A middle-aged woman riddled with indecision as she is confronted by maternity, including undergoing abortion, gave Max Eigenmann her best actress award for “12 Weeks” in this year’s Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival.
Alice (Eigenmann) is a single 40-year-old woman who discovers she is pregnant after breaking up with her boyfriend (Vance Larena). With her age and current relationship status, her first instinct is to have the pregnancy terminated. As her body undergoes dramatic changes, Alice struggles and needs to decide whether she wants to be a mother or not.
The fetus is most vulnerable during the first 12 weeks. During this period, all of the major organs and body systems are forming and can be damaged if the fetus is exposed to drugs, infectious agents, radiation, certain medications, tobacco and toxic substances, in addition to emotional stress.
12 weeks also won the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) award.
Director Anna Isabelle Matutina said that the film aimed to tell modern Filipinas that they and they alone should decide about their bodies, certainly not the men in their lives.
She added that it is a story on modern Filipino women who continue to struggle in a highly conservative and deeply patriarchal country where anti-woman laws continue to exist and misogyny is blatant and common.
I had a discussion with Matutina on abortion in view of the recent overturning by the US Supreme Court of the doctrine enunciated in the 1973 landmark case of Roe v. Wade (410 US 113).
I first encountered Roe vs Wade in my constitutional and criminal law classes at the UP College of Law in the early 1990s.
The US Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that the US constitution generally protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion.
The case noted that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects against state action the right to privacy, and a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion falls within that right to privacy. A state law that broadly prohibits abortion without respect to the stage of pregnancy or other interests violates that right.
The case discussed abortion rights in three periods of the pregnancy.
In the first trimester, the state may not regulate the abortion decision; only the pregnant woman and her attending physician can make that decision.
In the second trimester, the state may impose regulations on abortion that are reasonably related to maternal health.
In the third trimester, once the fetus reaches the point of “viability,” a state may regulate abortions or prohibit them entirely, so long as the laws contain exceptions for cases when abortion is necessary to save the life or health of the mother.
However, the US Supreme Court recently overturned the Roe doctrine in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
It was a legal challenge to Mississippi’s 2018 Gestational Age Act, which had banned abortions after 15 weeks with exceptions only for medical emergencies or fetal abnormalities.
In upholding the Mississippi law, the Court has effectively ended the constitutional right to an abortion for American women.
The Court stated that Roe has “enflamed debate and deepened division” and that overruling it would “return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
The majority opinion relied on a constitutional historical view of abortion rights, saying, “abortion couldn’t be constitutionally protected. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.”
Aside from politics, nothing has polarized nations more than the issues of population growth control, abortion and contraception and their perceived consequences.
As in every democratic society, we might be expecting more discussion on diametrically opposed views.
The other winners for the full length films section include: “The Baseball Player” by Carlo Obispo won as best film along with three other awards, best editing by Zig Dulay, best screenplay by Obispo, and best actor by Tommy Alejandrino; Ma-an L. Asuncion Dagñalan (Blue Room) as best director; Ruby Ruiz (Ginhawa) as best supporting actress; Soliman Cruz (Blue Room) as best supporting actor; Neil Daza (Blue Room) for best cinematography; Marxie Maolen Fadul (Blue Room) for best production design; Isha Abubakar (Retirada) for best original music score; Pepe Manikan (Bula Sa Langit) for best sound design award; “Kargo” by TM Malones as audience choice award and Blue Room for the special jury award.
Since 2005, the Cinemalaya has continued “to discover, encourage, and support the cinematic works of Filipino filmmakers that boldly articulate and freely interpret the Filipino experience with fresh insight and artistic integrity.”
Peyups is the moniker of the University of the Philippines. Atty. Dennis R. Gorecho heads the seafarers’ division of the Sapalo Velez Bundang Bulilan law offices. For comments, e-mail info@sapalovelez.com, or call 0917-5025808 or 0908-8665786.