The government has embarked on a 10-point socioeconomic program aimed at significantly reducing poverty in the country until 2022. But it looks like the Supreme Court (SC) is hardly on the same page as the Executive branch as the ruling on the reproductive-health (RH) law would actually perpetuate poverty.
In other words, we have a situation where one hand does not know what the other is doing, and even working at cross-purposes with one another. That does not make for good economics at all.
This relates to the August 24 order of the Second Division of the SC stopping the Department of Health and the Food and Drug Administration from “granting any and all pending applications for registration and/or recertification for reproductive products and supplies, including contraceptive drugs and devices.”
In effect, what the SC temporary restraining order (TRO) does is to deprive tens of millions of Filipino women access to contraceptives, which violates women’s reproductive-health rights.
This is the reason last Monday (November 14) five non-governmental organizations and two prominent reproductive-health advocates filed a petition before the High Tribunal to immediately lift the TRO.
The petitioners assert the TRO runs counter to various international human-rights instruments, such as the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, as well as the 1987 Constitution’s provision on equal protection of the mother and the unborn; Republic Act (RA) 10354, or the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Law; and RA 9710, or the Magna Carta of Women.
The petitioners, who all call for the full implementation of RH law, are the Filipino Catholic Voices for Reproductive Health; Philippine NGO Council on Population Health and Welfare; Philippine Center for Population and Development; and Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development Foundation Inc. They are joined by former Health Secretary Dr. Esperanza I. Cabral and former Presidential Assistant for Social Development Ben de Leon.
They have solid grounds for asking the lifting of the TRO. Depriving women access to contraceptives would lead to an increase in unplanned pregnancy rates; teenage-pregnancy rates, already among the worst in the world will go even higher; and maternal deaths from preventable childbirth complications, now estimated to be at 14 deaths a day, will also shoot up.
Apart from these, intergenerational poverty will continue as poor parents are unable to provide for their many children.
We must remember that the SC already declared the RH law as constitutional. But why is it that it unduly favored the protection of the unborn over mothers, disregarded the “equal protection of the mother and the unborn” clause in the 1987 Philippine Constitution, and simply forgotten that mothers also have the right to life and health?
The SC TRO is a gross injustice against Filipino women and their families. While President Duterte himself has pledged full support for the RH law, the High Tribunal has gone in the opposite direction. Women’s access to contraceptives and family-planning services is crucial in implementing the RH law. Hence, lifting the TRO is correct not only from the legal point of view, but also from the socioeconomic standpoint. What’s keeping the SC from doing what’s right and would clearly benefit the entire nation?
2 comments
Poor PH, still under the thumb of the PEDOPHILE DAMASOS.
Fooling the Pinoys since 1521.
LOL!!!
PH still under the thumb of the PEDOPHILE CONEHEADS.
Fooling the Pinoys since 1521.
LOL!!!