Forgotten women
AFRIEND wished on Facebook for one gift this Christmas, that of “healing to all cancer fighters.” The one gift I'd rather have is for the Supreme Court to allow the implementation of the Reproductive Health (RH) Law and hold only in abeyance those parts of the law the Catholic bishops are objecting to… but yet decide on them posthaste.
Those who suffer direly from having no access to free reproductive health services (the poor who cannot afford private professional health services) vastly outnumber cancer fighters many of whom are rich anyway and able to afford private professional help.
These beneficiaries of the RH Law are our forgotten women. Forgotten by those who are preoccupied with protesting against Ferdinand Marcos's burial and by militants who rally to demand that President Duterte should focus more on the poverty than on the drug problem.
Marcos is no hero and by all means protests must continue. But I cannot help but wonder what relevance our protests against Marcos's burial has to the poor women, whose reproductive health (and consequent improvement of the quality of life) the Supreme Court has essentially set aside for far too long now to the former's great disadvantage and against which nobody is protesting.
Also, President Duterte has expressed the desire to fully implement the Reproductive Health Law. But he is stymied by the Supreme Court's indecision on the bishop's formal petition to stay the law's implementation. If moving on means helping the poor in our midst, would it not help if we gathered before the Supreme Court to demand for a quick decision on this issue and/or rally before Catholic bishops that they withdraw their opposition to this law?
Why is this issue taking so long to settle when it is clear from the principle of separation of Church and State that Catholic bishops cannot legally, not even morally, impose its beliefs on citizens of a pluralistic society such as ours? They can only appeal to their members to reject certain contraceptives which they consider immoral. They cannot prevent the law from being implemented in full among non-Catholics.
As to possibly abortive contraceptives, the law takes care to allow only those that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) certifies as non-abortive. Hence, bishops should limit their objection to contraceptives whose certification they still question before the FDA. It is heartless of bishops and the Supreme Court not to give the poor access, as per law, to generally accepted true contraceptives.
Meanwhile, for lack of free contraceptives, scientifically proven abortions starting with the fifth pregnancy of forgotten poor women will continue. These should be on the conscience of bishops and of the Supreme Court.