About 1,500 community women and reproductive health (RH) advocates trooped to the House of Representatives (HOR) this morning to urge the Committee on Appropriations to immediately approve the controversial RH bill. The Committee is having its third meeting on the budgetary
provisions of the bill as the rally was ongoing.
According to Elizabeth Angsioco, National Chair of the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines (DSWP), one of the leading pro-RH organizations, “Our members from nearby poor communities are here to show the Committee that ordinary women are the ones primarily and adversely affected by the lack of access to RH information and services, including family planning.”
“These are real women, mostly mothers, who bear the difficulties of unplanned, mistimed, and too many and frequent pregnancies, as well as the possibilities of complications related with childbirth. Theirs are the faces of the women continuously deprived of access to needed RH services because of the delays in passage of the RH Bill,” Angsioco added.
“As anti-RH legislators like Representatives Golez, Garcia, and Nograles comfortably sit on their chairs and use rhetoric, technicalities and other tactics to delay and prolong the process, women like the ones present here succumb to maternal morbidities, even death, due to complications. We should remember that eleven (11) Filipinas, mostly poor, die daily from pregnancy or childbirth-related complications. The country’s Maternal Mortality Rates (MMR) is among the highest in Asia. Such is the extent of the problem and literally, women’s lives, particularly those in poverty, are in the hands of these lawmakers,” she asserted.
“The RH Bill has been pending for 16 long years. Everything that can be said has been said, all arguments used and all positions heard. There’s nothing new except the fact that more women are put in danger daily. The bill contains life-saving services that will help save women’s lives. Anti-RH legislators refuse to see the benefits perhaps because many of them are men who do not know how it is to get pregnant and give birth, and they are assured of the best available RH services should any of their women family members need such because of their money and power,” Angsioco stressed.
“Thus, we call on the Appropriations Committee to approve the budget provisions of the bill so it can go to the Plenary, and finally, be voted on. We are ready to mobilize our members until the bill is passed,” she ended.-30- Vigie Benosa-Llorin, PLCPD
