Good start

There’s still huffing and puffing on both sides, but with a unanimous decision on the general aspects of the law, it’s doubtful that the Supreme Court will reverse its ruling on the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act.

Both RH advocates and opponents should be able to live with the SC ruling, which struck down, among other things, provisions that would penalize government health workers who refuse to implement the law because it’s against their religion or for some other personal beliefs.

It also makes access to RH services voluntary instead of a precondition for state assistance to the poor.

Impoverished women are the ones who need information on their right to reproductive health and the services available if they want to space their childbirths.

“If” is the operative word. Contrary to the misinformation spread by hysterical opponents, the RH Law is not imposing a one- or two-child policy like China. Filipino women are still free to have 20 children, one every year, and more – if that’s what they want. But those who don’t should have the freedom to choose. They should have the facts needed to make an informed choice, and access to resources needed to space childbirths. Keeping women in the dark about such information is medieval.

I obtained RH information in my teenage years, after several girls from my Catholic high school had abortions. Teenagers love to explore – and among the first things they explore is sex. It’s a fact of life, and even more so these days when every type of porn is available at kids’ fingertips. One father, seeing the futility of stopping such exploration, has only one instruction to his daughter: make sure you don’t land in YouTube.

So my teenage friends had sex, and were surprised that the natural method of birth control failed. Two of them nearly died from infections after the midwives, one in Quiapo and another in Baguio, used wires like those in clothes hangers for the abortions. A third went to a licensed gynecologist. She suffered no initial complications, although later, much to her dismay, she could no longer have children.

The gynecologist worked in a two-story house in Manila where the line of women, of all ages and income groups, waiting for their operation was as long as those snaking lines for rice during the global crisis in 2008. The doctor was a jolly, garrulous guy. I guess he talked a lot to relax his patients, many of whom were just teenagers. He told his patients that he paid off cops and soldiers to keep his clinic open. It cost him tens of thousands of pesos a month – a fortune in those days. The entire neighborhood knew about the abortion clinic.

Even at the hands of an experienced doctor, an abortion is an awful operation. If you’ve ever watched the procedure, you will swear never to have one and hope no one you know will be forced to have it.

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RH advocates hope the implementation of the law will bring the necessary information about contraception to enough women to significantly bring down the number of unwanted pregnancies and consequent abortions in this country, estimated at hundreds of thousands every year.

We didn’t learn about birth control pills from the abortionist. Friends in medical school told us about the contraceptives. That was how such information was shared among minors in the days before the Internet.

Today you can access that information online – if you’re computer literate, which millions of Filipinos still aren’t. I know a number of impoverished women, barely out of their teens, who got pregnant shortly after arriving in Manila from the provinces to find work. One of them jumped from the top of a coconut tree to end her pregnancy (she succeeded). Several others went to herbal stalls in Quiapo, where vendors readily gave them leaves plus instructions for infusing and drinking to end pregnancies (success rate unreliable).

I’ve also known older women who wanted to stop having children after numerous pregnancies and miscarriages (8 to 10 pregnancies is common; one had 14) but didn’t know how to go about it. They had a common complaint, which may be typical of the macho Pinoy male: the guys don’t like wearing condoms and leave the task of spacing pregnancies to the women.

Which is why we still needed a law, to give impoverished women the same information and at least the basic services available to their counterparts with the education and financial means to enjoy the right to reproductive health.

Republic Act 10354 also allows Congress to appropriate funding for RH programs to be administered by both the national and local government units (LGUs). This used to be done until the Catholic Church’s favorite president, currently detained for plunder, stopped the program.

The RH program was then left to the discretion of individual LGUs.

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In a dissenting opinion on the invalidated provisions, SC Associate Justice Marvic Leonen raised concern about allowing doctors to impose their religious beliefs on patients. The concern is valid, but anti-RH doctors are going to follow their religious beliefs anyway in implementing this law.

If a patient needing emergency attention bleeds to death because the only available doctor refuses to save her life even if it’s against his Hippocratic oath, the doctor should be charged with murder or homicide.

I don’t see this happening, however, since I think there are a lot more pro-RH health professionals out there than opponents.

The SC ruling softens opposition to the implementation of the RH Law. Pills, condoms and other contraceptives as well as the necessary information will now be accessible to women who are interested.

For its part the Catholic Church is free to warn women that they will burn in hell if they practice contraception or plan the size of their families. It will be a test of the Church’s credibility to see how many women heed the warning.

RH 10354 is not perfect, and it was certainly weakened by the invalidated provisions. But its most basic objective, which is to provide state-funded universal access to RH services, is intact and can be pursued. It’s a good start.