The abortion scare is truly just a scare. The religious right would
use all kinds of scare tactics and disinformation by claiming that
contraceptives are abortifacients and that the reproductive health
care bill (RH bill) promotes abortion. They have long been using these
arguments in public fora and debates. Both these two arguments of the
religious right are, of course, untrue. Their arguments are not based
on medical science and factual content of the RH bill which, in truth,
does not allow a single ground for safe and legal abortion.

What legislators, reproductive rights and women’s rights activists,
people in government and the public should bear in mind is, in this
day and age, our discourse should be raised to the level of
international human rights standards, realities women face, public
health, medical science, and legal reform.

The criminal law on abortion is an outdated colonial law that violates
the rights to health and life of Filipino women. It was a direct
translation of the old Spanish Penal Code of 1870s that used to
criminalize abortion—in the time of the Spanish friars and
conquistadores. Without knowing the full consequences of such a harsh
and restrictive law, our congress enacted the criminal provision in
our Revised Penal Code of 1930. At the time the law was adopted,
Filipino women did not even have the right to vote, there was no
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and no international human
rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR, 1976), the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1976), Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW,
1981), Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1990). These came
much later.

In this day and age, we talk about a humane society where no woman
should die from pregnancy, childbirth, and unsafe abortion. We talk
about the right to control one’s fertility with proper access to
reproductive health information and services, the right to sex and
sexuality education where we should be discussing delaying sexual
debut, safe sex, risks of early sex, sexually transmitted infections,
reproductive tract infections, risks of early pregnancy, risks of
early marriage, violence against women, empowerment of women and
girls, and the right to sexual orientation and gender identity, among
others.

Our discourse and standards should include separation of church and
state where the church should not be meddling with affairs of the
state, where there is non-establishment of religion, where the
standard is not religious standards from the Catholic, Islam or
whatever religion but the standard should be secular morality. All
these constitutional guarantees are there to maintain public good and
uphold human rights.

The international human rights standard is to liberalize abortion laws
to make it safe and accessible to women and thereby lessen maternal
mortality related to unsafe abortion. The Philippines is duty-bound to
fulfill its treaty obligations to uphold the right to equality, equal
protection of the law, non-discrimination of women, right to health
and life under the ICCPR, ICESCR, CEDAW, and CRC. Recognizing that the
criminalization of abortion does not lessen the number of women
inducing abortion but only makes it dangerous for women who undergo
clandestine and unsafe abortion, in 2006, the Committee on Elimination
of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee),[1] urged the
Philippine government to “consider reviewing the laws relating to
abortion with a view to removing punitive provisions imposed on women
who undergo abortion and provide them with access to quality services
for the management of complications arising from unsafe abortions and
to reduce women’s maternal mortality rates in line with the
Committee’s general recommendation 24 on women and health and the
Beijing Platform for Action.”[2]

In 2008, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR)
[3] expressed its concern that “abortion is illegal in all
circumstances, even when the woman’s life or health is in danger or
pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, and that complications from
unsafe, clandestine abortions are among the principal causes of
maternal deaths.” The Committee encouraged the Philippines “to
address, as a matter of priority, the problem of maternal deaths as a
result of clandestine abortions, and consider reviewing its
legislation criminalising abortion in all circumstances.”

With the stark realities of not having access to sex and sexuality
education, poor and adolescent women and girls not knowing how to
properly manage their fertility and where to get the proper
information and services, with policy restrictions in place such as
the Manila EO 003 denying access to modern contraceptives and
discouraging ligation to the poor women who need them, with the
prevalence of rape, and the overall impact on reproductive health with
more than half of all pregnancies being unintended and statistics
ranging from 17% to one-third of these unintended pregnancies ending
in abortion, 560,000 women who induced abortions, 90,000 women
hospitalized and 1,000 women who died from complications from unsafe
abortion in 2008 alone,[4] we simply cannot be scared by the religious
right or succumb to conservative discourse. The women who were
hospitalized and maltreated by doctors and nurses and the families of
the women who died due to complications from unsafe abortion, the rape
victims who were tortured from the pregnancy resulting from rape have
long been waiting for humane laws, policies, and practices. Not
providing access to safe and legal abortion to women, especially poor
women, who want to terminate their unwanted pregnancies is much like
sentencing these women to death—since about a thousand of them die
every year.

How do we prevent such discrimination and violation of human rights?
On one hand, we should prevent unwanted pregnancies through sex
education and increased access to the full range of contraceptive
methods, provide access to skilled birth attendants, provide emergency
obstetric care, overturn policies that restrict access to reproductive
health information and services, pass a comprehensive RH bill, and
implement it to the full extent. At the same time, we should provide
access to safe and legal abortion either on certain grounds (rape,
danger to the health and life of the woman, fetal impairment) or on
broader grounds to do away with judicial and medical interpretation.

By Atty. Clara Rita A. Padilla, Executive Director, EnGendeRights

[1] The committee tasked to monitor the implementation of CEDAW by the
Philippines as a state party.

[2] 2006 CEDAW Committee Concluding Comments.

[3] The committee tasked to monitor the implementation of CESCR by the
Philippines as a state party.

[4] Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), Meeting Women’s Contraceptive
Needs in the Philippines, 1 In Brief 2 (2009), http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2009/04/15/IB_MWCNP.pdf