With more than 86 per cent of the Philippine population being Roman Catholic and the only Christian nation in Asia, it’s relatively evident that religion plays an important role in people’s lives. This includes the fact that religion also drives many of the country’s policies and laws. Abortion is illegal. Divorce is illegal. Being the 12th most populated country in the world and increasing every day, some see family planning as the way to control population. For a nation where poverty still plagues the lives of people, where the gap between the rich and the poor still haunts its streets, it’s a reality: something must be done in order to support the whopping population—most of which are not well-off.
It took a long battle for the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10354) or commonly known as Reproductive Health Bill to be implemented. It guarantees the safe and universal access on contraception, sex education and maternal care. But what about abortion? Still illegal. Because of poor living standards, many pregnant women still choose to unsafe abortion. Many of these women are teenagers and rape victims. In fact, over half of the pregnancies in the country are unintended. Because of Catholic values, sex education isn’t widely taught and despite having the RH bill, contraception is difficult to find or for many, expensive to afford.
Because of this reality, you start to think that it’s so difficult to be a woman in such a conservative country.
Negative views on abortion are also prevalent in the country. Talking about it almost seems like a taboo. If women seek abortion and suffer from it medically, they are threatened with prosecution in order to maintain the state of the affairs. The mere idea of change — making abortion illegal — is too sickening for people to grasp that the women who suffer are the ones usually blamed. And the broken system that doesn’t allow it isn’t.
This fear of change buries itself deep in the past. It takes it roots from the old Spanish Penal Code of 1870s—one that disapproves abortion dating back during the Spanish colonization of the country. To add fuel to the fire, this was also the time when laws protecting women such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women were not yet implemented. For a country that has been under Spanish rule for more than three centuries, it has certainly left an impact on what the Philippines is today. And the practice of illegal abortion is still upheld until now.
If keeping abortion illegal continues, it further endangers the women in the country—denying them the freedom to choose what they should do with their bodies. It perpetuates the stigma that what happens to women is their own responsibility and fault. Instead of giving safe access to abortion, the strong hold on religion is suffocating women and only contributes to the growing unwanted pregnancy because of the lack of health care that is going against religious practices and beliefs.
While other Catholic-dominated countries have already allowed for abortion under special circumstances, the Philippines still has a long way to go—having one of the strictest health laws in Asia. Indeed, for a country that has been colonized numerous times, our colonial nostalgia is the puppeteer of our lives. And for many women in the country, the religion is killing them.
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