GABRIELA, Gabriela Women’s Party push for pro-health, pro-poor, pro-women RH Bill but shuns population control

In a press conference at the House of Representatives this morning, women’s group GABRIELA and Gabriela Women’s Partylist restated their support for the enactment of a law that will ensure as a matter of government policy women’s access to reproductive health services and information but said they will exhaust efforts to scrap a population control agenda from House Bill 4244, more popularly known as the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill.

“We commend the positive provisions of the RH Bill, specifically how it seeks to address the sordid situation of Filipino women’s reproductive health by prescribing government responsibility in providing comprehensive reproductive health care to women and securing women’s right to informed choice. As far as these positive provisions, which will specifically benefit poor and marginalized women, are concerned we will continue to support the RH Bill,” said Lana Linaban, secretary general of GABRIELA National Alliance of Women.

“We are deeply concerned, however, that ongoing plenary debates in Congress as well as general public discourse on the matter has delved not into the bill’s positive provisions but mainly in the highly contentious and disagreeable population control agenda outlined in some of the its provisions. We fear that such framing of the RH Bill as a case for a national policy on population control sharply deviates from a pro-health, pro-poor, pro-women legislation that marginalized women hope the RH Bill to be,” Linaban stated. Speaking at the press conference, mothers from urban poor communities in Metro Manila also expressed their dismay at the debates’ failure thus far to examine and highlight poor women’s lack of access to information and services on reproductive health, the alarming situation of maternal health in the country and how the government can work to address the alarming situation of Filipino women’s reproductive health.

“These are important issues that matter to stakeholders like us. We are keen on hearing how our legislators regard these issues, but so far there have been no substantial discussions on these,” said Jessica Rufin of Barangay Batasan.“We are alarmed that the debates stress population control as a solution to poverty. We do not believe that population control, that forcing us to control our pregnancy without regard for our health, will ease us out of poverty. We are poor because we cannot find jobs, or even if we do have jobs our wages are not enough to meet our family’s basic needs for food, utilities, shelter, health care and even our children’s education. Population control is not a solution because even if we only have a few children we will still be poor as long as there are no government policies and programs that squarely address poverty,” said Kristine Joyce Haban, mother of three.

According to GABRIELA, specific provisions of the RH Bill that frame a population control policy include the following: Section 3, Letter (L) of the Guiding Principles; Section 12, Integration of Responsible Parenthood and Family Planning Component in Anti-Poverty Programs; and Section 25, Letter (I) of the Implementing Mechanisms.According to Gabriela Women’s Partylist solons Luzviminda Ilagan and Emmi de Jesus, they will take on the concerns already raised by GABRIELA and other marginalized women and work to convince fellow legislators to revisit provisions of HB 4244 with hopes of taking the population control agenda out of the bill.“As the bill’s co-authors, we will call the attention of our fellow authors to this serious matter and we will definitely bring this to plenary discussions especially during the bill’s period of amendment,” said Rep. De Jesus.“The RH Bill has many positive provisions that may be put to waste if the population control menace continues to overshadow the bill’s essence. As we work to strengthen the public and fellow legislators’ appreciation of such good provisions, we shall nonetheless refuse to make the RH Bill a platform for population control,” said Rep. Ilagan.After the press conference, close to a hundred members of GABRIELA from various urban poor communities in Metro Manila staged a picket at the South Gate of the House of Representatives and later trooped to the offices of the authors of HB 4244 to urge lawmakers to work for the passage of a comprehensive RH Bill without a population control agenda.###