Many expected that a government headed by the country’s second woman President would put special value on women, especially since the administration it succeeded was headed by the most sexist president the country ever had.  But far from upholding women’s rights and interests, the Macapagal administration seems all-too-willing to sacrifice women to appease the backward and conservative elements of the Catholic Church.

One strong indication is the outright dismissal by Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Manuel Dayrit of the petition letter of women’s groups, led by WomenLead, requesting for the reopening of the case on the emergency contraceptive pill (ECP) Postinor.  It will be recalled in 1999, Postinor was made available on a limited basis to government hospitals to prevent unwanted pregnancies among sexual abuse victims.  However, it was delisted by the Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD) in December 2001 upon the complaint of the church group Abay Pamilya.

The World health Organization (WHO) defined pregnancy as beginning after successful implantation of the fertilized egg on the uterus, and endorses ECPs as a safe and efficient means of preventing unwanted pregnancy.  Women and reproductive health advocates therefore assert the importance of the drug for women victims of sexual violence.  However, Dayrit insists that Postinor is an abortifacient and maintains that since the Philippine Constitution states that life begins upon fertilization, the DOH cannot adopt the position of WHO on this issue.

The move dismayed women’s groups, especially since they had pointed out that noted constitutionalist, Fr. Joaquin Bernas, S.J., himself had stated that the Commission left it for science to specify when conception begins.  According to Carol Ruiz-Austria, WomenLead executive director, they never anticipated such a callous dismissal of such an important issue. “After all,” she added, “we all know that the absence of proper information and safe access to contraception and family planning have life threatening consequences for women.

What is also alarming is Dayrit’s statement calling Postinor an abortifacient for preventing fertilization.  According to Ruiz-Austria, “it would actually be worse than the already inaccurate interpretation by the BFAD of the constitutional provision on conception because it would practically rule out all types of contraception.  Even much worse, it establishes conception or life before fertilization.  That would mean monthly menstruation is unintentional abortion (punishable under the Penal Code) and male masturbation is genocide.”

Adds Ruiz-Austria: “It’s nothing short of frightening.  How many more Filipino women will die of complications from unsafe abortions?  How many more women will die during the live birth because of the utter lack of primary health care to ensure pregnancies?  It is mind-boggling that an administration  apparently obsessed with winning over sympathetic confidence from the Catholic leadership, will stoop so low as to engage in misinformation to implement a policy that has no legal, let alone moral, basis to stand on.”

To which Rina Jimenez-David, Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist, agreed (PDI 6/6/02):

Abortion is very much a public health issue in this country.  With an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 abortions performed here a year, we have an abortion rate slightly higher than in the United States, where the procedure is legal.

Because induced abortion is illegal in this country, it is usually unsafe, being clandestine, unregulated and often performed by untrained practitioners, if not by the women themselves.  So managing the consequences of botched abortions, which range from sepsis or widespread infection, to uncontrolled bleeding or even perforation of the uterus, is a big challenge to government hospitals.  In fact, it constitutes the biggest expense item of maternity wards of government hospitals.

It’s a mystery, then, why the Department of Health, which says one of the goals of its family planning program is to reduce the number of abortions, would ban Postinor that precisely helps prevent unwanted pregnancies through emergency contraception.  Or why groups allied with the Catholic Church would have lobbied for the banning of Postinor when I’m sure they’re fully aware that, having been denied any form of emergency contraception, a woman who finds out she has gotten pregnant after a rape, would consider an abortion next.  Unless, of course, they believe any woman who’s had unprotected sex, even if it was forced on her, has no choice but to get pregnant as a result.

She also talked about dangerous policies followed by Catholic hospitals: I remember seeing…a sign in the emergency room of one Catholic hospital warning women that “abortion is a crime under Philippine law, and so in accordance with the law, we will report any woman who is brought to this hospital showing signs that she has undergone or has attempted an illegal abortion.”

A friend of mine, a woman doctor once told me of the time she had to rush a neighbor, who had come to her for help after an abortion, to the same hospital for treatment.  She loaded the woman into a taxi and rushed her to the nearest hospital.  But when the emergency room personnel were told that the patient was suffering from the consequences of a botched abortion, they refused outright to take her in.

“So I had to call another taxi, load the woman into it, and bring her to a government hospital,” my friend recalls.  “We reached it just in the nick of time, but the woman was already near-death.  The delay in treatment very nearly cost her life.  If she had died.  I would have sued that hospital!”

Former Health Secretary Alberto Romualdez tells me of a “funny” policy practiced by Catholic doctors in Catholic hospitals.  Because hospital policies do not allow for permanent sterilization through tubal litigation, some doctors choose instead to perform what is known as a “partial hysterectomy,” removing the woman’s uterus but keeping her cervix intact.

Clearly, the hysterectomy, although partial, is far more serious and invasive procedure than a tubal litigation which would have achieved the same ends.  But what is a woman’s life and health compared to hospital policy?

Even “funnier” is the practice of some conservative doctors who consent to open up a woman whose condition calls for a tubal litigation only to leave her at the operating table, assigning a resident, instead, to perform the procedure.  Thus, do some doctors observe the “correct” Catholic dictum and salve their consciences, while forgetting the ethics of the healing profession that requires them to “first, do no harm.”

Published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, June 4,5,6, 2002