Women's realities and abortion

(published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, November 18, 2002)

I have noticed much reluctance and defensiveness in the way abortion rights had been discussed in recent newspaper columns and letters to the editor. Much about reproductive rights is also
misunderstood. Reproductive rights include the woman's right to prevent pregnancy and to terminate her pregnancy. I will not skirt around the issue and say that abortion is indeed a part of it.

In upholding these rights, legislators are counted upon to show impartiality in the face of the massive disinformation campaign launched by Catholic fundamentalists who purposely appeal to morals and religious devotion and allegiance, which the state must be dissociated from. Catholic fundamentalists have turned a blind eye to the realities women face today. Women are dying because they are forced to resort to clandestine, illegal and unsafe abortion to terminate their unwanted pregnancies.

The Philippines is one of a few predominantly Catholic countries where Catholic dogma has prevailed in law. It has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world-even penalizing the woman who undergoes abortion. And it is one of the remaining countries in the world that deny emergency contraception, specifically, levonorgestrel. One glaring example is the outdated Revised Penal Code provision penalizing the woman and the person assisting the woman for undergoing abortion. Another example is the 1987 constitutional provision equally protecting the life of the mother and the life of the unborn. This particular provision was not in the 1935 and the 1973 Philippine Constitutions. It is unfortunate that the religious commissioners during the 1986 Constitutional Commission had used their position to insert this provision in our Constitution-a blatant violation of the principle of separation of church and state. We cannot let fundamentalist Catholics and any other religion to perpetuate the imposition of their morals and religion in our law.

To those who are imposing their fundamentalist morals and religion, I will pose these questions: If you or your daughter were raped, would you or your daughter bear that child even if it was not your or your daughter's choice to get pregnant? If you already have several children and are hard up with money and your husband forces you to have sex, will you bear that child even if it was not your choice to be pregnant?

If we are to engender women's reproductive rights and we are to be compassionate and responsive to women's realities, then women's right to safe and legal abortion as well as right to emergency contraception should be recognized and protected by Philippine law.--Clara Rita A. Padilla