Where do we stand on Roe v. Wade?
There’s a raging conflagration burning America right now. It’s an issue that has gripped the Americans overshadowing the horrors of the pandemic and the cataclysm of the war in Ukraine. The controversy came to a head when the US Supreme Court overruled its landmark decision in roe v. Wade, 410 US 113 (1973) promulgated on January 22, 1973, which ruled that the US Constitution protects a pregnant woman’s rights to choose to have an abortion before fetal viability. Viability can occur at around 23-24 weeks of pregnancy.
The Roe v. Wade decision was reaffirmed in 1992 in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey and this has been the legal precedent followed in a long list of cases decided by the courts. In 2018, the State of Mississippi passed a law that allows abortion only in medical emergencies or for severe fetal abnormalities. The law did not even exempt rape or incest. In effect, the Mississippi law banned abortion. This law was challenged and the district court disallowed it holding that the law violates an SC precedent legalizing abortion prior to viability as held in Roe and Casey, and this was sustained by the appellate court. Mississippi appealed the decision to the US SC and argued that the highest court should not only uphold the law but also void the decisions in Roe and Casey. The State of Mississippi claimed that Roe and Casey “have no basis in the Constitution. Nowhere else does this court recognize a right to end a human life.” Pro-abortion lawyers contended that the SC in Roe and Casey “correctly recognized that the Constitution protects a woman’s fundamental right to decide whether to end a pregnancy before viability. The guarantee, that the state cannot force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth, has engendered substantial individual and societal reliance. The real world effects of overturning
Roe and Casey would be severe and swift.” But the conservative supermajority in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), in a decision penned by Justice Samuel Alito, voted 6 to 3 to overturn the 49-year-old precedent laid down in Roe v. Wade. Despite the overwhelming public opinion in the US against the revocation “of a right that is so fundamental to so many Americans and so central to their ability to participate fully and equally in society,” the SCOTUS has officially declared Roe v. Wade dead. Now, we are seeing protests and street demonstrations by abortion rights advocates and millions of their supporters taking place all over America. Together with inf lation, abortion will be one of the major issues in the coming US midterm elections. As President Joe Biden has exclaimed, “abortion will be in the ballot this November.”
The controversy surrounding the overturning of Roe v. Wade may not happen in our country. The Philippines is one of the few countries in the world that still totally bans abortion under any circumstance. It is a crime punishable under Articles 256 to 259 of our Revised Penal Code. These provisions were lifted from the old Spanish Code of 1822, which we were exposed to as a former colony of Spain. Critics who want to decriminalize abortion allege that these harsh laws are antiquated and unduly restrictive and are no longer attuned with the modern times. Furthermore, they are discriminatory to women. If these reasons are cogent enough to warrant a review of the abortion issue, then legal scholars and progressive legislators should restudy the matter. Maybe abortion may be allowed under strict conditions such as in rape, incest, severe fetal deformity, when pregnancy will endanger the woman’s life, or under similar exceptional circumstances as other conservative countries had done. There may be past efforts to do this but it has not gained enough traction to move it forward. The current debate on abortion in the US may help revive local interest on the issue.
The other reason is that the Filipinos are predominantly Roman Catholics. Our religion strongly forbids abortion and considers it an evidence of sexual sin. Religion plays an important role in our lives and many devotees will not have the temerity to disobey the teachings of their faith. A faithful will not dare to be excommunicated by his church and ostracized by the religious community. Many Catholics will not be willing to pay that price.
On the other hand, the health, safety and welfare of our women play a significant part in the overall equation. Our total population is approximately 110 million and roughly 25 percent of them are women of reproductive age. The levels of unintended or unwanted pregnancies are high owing largely to low level of contraceptive use and early exposure to the opposite sex by young women still unprepared for motherhood or family life. There is greater sexual activity among our young people. Premarital sex, once held a taboo among conservative Filipinos, has now been accepted as a fact of life. Teenage pregnancies that are either unintended or unwanted have become a problem among many families. Unwed mothers and their families suffer a tarnished reputation in the community. For a pregnant giri still in school, childbirth and childrearing interrupt with one’s studies, if it does not completely stop her from attending school. Even married women resort to abortion when they are not ready financially to raise a child. This is the same predicament confronting a mother who has already given birth to a number of children. The cost of bringing up more children into this world, which she cannot feed, clothe and send to school, is a prospect she will avoid. In many situations, preterminating the pregnancy is seen as the solution to the dilemma.
Generally, our society condemns abortion and stigmatizes women who indulge in it. Thus, abortion happens and commonly resorted to particularly by young women who don’t want to be disowned by their family and their community for bearing a child out of wedlock, or at too young an age. But since abortion is a crime, abortion is done clandestinely by self-inducement or with the aid of illegal practitioners under unsanitary conditions. This eventually results to unsafe abortion practices, which put at risks the lives and health of women. Unsafe abortion contributes to the high maternal mortality and morbidity ratios every year in our country. This is very unfortunate given the significant advance in modern medicine and health care systems in our country.
Abortion is a social malady that severely afflicts our women, but we can minimize its ill effects. In 2009, a milestone legislation, RA 9710, otherwise known as “The Magna Carta of Women’’ was enacted into law. It’s a comprehensive human-rights law that seeks to empower and protect women against any form of discrimination and ensure equal rights and opportunities for men and women in our society. Next month, we will observe the 13th anniversary of the law but nothing much has been achieved to give Filipino women a cause to celebrate. Definitely not in protecting them from the inimical impact of abortion. Let’s admit the sad fact that abortion is here with us to stay and unless something is done about it, it will continue to haunt us with or without Roe v. Wade.