Women's groups to Congress: Allow 'safe and legal abortion'

Reproductive health and women's rights advocates urged Congress Monday to pass a law allowing "safe and legal abortion," citing a new report that described a “human rights crisis" of maternal deaths, injuries, and illnesses arising from unsafe abortions in the Philippines. The report “Forsaken Lives: The Harmful Impact of the Philippine Criminal Abortion Ban" released by the New-York-based Center for Reproductive Rights on Monday estimates that more than half a million Filipino women induce abortions every year. Of these, around 90,000 seek treatment for complications, while around 1,000 die. “Our Congress should address this issue by passing a law that expressly allows safe and legal abortion," said Attorney Clara Rita Padilla, Executive Director of EnGendeRights.

"The Philippine Judiciary should rule on the constitutionality of safe abortion when raised in court. Women’s rights advocates and reproductive rights advocates should also demand access to safe and legal abortion to address this public health issue," added Padilla, a former Visiting International Legal Fellow at the Center for Reproductive Rights. Women's advocates asked the Congress to legalize abortion under certain conditions, such as when the life or physical and mental health of a woman is at stake, when the pregnancy is a result of sexual assault, or when the fetus is impaired. However, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines or CBCP rejected the proposal. Responding to the figures describing the incidence of unsafe abortion cited by the CRR study, CBCP legal counsel Josephine Imbong said, “Kung maraming drug addicts, gawin na lang nating legal ang drug addiction? (If there are many drug addicts, does that mean we should make drug use legal?" Imbong expressed skepticism about the report’s findings regarding the widespread incidence of unsafe abortion. “The cases that they are citing about poor women [seeking unsafe abortion] are exceptional. It is not the general rule. We have studies that the majority of women and mothers in this country love to have children. We cannot allow a minority to rule and change the law," she said. Imbong asserted that abortion should not be allowed under any circumstances, including rape or incest. “Hindi naman kasalanan ng baby yun eh. Bakit siya papatayin?" (The rape is not the baby’s fault. Why should the baby be killed?) she said. The Catholic Church's stance on abortion is based on the belief that every human being, including fetuses, have the right to life. Criminalization of abortion The Revised Penal Code of 1930 orders imprisonment for any woman found guilty of inducing abortion upon herself, or for any physician or midwife that will assist her. This is supported by the 1987 Constitution which states that the State shall “equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception." According to the CRR report, however, “Criminalization of abortion has not prevented abortion in the Philippines, but it has made it extremely unsafe, leading directly to the preventable deaths of thousands of women each year." The report found that the most typical methods of unsafe abortion practiced in the Philippines were abdominal massages by traditional midwives or manghihilot, the unsupervised consumption of contraction-inducing drugs or traditional herb concoctions, and the insertion of catheters into the uterus. These methods resulted in physical complications such as hemorrhage, sepsis, damage to the uterus and other internal organs, and death, the report said. Dr. Florence Tadiar of the Institute for Social Studies Action or ISSA, a human rights advocacy group that is also supporting the liberalization of the law on abortion, said campaigners are starting to hold dialogues on the issue. "What we're trying to do is initiate a discussion about the human rights violations by the government-- violations of the international commitment of the Philippines to women's health," she said. "One recommendation of the report is that the CBCP will respect other religions. The Catholic church is not the religion of the state," Tadiar added. "Even the prevention of abortion, the prevention of pregnancy, they are already making it a morality issue. They are deeming it a sin." Abortion among poor women The CCR study found that most women who seek unsafe abortions are poor. They usually resort to the practice for health reasons, lack of economic preparedness to support more children, or because they became pregnant as a result of rape or incest. “Only those who are better off, rich, can talk about abortion as illegal. They have no worries about raising their children. But for those who have to work daily to be able to feed their families, the poor women, have limited options. They do not know what it is like to be poor and desperate," said Aileen, a mother of five and survivor of an unsafe abortion who was interviewed for the report. The report also described cases where women were threatened or discriminated against by medical professionals when they sought treatment for complications from an unsafe abortion. Haydee, a mother of one who got an abortion because her unusually high blood pressure made her pregnancy life-threatening, said she was scolded by doctors when she sought help for post-abortion bleeding. “They scolded me, telling me that even if I had this condition, I should not terminate it because it is illegal. I was also frightened because they said they would report us to the NBI," she said. The study was based mainly on interviews conducted between 2008 and 2010 with survivors of unsafe abortion, acquaintances of women who died from unsafe abortion, health professionals, lawyers, ethicists, reproductive health activists, counselors, academics, political leaders, and law enforcement agents. –VVP/YA, GMANews.TV