Birth Control and its Opposition in the Philippines

Ms. Gina Judilla, a 37 year-old woman from Manila, Philippines is seen with her five children huddled in a small, undoubtedly unsanitary room. In an interview with the New York Times, she describes the various methods she tried using in order to terminate several of her pregnancies. From jumping down stairs to taking a gastric ulcer pill called Cytotec, apparently known as a birth control pill in the Philippines, she has been unsuccessful in committing abortion. Ms. Judilla is not alone in this process of attempts to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Many impoverished women are frequently impregnated unwantingly in the Philippines due to the fact that it is very difficult, and in some areas of the country, next to impossible to attain low cost reproductive services. From condoms to birth control, many public health clinics constantly turn people away because the services are unavailable. The Philippine government took note in a 2006 survey that from 2000 to 2006, only half of Filipino women of reproductive age used birth control of any kind. As a result, such startling numbers that 54 percent of the 3.4 million children born in the Philippines in 2008 were unintended. Of this 54 percent, 92 percent resulted from not using birth control.

Family planning advocates have made headway to change these numbers as legislation as reached the Philippine Congress. The bill is known as Reproductive Health and Population Development Act, and it would require governments down to the local level to provide free or low-cost reproductive health services — from condoms and birth control pills to tubal ligation and vasectomy. It would also mandate sex education in all schools, public and private, from fifth grade through high school.

The benefits of instituting such a policy are clear, less unintended pregnancy results in less of an aggravation of poverty. For families like Judilla, fewer children of the household will allow for more children to go to school. She noted that only two of her older children can go to school as they are all they have the finances for. And of course, the instituting the sex education in the schools will also stimulate safer sexual practices for future generations.

In opposition to this bill are the Roman Catholic organizations that say the bill would end up legalizing abortion. For a country whose roots and its people are predominantly Roman Catholic, there is a fear of un-Godly principles finding such heavy support at the national level of the government. The environment secretary, in response to the opposition's move of taking away contraceptives from public clinics and hospitals and in opposing the RH bill, said, “Contrary to what many are saying, that policy was meant to protect women, to protect their wombs from those who want to take away life,” he said.

It's understandable that the Roman Catholic Church has its values and its policies. However, how just is it that they infringe their principles on an entire country who may not have any moral connection to the church? Is it fair or just that they continue to allow millions of children being born in to a world of despair and poverty, and for most, will not likely to live a life much beyond the conditions of their natural inheritance? I would also like to add that this bill will really prevent so many attempts of abortion, like Ms. Gina Judilla's, which occur in unsanitary and unsafe conditions. In providing contraceptives, the government is simply trying to prevent so many unwanted pregnancies from occurring. They are trying to preserve the lives of those children that are born in to their country so that they have better opportunities to get education and stimulate the development of the country (as Gina Judilla's case would prove).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/world/asia/26iht-phils.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp