Civic leaders urge Congress: Prioritize divorce bill

A PANEL of civic leaders is urging Congress to prioritize the long-gestating bill on divorce to allow Filipino women to have a “second chance” on love and empower them to break free from abusive relationships.

This comes as both houses of Congress continue to debate divorce measures, and with House Bill 9349, authored by Albay 1st District Rep. Edcel Lagman, being discussed in the House plenary last week.

The Philippines, along with Vatican City, is the only nation-state in the world without a divorce law.

During a broadcast of “World Questions: Philippines” by the British Broadcasting Corp.’s World Service Radio on Saturday, Akbayan Citizens Action Party President Rafaela David aired her firm belief in the importance of women who have survived and experienced “loveless and abusive” marriages to pressure lawmakers to pass the bill.

“We believe that this option should be available to the Filipino people; we believe that there should be a chance for a second love and with all due respect to the religious community, what destroys the family is an abusive relationship that we Filipinos should get out from,” David said.

Former Supreme Court associate justice Antonio Carpio also noted that there were several attempts in the past to legislate divorce despite Muslims having allowed themselves to have their own divorce, which he calls as an “anomaly.”

“We had a divorce law in the past during the American and Japanese regime, so it is something in our legal system before, but we need to pass this already,” Carpio said.

Political analyst and writer Richard Heydarian believes that over the past decade, the country is now moving more secularly than before, noting the passage of the Reproductive Health Law in 2013, which was opposed by the Catholic Church.

“We saw a lot of pushback by more conservative elements in the Catholic hierarchy against a whole range of issues,” Heydarian said.

He also said that as Pope Francis is moving toward a more liberal direction in his leadership of the Catholic Church, then the country is now ready to move in the same liberal direction where laws such as divorce may be passed.

“But it also depends on bottom-up pressure, we cannot just rely on the politicians for the right position,” Heydarian said.

Ateneo de Manila University-John Gokongwei School of Management dean Roberto Galang, the only one in the panel who is against divorce, believes that the divorce law may have a hard time hurdling Congress because some politicians do not see the urgency to pass one, and that more Filipinos are now getting born out of wedlock.

“Filipinos are not getting married because I don’t need a divorce because I wasn’t even married in the first place,” Galang said.