"A POSITION PAPER ABOUT 

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH  BILL"

Introduction:

• The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10354), informally known as the Reproductive Health Law or RH Law, is a law in the Philippines, which guarantees universal access to methods on contraception, fertility control, sexual education, and maternal care. While there is general agreement about its provisions on maternal and child health, there is great debate on its mandate that the Philippine government and the private sector will fund and undertake widespread distribution of family planning devices such as condoms, birth control pills, and IUDs, as the government continues to disseminate information on their use through all health care centers. Reproductive Health Bill (R.H) must be passed to become a law in the Philippines.

Body 1: Reasons Why We Need the RH Law

1. To respond to the clamor of the Philippine population who want the Reproductive Health Care Bill passed into law

• Without a clear reproductive health care policy, we are at the mercy of national and local government officials who may choose to promote the natural family planning method (NFP) and deny access to the full range of contraceptive methods. In the past, we saw the examples of then Health Secretaries Dayrit and Duque who merely promoted NFP under clear instructions from Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the former Manila City Mayor Atienza who effectively banned access to modern contraceptives in Manila City as a result of his EO 003 (Series of 2000). The poor women, adolescent women, rural and indigenous women are the ones most affected by the lack of a reproductive health care policy. They are the ones who have the most unintended pregnancies and closely-spaced pregnancies. Their births are commonly unattended by trained health professionals.

2. To prevent unintended pregnancies

• According to the recently-launched 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey (2008 NDHS), one in three births is either unwanted or mistimed; over half of married women age 15-49 do not want another child; 82 percent of married women want either to space their births or to limit childbearing altogether. The total unmet need for family planning is 22 percent with highest unmet need for women age 15-19, lowest quintile of wealth, rural women and women in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Twenty-six percent of women age 15-24 have already began child-bearing. The contraceptive prevalence rate was only 36% using modern methods.

3. To prevent maternal deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth

• According to the 2008 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) State of the World Population report on the Philippines, at least 230 Filipino mothers die for every 100,000 live births, compared to only 11 in US (with modern method contraceptive prevalence rate of 68%), seven in Canada, four in Spain (with modern method contraceptive prevalence rate of 62%), three in Italy, six in Japan, 14 in South Korea, 14 in Singapore (with modern method contraceptive prevalence rate of 53%). Across Europe, with the exception of Albania, Romania, and Estonia, the maternal mortality ratio is below 15.
• According to the 2008 NDHS, only 44 percent of births occur in health facilities and only 62% of births are assisted by a health professional.10 Maternal deaths related to childbirth can be reduced further by access to skilled birth attendants which would be addressed by a comprehensive reproductive health care policy.

4. To prevent infant mortality

• Adequate birth spacing is important for the health of the woman and the children. Birth spacing of four or more years can increase the survival rate of children less than five years of age. The under-five mortality rate11 for children born less than two years after a previous birth is 54 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with 25 deaths per 1,000 for children born after an interval of four or more years.

5. To help individuals and couples choose freely and responsibly when to have children

• The Constitution states that it shall “defend the right of spouses to form a family in accordance with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood” (Art. 15, Sec. 14). Every person must be free to make sexual and reproductive decisions according to her or his own conscience and religious beliefs free from interference, coercion or constraint.
• The CRC Committee expressed concern “at the lack of effective measures to promote the reproductive rights of women and girls and that particular beliefs and religious values are preventing their fulfillment. According to our obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which the Philippines ratified on August 3, 1981, the Philippines should ensure women “the same rights to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and to have access to the information, education and means to enable them to exercise these rights.

6. To reduce abortion rates

• The Philippine legal restriction on abortion, one of the vestiges of Spanish colonization in the Philippines, was lifted directly from the old Spanish Penal Code of 1870. Recognizing the high rates of deaths of women undergoing clandestine and unsafe abortion procedures due to its illegality, the Spanish government reconsidered its restrictive law and has allowed abortion on certain grounds in 1985, over 25 years now. Last February 24, 2010, Spain approved a new law on abortion that further eases restrictions by allowing the procedure without restrictions up to 14 weeks and gives 16- and 17-year olds the right to have abortions without parental consent. The law is the latest of a series of bold social reforms undertaken by Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who first took office in 2004. Spain has also legalized gay marriage and made it easier for Spaniards to divorce under Zapatero’s administration.

7. To give rape victims a better chance to heal from their ordeal

• Giving rape victims access to emergency contraception (EC) like levonorgestrel can help them prevent unwanted pregnancies. The availability of Postinor, a brandname for levonorgestrel, has been prey to religious fundamentalist attack. Then Health Secretary Alberto Romualdez, Jr. issued a Position Paper in 1999 allowing its dispensation to rape victims through the hospital-based DOH network of Women and Children Protection Units (WCPU). Subsequently, however, Postinor was delisted by the Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD) and, despite requests for its re-registration, it has not been allowed to be registered again by the BFAD.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) defines EC as a method of preventing pregnancy. According to WHO, EC does not interrupt pregnancy, therefore, it is not considered a method of abortion. Over 140 countries worldwide have registered EC pills such as Postinor and the like including 31 predominantly Catholic countries such as Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Burundi, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lesotho, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Rwanda, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela, Almost all of the ten ASEAN countries including Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam have registered levonorgestrel.

8. To prevent early pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases especially among adolescents

• The Comprehensive Reproductive Health Care Bill (RH bill) recommends that the government provide mandatory reproductive health education starting at Grade 5. According to our obligations under CEDAW, “teenage pregnancies…present a significant obstacle to girls’ educational opportunities and economic empowerment.” It is the government’s duty to “give priority attention to the situation of adolescents and that it provide sex education, targeted at girls and boys, with special attention to the prevention of early pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.
• Philippine law already requires schools to teach HIV and AIDS under the 1998 Philippine AIDS Prevention Act (RA 8504). The ordinances in the provinces of Aurora, Ifugao, Mt. Province, Sultan Kudarat, Sulu and Olongapo City all require adolescent reproductive health (ARH) education in schools. These laws manifest the need to uphold ARH education.

9. To address the rising HIV/AIDS cases

• The HIV epidemic in the Philippines is steadily growing. At the start of 2010, there are already four new cases being reported every month compared to the two new cases reported monthly in 2009. According to the estimates of Dr. Enrique Tayag, Director of the National Epidemiology Center (NEC), there will be an additional 1,500 Filipinos newly-infected by HIV by December 2010 and around 4,000 - 7,000 by 2011.

10. To avoid the negative impact of large families on poor families

• For many poor families, a large family size results in further poverty and lack of access to education and health services, among others. There are also studies showing that the eldest or second eldest from poor, large families end up in prostitution to meet their families’ needs and many women from large families also end up being trafficked.

11. To free women’s bodies from being held hostage by politics and fundamentalism

• Groups such as the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) have continuously opposed the passage of the RH bill into law. It even identified in its guidelines for the 2010 elections that voters should not vote for candidates who support the RH bill. The above findings on the negative impact of the non-passage of the RH bill and the restriction of access to modern contraceptives show that a stance that is against the passage of the RH bill is not responsive to the needs of the Filipinos—Catholics included. Such a stance on the RH bill is detrimental to women’s reproductive rights and to the lives and well-being of Filipinos especially the poor. In fact, the results of the 2010 election prove that many Catholic-backed candidates did not win in the elections.

Body 2: Disadvantage of Reproductive Health Bill

• The disadvantage of the Reproductive Health Bill in the Philippines is the undue focus being given to reproductive health and population and development, when many more urgent and important health problems need to be addressed in the country, those that cause a significant number of deaths across the country such as cardiovascular diseases and infections. Financial resources allotted by foreign donors to assist the Philippine government programs could actually be better spent towards pursuing health programs targeting communicable diseases than purchasing artificial contraceptives. 

• The Reproductive Health Bill is controversial, as it is being opposed by concerned citizens, especially the pro-life, pro-family and pro-God groups, regardless of creed or religion. The Roman Catholic Church expresses its opposition against the bill on many counts, most especially the procurement and distribution of family planning supplies for the whole country, when the available evidence from peer reviewed medical journals supports the hypothesis that when ovulation and fertilization occur in women taking oral contraceptives (OCs) or using intrauterine devices (IUD), post-fertilization effects are operative on occasion to prevent clinically recognized pregnancy. Hormonal contraceptives and/or IUDs directly affect the endometrium. 

• These effects have been presumed to render the endometrium relatively inhospitable to implantation or to the maintenance of the preembryo or embryo prior to clinically recognized pregnancy. These make pills and IUDS abortifacient.

• Pro-life groups, and many professionals in the medical and nursing fields, believe that physicians and policy makers should understand and respect the beliefs of patients who consider human life to be present and valuable from the moment of fertilization. Patients should be made fully aware of this information so that they can consent to or refuse the use of artificial contraceptives. 
• However, the position of the Catholic Church and the pro-life groups does not mean that they espouse the attitude of "natalism" at all costs, as if the "number" of children, in itself, were the unmistakable sign of authentic christian matrimonial life. 

• The sexual act, properly exercised within marriage only, is ordained primarily to the propagation of life. If there are reasonable motives for spacing births, such as serious medical conditions in the mother, or extreme poverty, then the Catholic Church teaches that married couples may take advantage of the natural cycles of the reproductive system and use their marriage precisely those times that are infertile (natural family planning). 

• Other aspects of the bill being contested by concerned citizens include the classification of family planning supplies as essential medicines when their safety/toxicity profile and legal permissibility are questionable. 

• Very pertinent to the debate about reproduction rights is the right to life. The Philippine Constitution says that the State "shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. If artificial contraceptives are medically proven to induce abortion as one of their mechanisms of action, then procurement and distribution of such family planning supplies are unconstitutional and illegal.

Conclusion:

• Therefore, R.H bill or the reproductive health bill must be passed to make it a law because there are more possible good benefits to us as compared to it's disadvantages. Since, we are over populated and we can't avoid that kind of issue, this bill will help to minimized the rapidly increasing of population. We can't tell them about how many children they will produced. Remember that human has freedom to all and no one must be deprived by others but then, we need also to notify our self about our limitations in everything. Don't be like an abusive person because every actions have consequences.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/insights/08/16/10/reasons-why-we-need-rh-law

https://www.scribd.com/doc/130656422/Advantages-and-Disadvantages-of-RH-BILL