Women in the Philippines, a heavily Catholic country with strong “pro-life” laws, are agitating for birth control access. They’re arguing that being unable to plan their families is having “a devastating effect on their lives … causing unwanted pregnancies, pushing them further into poverty and harming their health and wellbeing.” And what does a “pro-life” country like the Philippines look like?
The policy has hit poorest people the hardest, they say, forcing people to choose between a packet of pills or food for their families.
Several of the petitioners have had many more children than they wanted – some at the expense of their health – because they could not afford to pay for contraception.
The policy also exposed women to violence from husbands who did not want to abstain from sex, the rights groups found in an earlier report, and meant more women were resorting to illegal and unsafe abortions.
Mr Atienza is no longer mayor – he is now secretary for the Department of Environment – and his replacement Alfredo Lim is currently looking at the issue.
But EO 003 remains in place and there are no plans to start providing free contraceptives again – not even condoms for sex workers.
Unsurprisingly, divorce is also illegal in the Philippines. Almost 40 percent of men in the Philippines admit to beating up their wives. Between 1.8 to 3.2 million children in the Philippines are exposed to domestic violence. The lack of access to contraception and the unavailability of divorce means that many Filipina women are utterly trapped — which is exactly where “pro-life” groups think women should be.
Similar Posts:
- Illegal abortion killing and injuring women in the Philippines by Jill September 5, 2007
- College Republicans Diaper Drive at NYU Today by Jill September 26, 2007
- Pro-Lifers love babies so much they want to defund Planned Parenthood so that you get pregnant by Jill December 11, 2008
- Pro-Life… Until Birth by Jill October 17, 2007
- Yet again, “pro-lifers” promote deadly policies by Jill February 22, 2008
it seems so simple to me. you want fewer abortions (i know i do! i am fiercely pro-choice, but i wish it wasn’t a choice women had to make) then you need to prevent more pregnancies. it just seems that simple. give us contraceptives. give us EC. give us friggin access!
[...] (hat tip to Feministe) [...]
The thing is, these types of pro-lifers aren’t “pro-life” at all. They are anti-sex. Or, more accurately, anti-sex without the risk of pregnancy. These types are of the opinion that people shouldn’t have sex if they don’t want children, because that kind of sex breeds a “culture of death” (apparently, sperm and ova are considered live beings — right).
This doesn’t really work in a society where women aren’t treated as property. In a society where they are, imagine how well it works.
Wait — we don’t HAVE to imagine, we can watch it, live.
Isn’t the president of the Philippines a woman? I do not understand women who pull shit like this. I’m sure that the elite and wealthy in the Philippines are able to secure abortions and BC for themselves.
Well, people are also only able to come to power and maintain it in the Philippines by toeing the Catholic Church line. So Gloria Arroyo does what she has to do to maintain her position.
At the expense of other women! Sweet!
Yeah, it’s lovely. But what good is a rise to power if you can’t step all over everyone else?
(The whole thing kind of makes me want to punch a wall too, Ginger).
Thanks for this.
Things like this make me wonder about the world I’m growing up in…
the Catholic Church there should teach those women fertility awareness. It’s 99 percent effective, it’s taught among many American Catholics and has since spread to non-Catholic, non-Christian women wanting reliable birth control that isn’t a bunch of expensive hormones with sometimes pretty bad side effects. It is very popular in the PacNW, for example. It consists of taking your temperature daily and checking your cervical fluid by color (white or clear) and texture (sticky to creamy to eggwhite, in order of least to most fertile).
FAM’s cheap, was popularised first by the church, and very easy to teach and do.
If their men break the thermometers, the women can still check their cervical fluid daily. Their men can’t take ten seconds away from them. Nobody can. And that method is even simpler and nearly as accurate.
I want to know why the Catholic Church isn’t busy mentioning this, at the very least.
a person, did you read the article? The women’s husbands refused to abstain from sex. (For those not in the know, FAM often requires abstention for a week – or more – to ensure accuracy.) What good does knowing your fertile time do you when your husband decides he doesn’t care?
That might work if the men took no for an answer.
a person – their men may not be able to take ten seconds away from them – but there’s always marital rape, and what good is knowing their fertility then?
Plus – nope, with perfect use, NFP is 97% effective, with normal use 75%, which is better than nothing, but notably less effective than hormonal contraception.
IOW – NFP (or FAM) is a great option for committed Catholics with cooperative marriages and adequate instruction. It’s a good thing to have on the available menu of options. It’s not adequate as the only option – nothing would be.
As Tapetum says, it’s a good option among several that should be available. So-called natural family planning does not work for everyone, especially for women whose bodily integrity is not respected by the men in their lives or by the culture in general.
I am sick of hearing how awful the Pill must be with all of its awful side effects. I’m not on in and never have been, and I’ve rarely been in a sexual relationship with a man so birth-control is not something I have to think about for myself very often. But I’ve known many women who do just fine on the pill and if one version doesn’t work, sometimes another will. I’ve known women for whom the pill is a life-saver because otherwise they suffer from intense pain during their periods. It’s not right for everyone, no medication is, but we don’t use that as a reason to withold other medications from people who need them.
I think some of the people pushing “natural” family planning think that suffering is a “natural” (i.e. proper) condition for women.
A person, the article is clear that fertility awareness is simply not an option for many of these women. Plus, as others have said, when your husband has control over you, you don’t have much of an ability to say, “Sorry honey, not tonight.”
From the article:
Funny, I don’t consider domestic violence and holding women hostage to their uteruses “values.” Must just be me.
Patricia – it’s the weird insistence by some Catholics that the same God who created a thousand different kinds of stars and millions of different species of life, not to mention several billions of unique human beings, must necessarily have restricted himself to one (1) perfect plan for how those human beings were supposed to regulate their families.
Somehow I get the impression it’s not God who’s afraid of a little diversity.
a person, you’re assuming that these women are married to decent guys who can take ‘no’ for an answer. Domestic violence is rampant in the Philippines.
you don’t have to abstain. there’s plenty of other sex acts. the goal is just to keep sperm away from the vagina during the fertile window. the women can offer oral, for example, during those days and have some control over even the sex in a tiny way. choosing your poison isn’t much, but it is a measure of control in its way, too.
plus, how often they beat their wives (the non-majority that do) is pretty important. in cultures that expect guys to knock a woman around for ‘discipline’, there is a gradation, and at least anecdotally, the majority of knocked-around women are not getting hit every day or even every week. so if patterns hold, some men are doing the physical violence intermittently for show. and maybe that percentage is a lot of the 39% who admit to harming a woman. maybe that percentage can be persuaded it isn’t manly to knock your wife/gf around even for show. i take some comfort in the fact that it’s NOT a majority in the first place.
i think it’s a more viable strategy for fertility management given the circumstances the women are dealing with than pills that have to be hidden and consistently taken without discovery. at the very least, it is the lowest possible risk to the women to try and test out.
a person – if the man is actively trying to find and destroy pills, that would strongly indicate that he is actively working against his wife’s attempts to not conceive. Nor do I think the frequency with which a man knocks his wife around and/or rapes her has much effect – it only takes one sperm to ovum to cause that pregnancy and add that additional child to the family. And if he actively wants his wife to concieve (better control over her, proof of his virility, whatever), then her very attempt to offer non-PIV sex options is likely to provoke him to that rape. Pills may give you a phyiscal thing you’re hiding – but if you can hide them and take them, then your husband cannot contravene your wishes just by having sex with you. If worked carefully, he may never even suspect you’re taking them.
That it’s not a majority of men is a good thing – but it’s such a large minority as to be very dismaying.
a person – Oral and anal sex are sinful acts for Catholics. Even a handjob is a sin. Here is a link http://catholicplanet.com/CCSE/marriage-sins.htm.
Here is an excerpt: “Examples of intrinsically disordered sexual acts include: masturbation, homosexual acts, any sexual acts with more than two participants, oral sex, anal sex, manual sex, sexual acts involving objects or devices, etc.”
Only PIV sex is moral in the catholic theology. It is one of many reasons why I no longer catholic.
Just to pile on with the objections to a person’s idea, the Church isn’t thrilled with NFP either. It hasn’t retreated from the declaration of infallible Pius XII in 1951 that unless the couple has a strong, serious “medical, eugenic, economic [or] social” reason to avoid pregnancy, the rhythm method is a sin.