The House Committee Revision of Laws should immediately junk House Bill 4643. The bill is so outrageous. It seeks to restrict access to safe methods of contraception such as emergency contraceptive pills, Depo Provera, IUDs, among others.
The sponsor of the bill and its supporters are trying to mislead the Committee into believing that all contraceptives are abortifacients. They would like to deny access to safe and legally acceptable methods of contraception to the Filipino populace by blatantly relying on disinformation. Their misguided claims on IUDs, contraceptives, emergency contraceptive pills, and injectables are clearly contrary to the findings of internationally accepted findings of the World Health Organization and International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics.
The medical definition of pregnancy is the implantation of the fertilized egg in the uterine wall. Contraceptives do not have any effect on an implanted fertilized egg, thus, are not abortifacients.
The constitutional provision protecting the life of woman and the unborn from conception does allow access to information and services to contraception and even abortion. Chile and Peru have the same constitutional protection of the life of the woman and the unborn from conception and they allow access to emergency contraceptive pills. In Argentina and Belgium, emergency contraceptive pills are available without prescription. Spain, upon whose old Penal Code the Philippine Revised Penal Code penalty imposed on the woman who induced abortion was adopted, allows abortion on grounds of rape and fetal impairment leaving the Philippines to contend with its colonial laws. Belgium, France and Italy allow abortion on demand. Colombia allow abortion on grounds of danger to life and health, rape and fetal malformation incompatible with life outside the uterus.
All the above-mentioned predominantly Catholic countries belie the claim that restricting access to contraception and even safe and legal abortion in the Philippines is a matter of practice of the Catholic religion. It is simply ignorance of medicine, science and law and clinging to our colonial past.
Catholic women around the world–including more than 60 percent of Catholic women in Trinidad, Tobago and Botswana, and 28 percent in the Philippines–have used contraceptive methods, showing that Catholic women exercise freedom of
conscience.
It is the obligation of the Philippine government as cited in the recent UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women Concluding Comments on the Philippines to “strengthen measures aimed at the prevention of unwanted pregnancies, including by making a comprehensive range of contraceptives more widely available and without any restriction….”
Access to the full range of contraceptive methods is effective to prevent unintended pregnancy, abortion and maternal mortality and morbidity.
