In the wake of the Senate Bi Cameral Committee removing a P1 billion allocation for family planning commodities from the Department of Health’s 2016 budget, several reporters have come to Roots of Health to ask us to comment on how this will affect women and girls in Palawan. I’ve been asked questions that I think are important to discuss, so I will share them here.
Since Congress and Senate passed the RH Bill, and the Supreme Court already declared the RH law constitutional, are the lawmakers who voted to cut the budget for contraceptives violating the law?
What they did is not illegal, but they are violating our democratic process. A few Senators decided that their will is more important than the will of the people, Congress, Senate, the Supreme Court and the President. Senator Sotto did it for religious beliefs (he believes condoms are abortifacients). Senator Loren Legarda’s reasons are unclear, but her excuses are pathetic. The manner in which this was done was incredibly unethical. Senator Legarda knew very well what she was doing, and knew her colleagues who drafted the law, especially Senator Pia Cayetano would be furious, but she never once informed them and intentionally misled them. As Senator Cayetano has said publicly, it is a huge breach of trust.
Do you think the law now becomes useless or toothless because of the budget cut?
This is hard to say. There are many great laws in the Philippines (like the Magna Carta on Women) that do not achieve much because they do not have funds allocated to them, so they cannot be implemented. There are other aspects to the RH Law that will hopefully be implemented properly. This is definitely a big hurdle to the implementation of the RH Law but it does not make the Law useless. There are so many strong advocates for this and we will continue fighting for reproductive health!
Do you see power play, politics or the Catholic Church wielding its muscles again?
This budget cut was orchestrated by Senator Tito Sotto and for whatever reason, agreed to by Senator Loren Legarda. Senator Sotto was always against the RH Law for religious reasons. He lost the fight and reproductive health and democracy won. Since his loss he’s no doubt been plotting to find ways to hold back the Law and what he’s done now has dealt a big blow. But make no mistake – we will continue fighting Sotto, and we will continue fighting for the proper implementation of the RH Law.
How will the budget cut for contraceptives affect families/women in general (especially those who rely on free government contraceptives?)
This budget cut will lead to more maternal deaths and more unplanned pregnancies, and more abortions. It really is just so tragic. The women who rely on free contraceptives need to get them for free because they are poor. They have to work so hard to scrape even the smallest amount of money together for food and their families’ needs. Now that they will not have access to free contraceptives, they will most likely have unplanned pregnancies, they will probably not access prenatal care, and will have greater chances of having negative outcomes with their babies and their births. More desperate women will have unsafe abortions. More mothers will die, more babies will die. This is not a “culture of life” and is not what Filipinos deserve. Women should not die during childbirth. Children should not lose their mothers during childbirth.
What should people do?
We must make this an election issue! The irony in all this is that Senator Sotto’s actions are against the rights of all Filipinos but most notably the poorer Filipinos, the so called “masa” who rely on free goods from the government. Yet most likely the masa are the very same people who will elect Senator Sotto into power once again. We must educate people on what these Senators have done so they can vote according to their interests and stop electing artistas who don’t care about them at all.