President Benigno S. Aquino III
Malacañang Palace
J.P. Laurel St., San Miguel
Manila, NCR
1005 Philippines
Re: Reproductive Rights in the Philippines
Dear President Aquino,
We write to strongly support your defending the sexual and reproductive rights and the right to the highest obtainable standard of health of the Philippine people.
On September 26, 2010, you publicly recognized that the Philippine government is obligated to inform people of their reproductive rights and family planning options. This reinforced your commitment during the election campaign to provide "a range of options and information to couples, [including] both natural family planning and modern methods." Human Rights Watch wholeheartedly agrees with you and encourages you to move promptly with clear and effective policies to realize this commitment.
Pregnancy is not a debilitating illness. Yet every year, thousands of women and girls in the Philippines experience entirely preventable suffering because of their reproductive capacity.
Many women who become pregnant have been deprived of the right to make independent decisions about their health and lives because the government does not purchase or distribute contraceptive supplies. According to the Guttmacher Institute, over half of the pregnancies in the Philippines are unplanned.[1] Other women are forced to carry life-threatening pregnancies to term because abortions are illegal. The Philippines is one of the few countries that prohibits and criminally punishes abortion without exception; that is, irrespective of whether the pregnancy poses a risk to the woman's life or health, whether she is a victim of rape or incest, or in cases of fetal impairment. The law leaves the possibility open that an abortion to save a pregnant woman's life could be classified as a justifying circumstance that would bar criminal prosecution under the Revised Penal Code. However, this has yet to be adjudicated by the Philippine Supreme Court and therefore does little to mitigate the serious consequences of the general criminalization of abortion on women's health and lives.
As a result, many women choose to seek alternative and at times highly unsafe abortions from unlicensed providers. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that in the Philippines in 2008, 570,000 women turned to illegal abortion, 90,000 women suffered complications from the often crude and painful methods used, and 1,000 women died as a result.[2] According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, abortion-related complications are one of the top ten reasons for hospitalization of women in the Philippines.[3]
Even in the best of circumstances, women's and girls' lives are intimately affected by their childbearing capacity. Pregnancy not only impacts their bodies, but affects their access to education, employment, and public life. Where pregnancy is wanted, these changes can be anticipated. But where decisions about having, or not having, a child-such as taking contraception-are coerced or severely curtailed by circumstances, the resulting life changes can be unexpected and oppressive. International human rights law recognizes this and provides support for women and girls to access needed health care and independent decision-making through the protection of the rights to life, health, nondiscrimination, physical integrity, freedom of expression and religion, and the right to decide independently the number and spacing of children.
In 2004 Human Rights Watch concluded that the Philippine government's anti-condom approach put at grave risk large numbers of men, women and children who could contract HIV.[4] In the six years since Human Rights Watch first published a report on this topic, little has changed.
Your government should undertake comprehensive action on a number of issues related to access to reproductive and sexual health care and information. As essential first steps you should:
1. Provide access to information:
- Review the content of HIV prevention curricula in all public schools. Ensure accuracy, comprehensiveness, and proper implementation by trained and competent teachers.
- Allow nongovernmental HIV/AIDS educators to provide age-appropriate, comprehensive, evidence-based HIV prevention information in public schools.
2. Provide access to contraception:
- Implement strategies aimed at reducing unplanned and unwanted pregnancy by ensuring universal access to condoms, other contraceptive supplies, and information.
- In coordination with local governments and international donors, immediately assess contraceptive supply needs in each local government unit, and develop a strategy for meeting those needs.
- Develop an explicit national condom promotion strategy. Such a strategy should include, at a minimum, a fact sheet from the Department of Health setting out the effectiveness of condoms against HIV, a national policy favoring 100 percent accessibility of condoms in entertainment establishments, and an authorization to spend government funds on condom supplies and education.
- Secure adequate funding for a full range of contraception methods and take steps to lift bans on modern contraceptives, such as the Manila City Executive Order.
3. Remove criminal sanctions on abortion:
- Amend the Revised Penal Code to unequivocally lift criminal sanctions on abortion at a minimum when the life or health (physical or mental) of the pregnant woman is in jeopardy and when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest.
Human Rights Watch looks forward to working with your administration to realize these goals. We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you or the appropriate officials to discuss these issues in more detail.
Sincerely,
Elaine Pearson
Deputy Asia Director
[1] The Guttmacher Institute, "Meeting Women's Contraceptive Needs in the Philippines," In Brief: 2009 Series, No. 1, April 15, 2009, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2009/04/15/IB_MWCNP.pdf (accessed October 2, 2010), p. 1.
[2] The Guttmacher Institute, "Meeting Women's Contraceptive Needs in the Philippines,"p. 1-3.
[3] The Center for Reproductive Rights, "Forsaken Lives: The Harmful Impact of the Philippine Criminal Abortion Ban," August 2, 2010, http://reproductiverights.org/sites/crr.civicactions.net/files/documents... (accessed October 2, 2010), p. 52.
[4] Human Rights Watch, "Unprotected: Sex, Condoms, and the Human Right to Health in the Philippines," May 5, 2004, https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/philippines0504/ (accessed October 2, 2010).
