Legalizing Abortion Will Save Filipino Women's Lives

(published in Today, April 28, 2003)
The police recently arrested six "abortionists" in Obando. Police Chief Supt. Eduardo Matillano, director of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), even said that abortion should be made a heinous crime.

Estimates show that despite the illegality of abortion, 400,000 Filipino women induce abortions annually. About 80,000 women end up hospitalized and many others die due to complications from clandestine and unsafe abortion. Unsafe abortion and its complications have been the number three leading cause of hospital discharge from 1994-99.

Those who impose their morality on women are oblivious to these facts. Women who undergo abortion are faced with unwanted pregnancies. Mainly married women with three or more children are the ones obtaining abortions. Many of these women are unable to practice contraception while others are rape and incest victims.

Prosecution of women who undergo abortion and those who perform abortion is not the answer. Recognizing that the criminalization of abortion does not lessen the number of abortion but makes it dangerous for women, the Cairo and Beijing conferences urged countries to review penalties against women who undergo abortions and the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women recommended that state parties remove punitive provisions imposed on women who undergo abortion.

The Philippines has a commitment to make abortion safe and legal for Filipino women. Where abortion is legal, like in Canada and Turkey, abortion rates did not increase while the Netherlands has one of the lowest abortion rates in the world. Deaths due to abortion fell 85 percent after legalization in the US. Matillano erred in likening a fetus with a child. Such statement is not supported by Philippine law. As a civil servant, he should not use his position to further his religious beliefs and impose his morality.

Increasingly, countries worldwide are permitting abortion on broad grounds including Spain and Italy. Just as Presidential Decree 772 on anti-squatting—seen as an injustice to the urban poor and not a solution to the problem of squatting—was repealed so must the 1932 Revised Penal Code provision penalizing the woman who undergoes abortion and those assisting her be repealed.