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Reproductive Health Bill: Fact Sheet and

Explanatory Note
« on: October 08, 2008, 02:47:30 pm »

http://jlp-law.com/blog/reproductive-health-bill-fact-sheet-and-explanatory-note/

Reproductive Health Bill: Fact Sheet and

Explanatory Note
Published by Atty. Fred September 16th, 2008 in Family and Property Law and Obiter/News.

(Note: This is the Fact Sheet from the Committee on Health on House Bill No. 5043 [full text], in
substitution to HB Nos. 17, 812, 2753 & 3970. Introduced by Reps. Edcel C. Lagman, Janette L.
Garin, Narciso D.Santiago III, Mark Llandro Mendoza, Ana Theresia Hontiveros-Baraquel, Eleandro
Jesus F. Madrona. The full text of the explanatory note of Rep. Edcel Lagman’s House Bill No. 17,
one of the substituted bills, is also reproduced below.)

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND POPULATION DEVELOPMENT ACT OF 2008

OBJECTIVE/S:

* To uphold and promote respect for life, informed choice, birth spacing and responsible
parenthood in conformity with internationally recognized human rights standards.

* To guarantee universal access to medically-safe, legal and quality reproductive health care
services and relevant information even as it prioritizes the needs of women and children.
KEY PROVISIONS:

* Mandates the Population Commission, to be an attached agency of the Department of Health,

to be the central planning, coordinating, implementing and monitoring body for effective
implementation of this Act.

* Provides for the creation of an enabling environment for women and couples to make an
informed choice regarding the family planning method that is best suited to their needs and
personal convictions.

* Provides for a maternal death review in LGUs, national and local government hospitals and
other public health units to decrease the incidence of maternal deaths.

* Ensures the availability of hospital-based family planning methods such as tubal ligation,
vasectomy and intrauterine device insertion in all national and local government hospitals,
except in specialty hospitals.

* Considers hormonal contraceptives, intrauterine devices, injectables and other allied

reproductive health products and supplies under the category of essential medicines and
supplies to form part of the National Drug Formulary and to be included in the regular purchase
of essential medicines and supplies of all national and local hospitals and other government
health units.

* Provides for a Mobile Health Care Service in every Congressional District to deliver health
care goods and services.

* Provides Mandatory Age-appropriate Reproductive Health Education starting from Grade 5 to

Fourth Year High School to develop the youth into responsible adults.

* Mandates the inclusion of the topics on breastfeeding and infant nutrition as essential part of
the information given by the City or Municipal Office of the Family Planning to all applicants for
marriage license.

* Mandates no less than 10% increase in the honoraria of community-based volunteer workers,
such as the barangay health workers, upon successful completion of training on the delivery of
reproductive health care services.
 * Penalizes the violator of this Act from one month to six months imprisonment or a fine
ranging from ten thousand to fifty thousand pesos or both such fine and imprisonment at the
discretion of the Court.

——————————-

Republic of the Philippines

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Quezon City, Metro Manila

FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST REGULAR SESSION

HOUSE BILL NO. 17

Introduced by HONORABLE EDCEL C. LAGMAN

EXPLANATORY NOTE

The present population of the country of 88.7 million has galloped from 60.7 million 17 years ago.
This makes the Philippines the 12th most populous nation in the world today.The Filipino
women’s fertility rate of 3.05% is at the upper bracket of 206 countries. With four babies born
every minute, the population is expected to balloon to an alarming 160 million in 2038.

It is worth noting, however, that available studies, data and statistics show that the Filipinos are
responsive to having smaller-sized families through free choice of family planning methods:

a. The desired fertility rate of Filipino women is 2.5 children per woman. However, the actual
total fertility rate is 3.5 or a difference of one child because of the lack of information and
absence of access to family planning. The current unmet need for contraceptives for example is
23.15% for poor women and 13.6% for women who are not poor (2003 National Demographic
and Health Survey)

b. 61% of currently married women do not want additional children (2003 National
Demographic and Health Survey)

c. 50.6% of the youth want to have only two children (2002 Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality
Survey)
 d. 97% of all Filipinos believe it is important to have the ability to control one’s fertility or to
plan one’s family. It is significant to note that 87% of the total respondents are Roman Catholic
(February 2004 Pulse Asia Survey)

e. Nearly nine in ten Filipinos or 86% say that candidates for elective positions who advocate a
program for women’s health should be supported while only 2% say they should be rejected and
12% are undecided on the matter;

f. 82% say that candidates in favor of couples’ free choice of family planning methods should
be supported while only 3% think otherwise and 15% are undecided;

g. 82% of Filipinos consider candidates supporting a law or measure on population issues

worthy of their voltes while only 3% say such candidates should not be backed at the polls and
15% are undecided;

h. 83% of Filipinos say they are in favor of candidates who support the allocation of goverment
funds for family planning while only 2% say they are not and 15% are undecided; and

i. A mere 8% of Filipinos believe that a candidate’s championing of family planning issues will
spell that candidate’s defeat at the polls.

j. In July 1991, the Social Weather Stations conducted a survey that revealed that 97% of
Filipinos want to have the ability to control their fertility and plan their families.

Notwithstanding these findings that favor smaller-sized families, this bill is not a population
control measure with the sole objective of limiting population growth. It provides for population
development that aims to:

(a) help couples/parents achieve their desired fertility size in the context of responsible
parenthood;

(b) improve reproductive health of individuals and contribute to decreased maternal mortality
rate, infant mortality and early child mortality;

(c) reduce incidence of teenage pregnancy and other reproductive health problems; and

(d) contribute to policies that will assist government to achieve a favorable balance between
population and distribution, economic activities and the environment.

This measure is not coercive. It gives couples the freedom to decide whether or not to plan their
families or space or limit their children. Those who decide to plan their families also have the
freedom to choose what method of contraception is best suited for them. The so called “two child
policy” is voluntary, not compulsory; suggestive, not coercive; and absolutely not punitive. It is
not even a policy. It is a suggested ideal or norm.

Accordingly, this bill seeks to provide the enabling environment for couples and individuals to
enjoy the basic right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children
and to have the information, education, and access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable
methods of family planning of their choice.

This proposed law aims to uphold and promote the four pillars of population and development
enunciated by no less than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself in her statement of support
for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) namely: (1) responsible
parenthood, (2) informed choice, (3) birth spacing, and (4) respect for life.

It should be clarified, however, that this bill does not only protect the life of the unborn from the
moment of implantation but that of the mother as well. Hence, the bill seeks to promote the
reproductive health of women basically through massive and sustained information campaign on
reproductive health rights, care, services and facilities coupled with universal access to all
methods of family planning ranging from the natural to the modern which are medically safe and
legally permissible. In the event they fail to prevent pregnancy and resort to abortion, they shall
be provided with appropriate health and medical care. Despite the provision for humane and
compassionate management of post abortion complications, this bill continues to proscribe and
penalize abortion which is a crime under the Revised Penal Code.

To contribute to the empowerment and responsible behavior of the youth, this proposed
legislation provides for age-appropriate reproductive health and sexuality education that may be
initiated by parents at house, and shall be sustained and complemented by formal education in
school.

An effective reproductive health education does not only instill consciousness of freedom of
choice but responsible exercise of one’s rights. According to the United Nations Population Fund:
“It has been, repeatedly shown that reproductive health education leads to responsible behavior,
higher levels of abstinence, later initiation of sexuality, higher use of contraception, and fewer
sexual partners, These good effeds are even greater when parents can talk honestly with their
children about sexual and reproductive matters.”

To guarantee the right of all persons to a full range of information on family planning methods,
services and facilities and to ensure their access to an equally full range of medically safe and
effective family planning methods at an appropriate time and by competent and adequately
trained persons,the bill mandates the Commission on Population (POPCOM) to be the central
planning, coordinating, implementing and monitoring body for the comprehensive and integrated
policy on reproductive health and population development. Section 5 of the bill specifies the
functions of POPCOM as the lead agency in the implementation of the “Reproductive Health,
Responsible Parenthood and Population Development Act of 2007″.

This proposed Act doses not only seek to protect and promote reproductive health and rights and
to empower couples, individuals, more particularly women, and the youth, but it also aims to
improve the quality of life of the people in general. Studies show that rapid population growth
exacerbates poverty while poverty spawns rapid population growth. Consider the following:

* The Family Income and Exfenditures Surveys by the National Statistics Office (NSO) from
1985-2000 disclose that 57.3% of families having many children are poor but only 15.7% of
families having two children are poor.

* Large family size is associated with negative determinant of school participation and poor
health and survival rates among children. (Orbeta, Population and the Fight Against Poverty,
2003)

* The prevalence of child labor rises, and school attendance falls, with the number of children
in the family (Raymundo, 2004). Moreover,the odds of a child becoming underweight and stunted
are greater if he/she belongs to a household with 5 or more members (FNRI 1998). This partly
explains why poverty tends to be transmitted and sustained from one generation to the next.

* According to the UN Population Fund 2002 Report, “lower birth rates and slower population
growth over the last three decades have contributed faster economic progress in a number of
developing countries.”

* Moreover,the same Report disclosed that fertility declines accounted for 1/5th of the
economic growth in East Asia between 1960 and 1995. Additionally, it showed that countries that
invest in health, including reproductive health and family planning, and in education and
women’s development register slower population growth and faster economic growth.
A consistent and coherent national population policy along with sound monetary and fiscal
policies and good governance could propel our people toward sustainable human development.

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Re: Reproductive Health Bill: Fact Sheet and

Explanatory Note
« Reply #1 on: October 09, 2008, 10:09:08 am »

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Re: Reproductive Health Bill: Fact Sheet and

Explanatory Note
« Reply #2 on: October 09, 2008, 10:11:30 am »

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH BILL?

By Francisco S. Tatad

Amid the domestic fallout of skyrocketing food and oil prices world-wide and a tottering
international financial system, some lawmakers have embarked on a high-profile campaign to
ram through a population control-driven bill that threatens the sanctity of human life, family life
and marriage, without regard to their honored place in our Constitution and our Christian culture.

The population has many problems. But population is not itself the problem. Assuming there are
problems associated with population growth, the reproductive health bill does not provide any
answers. I hope the following will help put this bill to rest and allow the nation to devote its time,
energy and resources to its real and more pressing problems.

1. THE BILL IS BASED ON A FLAWED PREMISE.

There is no “population explosion” and the country is not overpopulated.

The population growth rate and the total fertility rate (TFR) have declined. The National Statistics
Office puts the growth rate at 2.04 %, the TFR at 3.02. However, the CIA World Factbook (2008),
for one, puts the growth rate at 1.728%, the TFR at 3.00. Whatever the real numbers are, at least
one million Filipinos leave the country for foreign jobs every year. There are at least 12 million
Filipinos now living and working abroad.

The country has a population density of 277 Filipinos per square km, with a GDP per capita
(purchasing power parity) of $,3400. The Central African Republic has a population density of 6.5
and a GDP per capita (PPP) of $700. At least 50 countries have a much lower population density
than that of the Philippines, yet their GDP per capita is also much lower.

Fact: the few are not always richer.

On the other hand, at least 36 countries have a much higher population density than that of the
Philippines, yet their GDP per capita is also much higher. Macau has 18,428 people per square
km and a GDP per capita of $28,400; Monaco has 16,754 people per square km, with a per capita
income of $30,000; Hong Kong has 6,407 per square km, and a per capita income of $42,000;
and Singapore has 6,489 per square km., and a per capita income of $49,700.

Fact: the many are not always poorer.

The most critical statistic has to do with the age structure of the population. Worldwide, the
median age is 27.4 years. In the Philippines, it is 23 years. In at least 139 countries it is higher
than 23; in 73 others, lower. All the developed countries are on the high side. Monaco has the
highest (45.5 years), followed by Japan (43. , Germany (43.4), Italy (42.9), Sweden (41.3),

Spain (40.7), Switzerland (40.7), Holland (40), United Kingdom (39.9), France (39.2), Singapore
(38.4), Russia (38.3), United States (36.7), South Korea (36.4). In China, the world’s fastest
growing economy, it is 33.6.
This means a Filipino has more years to be productive than his counterpart in the developed
world, where the population is graying and dying, without adequate replacement because of
negative birth rates. Those who understand this well will tend to be more confident of the future;
they will see the need to invest more extensively in the development of this resource.

2. THE BILL IS TOTALLY UNNECESSARY

Except for the purported objective of treating fertility and preventing abortion, which (if
government is serious) may be immediately addressed by secondary health policy, the things the
bill wants to do are already being done, whether legally or not.

Officially-sponsored contraception and sterilization are ongoing with foreign and local funding,
even without a legal mandate. Punishable abortions go unpunished. Certain things that are lawful
and necessary (like promotion of breast-feeding, infant and child health and nutrition) can be
done easily without legislation. Some truly repugnant things (like mandatory sex education for
young children, inclusion of contraceptives and abortifacients in the National Drug Formulary as
essential medicines, and making a family planning compliance certificate from the civil registrar
a requirement for marriage) should not be legislated at all.

There is free access to information on contraception. No law bars anyone from using
contraceptives of their choice, it is a free market. You don’t need the government for it.
Consumers however must pay for their own, as they pay for everything else. The Philippines is
not a welfare state, nobody gets a free lunch. If the government has the money, it should spend
it to save women from killer-diseases, not on trying to cure pregnancy, which is not a disease.

At least 80 women are said to die from heart diseases everyday; 63 from vascular diseases; 51
from cancer; 45 from pneumonia; 23 from tuberculosis; 22 from diabetes; 16 from lower chronic
respiratory diseases. This is where the State should provide, if it could, free medicine and medical
services.

Now, out of every 100,000 live births, some 107 women are said to die from complications during
childbirth. This is 107 too many. But the local executives of Gattaran, Cagayan and Sorsogon City
have shown that maternal death during childbirth could be brought down to zero simply by
providing women with adequate basic and emergency obstetric care facilities and skilled medical
services. Not contraceptives.

On July 29, 2005, the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health
Organization (WHO) announced that after a thorough review of the published scientific literature,
it was concluded that oral contraceptives are carcinogenic to humans ---they cause breast, liver
and cervical cancer. In light of that, the government should probably ban the carcinogens or at
least label them as “cancer-causing,” or “dangerous to women’s health.” But some legislators,
some of them doctors too, still want to distribute them as “essential medicines” to our women.
Why?

3. THE BILL ASSUMES THAT THE STATE IS OMNIPOTENT. IT SEEKS TO CONFER UPON THE STATE A
RIGHT AND AUTHORITY IT DOES NOT, AND CAN NEVER, POSSESS.

No one questions the right of the State to levy taxes, to expropriate private property for public
use, to conscript able-bodied young men for its defense. But the State may not enter the family
bedroom and tell married couples how to practice marital love.

For while it is a citizen who casts his vote, pays his taxes and fights for his flag, it is a man who
embraces his wife and fathers her child. There are certain areas, certain activities of man as man
where every individual is accountable only to God, and completely autonomous from the State.
These are sacred and inviolate areas where the State may not intrude.

Allow the State to invade our innermost private lives, and it will just be a matter of time before
we are told we can no longer breathe unless the State allows it.

4. THE BILL IS PATENTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

a) Article II, Section 12 of the Constitution provides: “The State recognizes the sanctity of family
life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall
equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. The natural and
primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the
development of moral character shall receive the support of the Government.”

“Sanctity”---the state of being holy---is an attribute of God. God is not outside our lives; the very
first words of the Constitution proclaim it: “We, the sovereign Filipino People, imploring the aid of
Almighty God…” Obedience to God’s laws, therefore, is not only a solemn teaching of the Church,
but also an express constitutional mandate.

The government cannot be party to a program that seeks to prevent one married woman from
conceiving, without making a mockery of that mandate. That is the necessary implication of the
State’s duty to “equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”
b). Article XV recognizes “marriage as an inviolable social institution,” and “the foundation of the
family.” Which, in turn, the State recognizes as “the foundation of the nation.” Section 3 (1) of
the same Article binds the State to defend “the right of spouses to found a family in accordance
with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood.”

Clearly, this does not allow the State to tell members of any faith ---in this case the Catholic
faith---not to listen to what their Church teaches on faith and morals, or responsible parenthood,
but to listen to the politicians and the population controllers instead.

But this is precisely what the bill seeks to do.

5. THE BILL IS DESTRUCTIVE OF PUBLIC MORALS AND FAMILY VALUES.

It seeks to legislate a hedonistic sex-oriented lifestyle whose aim is to assure couples and
everybody else of “a safe and satisfying sex life” (the other term for contraceptive sex), instead
of a mutually fulfilling conjugal life, and ultimately change time-honored Filipino values about
human life, family life, marriage, in favor of the most destructive counter-values that are
wreaking havoc on the morals of many consumerist societies.

6. THE BILL IS PARTICULARLY UNJUST TO CATHOLIC TAXPAYERS, WHO CONSTITUTE THE

MAJORITY, AND WHO WILL BE MADE TO BEAR THE COST OF THE PROGRAM THAT WILL
ULTIMATELY ATTACK A CONSTANTLY HELD DOCTRINE OF THEIR FAITH.

The same objection would hold even if the affected party were a religious minority. In fact, it
should be interesting to find out whether any legislator will dare propose any legislation that is
doctrinally and morally offensive to Islam or to any politically active local religious group.

7. THE BILL IS NOT WHAT ITS AUTHORS SAY IT IS. IT IS EVERYTHING THEY SAY IT IS NOT.

Not only is it hedonistic, it is above all eugenicist. It seeks to eliminate the poor and the “socially
unfit” while paying lip service to their cause. While it neither mandates a two-child family nor
legalizes abortion, it prepares the ground for both.

Its declared objective of population reduction conforms to the global population policy launched
by U.S. National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200 in 1974, under the title IMPLICATIONS
OF WORLDWIDE POPULATION GROWTH FOR U.S. SECURITY AND OVERSEAS INTERESTS. It
targeted the Philippines, along with India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia,
Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia and Columbia.
NSSM 200, also known as The Kissinger Report, called for a two-child family worldwide by the
year 2000, using universal contraception and abortion. “No country has reduced its population
growth without resorting to abortion,” the Report said. In 1974, NSSM 200 estimated thirty million
abortions worldwide. The annual rate has doubled since.

8. ENACTMENT OF THE BILL WILL ONLY DEEPEN THE IGNORANCE ABOUT THE ISSUES INVOLVED.

Some defenders of the bill claim that nine out of ten women (who must be Catholic) want to
contracept, regardless of what the Church teaches about it. Sad, but if the claim is correct, then
nine out of ten “Catholic” women need to be instructed more deeply on the doctrines of their
faith and on the harmful effects of contraceptives and abortifacients. Not everything an individual
wants is good or right; the truth is never the result of opinion surveys. Contraception is wrong not
because the Church has banned it; the Church has banned it because it is wrong. No amount of
surveys can change that.

The authors of the bill suggest that Catholics need not follow what the bishops are saying
because Humanae Vitae, Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on the regulation of birth, is not an infallible
document. This is an unfortunate conclusion from an incomplete premise.

Church teaching on contraception did not begin with Paul VI. Onan’s case (Gen 38:8-10) is
absolute proof; Pius XI and Pius XII pronounced on it before Humanae Vitae, appealing to
Scripture, to the Fathers of the Church, and to tradition. While Humanae Vitae was not infallibly
proposed, its teaching has been held definitively by all Catholic bishops. It meets the criteria set
forth by Vatican II for an infallible exercise of the ordinary magisterium of the bishops throughout
the world. As the theologian Russell Shaw points out, the Church has always taught contraception
to be gravely sinful; she has never taught that it is good, permissible, or even only venially sinful.

9. THE NATURAL REGULATION OF CONCEPTIONS DOES NOT OFFEND THE CONSTITUTION OR THE
RELIGIOUS BELIEF OF ANY COUPLE; IT IS IN FULL ACCORD WITH THE DEMANDS OF RESPONSIBLE
PARENTHOOD, AND IS NOT CONTRACEPTION AT ALL. NO LAW IS NEEDED FOR THE STATE TO
SUPPORT IT.

The Billings Method, which takes advantage of the fertility rhythm of the human body, has been
attested by the WHO to be 99% effective. But as there is no money in it, no industry has
promoted it like the various contraceptives and abortifacients. State support for it could spell the
difference.
(Former Senator Francisco S. Tatad represents Asia-Pacific on the Governing Boards of
International Right to Life Federation, Cincinnati, Ohio, and World Youth Alliance, New York, NY.)

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Re: Reproductive Health Bill: Fact Sheet and

Explanatory Note
« Reply #3 on: October 09, 2008, 02:46:08 pm »

Approach Reproductive Health Bill with sober minds

Published on 10/1/2008
Jane Godia
Last week, world leaders gathered at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to discuss
progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The goals are aimed at development in connection to various social factors. Their main objective
was poverty reduction, especially in Africa, and improving the lives of people that live on less
than a dollar a day.

These goals include ending poverty and hunger; universal education; gender equality; maternal
health; combating HIV/Aids; environmental sustainability and global partnership. Priority has
been given to ending hunger and reducing poverty, but in all the goals there is a trickle down
effect. The factors are part of a cycle and cannot be dealt with in isolation.

Take education for instance: While ensuring universal primary education for all, it is necessary to
see that the same number of students complete secondary schooling. Education also empowers a
woman to judge the number of children she can give birth to and care for. It also enables her to
make responsible choices regarding sex. For example, she can refuse sex without a condom and
reduce the risk of contracting sexually transmitted illnesses (STIs) and HIV.

September marks the ninth month since post-election violence hit the country. Hospitals in
Nairobi, Naivasha, Nakuru, Eldoret, Kitale, Kisumu, Burnt Forest and elsewhere are teeming with
new-born babies conceived after rape.

Today, some women who were victims of the chaos have children whose fathers they do not
know. Others are breast-feeding children whose fathers they can identify, but fear naming. Yet
others are suffering from STIs and HIV but have not sought treatment because the sexual and
gender based violence they encountered in the chaos left them traumatised. These women were
not given a choice between having children or using protection.

Choices

Even when freedom to make those choices can be availed, millions of other women are
disadvantaged because the Reproductive Health Rights Bill 2008 has been politicised. Many
people see reproductive health rights as ‘abortion’. But the Bill wants legal recognition of the
right for all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and
timing of their children; the right to information on reproductive health; the right to attain the
highest standards of reproductive health and the right to make decisions regarding reproduction
without discrimination, coercion and violence.
Mirage

In Kenya and many other developing countries, sexual and reproductive health rights remain a
mirage for many women.

Sexual health rights refer to a situation of having a responsible, satisfying safe sex life that is free
of disease, injury, violence, disability, unnecessary pain or risk to life.

Reproductive health rights on the other hand refer to complete, physical, mental, social well-
being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity on all matters related to its functions
and processes.

In discussing Goal Number 5 of the MDGs, world leaders were putting in perspective issues that
have been raised in the Bill. Among other things, it aims to provide a framework for protection
and advancement of reproductive and health rights for all. The other objectives are to achieve a
rapid and substantial reduction in maternal illness and death; ensure access to quality and
comprehensive provision of family planning services; and make provisions for adolescent
reproductive health.

Primary education is free. But is it not due to poverty that there are children roaming our streets
looking for food from dust-bins? Is it not from shortage of family planning products that women
are forced to have children they had not anticipated? Is it not for lack of education and poverty
that women are the most infected with and affected by HIV/Aids?

Rather than condemn it wholesale, policy makers should go through the Bill and understand it, as
they did with the Sexual Offences Bill.

Approached soberly, it is a major step in achieving the MDGs and improving the lives of millions.

The writer is The Standard’s Deputy Managing Editor in charge of Magazines.

jgodia@eastandard.net

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