Cayetano seeks special trust fund for abandoned children

MANILA, Philippines - Senate minority leader Alan Peter Cayetano is pushing for a bill that will provide for a national program to support and care for abandoned and neglected children through a special trust fund.

Cayetano has raised his concern over the recovery of several fetuses found in dumpsites in recent years due to unplanned pregnancies, mostly of poor mothers.

“It is the primary role and duty of parents before God and before man to take care of their children,” Cayetano said. These are shown by the parents’ sacrifice to work hard to ensure a bright future for their children by giving them education and health care.

He said the government should address the growing cases of abortion by providing opportunities to poor mothers who have unplanned pregnancies.

Cayetano said the government should provide adequate intervention by creating a national program to support and care for orphaned, abandoned and neglected children.

Poor mothers who often resort to abortion as well as those forced to have their children adopted by friends and strangers should be given the opportunity to avail of these benefits.

At the same time, children who were abandoned or neglected should still have access to full social and health benefits under the program to allow them to grow as responsible individuals, he said.

“But what happens when the parents abandon and neglect their children? Even worse is when poor mothers are forced to resort to unsafe abortion because of their unplanned pregnancy,” he said.

Cayetano’s proposed measure aims to allocate a trust account for each orphaned, abandoned, neglected, voluntarily-committed minor child under caring institutions accredited by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and care centers where the government has to infuse resources by quarterly depositing a special amount for each of the trust accounts.

The trust account matures when the orphaned, abandoned, neglected or voluntarily committed minor reaches the age of maturity, thus providing him/her some seed money to the face the challenges of life.

In 2005, official estimates put annual abortions at 400,000 to 500,000, and rising. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimate puts the figure at nearly 800,000, one of the highest rates of unsafe abortions in Asia.

Jean-Marc Olive, a former country representative of the WHO, said 70 percent of unwanted pregnancies in the Philippines end in abortion.

Pro-Life Philippines, an anti-abortion group, said that one of four pregnancies in the Philippines end in abortion.

About four in five abortions in the Philippines are for economic reasons, according to a survey by the University of the Philippines.

In many cases, the mother can’t afford another child, so she ends up choosing her five living children over the fetus in her womb, the senator added, citing a report from Jocelyn Pacete, a spokeswoman for Likhaan, a women’s health group based in Manila.