Boo Chanco
Philippine Star

There are some 400,000 cases of abortion in the Philippines annually. The shocking statistics underline a serious health problem for women because according to Department of Health data, abortion and its complications have consistently been the third leading cause of hospital discharges (after normal delivery and pneumonia) in DOH-retained hospitals. These Philippine data are higher than in other Asian countries like non Christian Japan, Bangladesh and India.

Abortion is illegal, as it should be, but a fact of Philippine life. People can pretend it isn’t there, but it won’t go away. It is condemned by the Church and is unacceptable to the Philippine Population Management Program. But it is being resorted to, clandestinely, with life threatening health hazards to women.

And who are the women who resort to abortion? A UP Population Institute study found that most of the women who have had an abortion are not your run-of-the-mill women with questionable morals and sexual habits. Most were married or living in, presumably in monogamous relationships, often in their mid-20s or older, with at least one child. A larger study — 3,703 women admitted in four government hospitals in 1993 — has come up with a similar profile. Most of the women respondents were also over 20, Catholic, and educated but unemployed and who come from large households.

Among married women, the main reasons for undergoing an abortion were (1) economic in nature, (2) too many pregnancies, and (3) a large family size. The reasons most often cited by unmarried women were (1) unpreparedness, (2) work demands, and (3) economic plight.

“Economic difficulty is the common reason for both the married and the unmarried, implying that a good majority belongs to the poor,” according to a report on the State of the Philippine Population Report (SPPR), published by the Commission on Population with assistance from the United Nations on Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA).

“The common denominator is a pregnancy that is ill timed, unplanned, and unintended,” the SPPR reports. As one researcher puts it, “As long as wealth and resources are not evenly distributed in the country, the problem of poverty will continue to stalk all of us; and abortion will remain a symptom of a social cancer that we cannot solve by the mechanical application of the law.”

And this is why a group of 27 UP Economics professors is supporting the Reproductive Health bill now being debated in Congress. “Caught between a hard Church and a soft State are the overwhelming majority of Filipinos who affirm the importance of helping women and couples control the size of their families and the need for government to give budgetary support for modern FP methods,” the UP economists emphasized.

Perhaps in response to claims that the Philippines is rich and can support a larger population, the group of UP economists cite data from countries across Asia showing that the weaker the state’s ability is to tax, mobilize resources, and spend on the right priorities, the greater the negative impact is of a rapidly growing population to economic development. That, unfortunately, describes the Philippines perfectly… a soft state that cannot afford to support its fast growing population.

The UP economists also looked at the problem at the micro level of families. Household survey data over time shows that poor families are heavily burdened when they end up with more children than they desire. Data on married women shows that the poor prefer smaller families but are unable to achieve their preference. Among the poorest women who want to avoid pregnancy, at least 41 percent do not use any contraceptive because they lack information.

Data point to several health implications of mistimed and unplanned pregnancies, the UP economists point out. These include maternal and infant mortality. Health risks are higher for adolescent mothers who are more likely to have complications during labor. Social costs of mistimed and unplanned pregnancies include a greater burden on public education, health, and other services.

Unfortunately, the UP economists lamented, serious discussion has been hampered by the lack of reliable information and the proclivity of some parties in the debate to use epithets that label the bill as “pro-abortion”, “anti-life”, and “immoral”. Nothing could be further from the truth, the UP economists say.

“We say—based on serious evidence—that the RH (Reproductive Health) Bill is pro-poor and authentically pro-life and pro-family,” asserted professors from the UP School of Economics in a position paper. The main thrust of the bill – “enabling couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information and means to carry out their decisions” – is something we strongly and unequivocally support, the economists said.

It is the position of the UP economists that “an unambiguous and consistent national population policy” is an integral component of a development and poverty reduction strategy and is long overdue in the Philippines.

They cite the need for information on family planning beyond “natural” family planning (NFP) because data shows that NFP has a failure rate of 24 percent—meaning that if 100 women adopt it, 24 of them would typically become pregnant in a year, mostly because they are unlikely to perfectly comply with the methods.

The professors accused President Arroyo of misleading the public during her State of the Nation Address when she claimed her policy of NFP combined with female education reduced population growth during her administration. The professors say the World Health Organization and the Population Council have categorically disowned President Arroyo’s claim citing them as source of information that NFP is effective compared to artificial contraceptives and that the latter contributed merely two percent to the decline of birth rates.

They say that the use rate of “modern-NFP” among married women of reproductive age actually dropped from 0.5 percent to 0.3 percent from 2001 to 2006. During the same period, modern “artificial” contraceptives rose from 33 percent to 36 percent. “Espousing ‘natural family planning only’ … reflects a lack of seriousness in pursuing long-term economic development and poverty reduction,” the professors say.

They also debunked claims that the RH Bill is pro-abortion and anti-life. “In the first place, there is an obvious definitional and scientific difference between contraception… and abortion…” The 27 say the bill’s main thrust is to promote full information on, and provide access to and a choice from among the whole range of traditional, modern, and NFP methods for contraception and not abortion. “The bill is, in fact, unequivocally and explicitly against abortion,” they add. Abortion will remain penalized.

As to the claim that the RH bill will lead to promiscuity, the break-up of families, a decline in moral values, and hedonism constitutes “pure ideological conjecture—an assertion sans logic and empirical basis,” according to the 27. Besides, why should the Church pass on to the State the task of making up for the failure of its bishops and priests to properly teach and make their church members follow the Church’s moral code?

In any case, new data now provide comfort to members of Congress that it is no longer political suicide to oppose the Catholic Church on this issue. A Pulse Asia survey has revealed that at least 85 per cent of 83 million Filipinos want government to provide them with means to plan their families, including a whopping 90 per cent of all Roman Catholics surveyed. Failure to heed this reality makes our legislators guilty of ignoring the wishes of an overwhelming majority of taxpayers/citizens in favor of the dictates of what is apparently a small but noisy elite in the Catholic Church itself.

As for the shocking problem of abortion earlier cited, what seems certain, going by the example in other countries, is that wider and more effective use of legal and medically approved contraceptive methods lessens the incidence of abortion.

In the end, that’s being more pro-life in deed and not just in theory.
Pre-vacation ritual

A man pulls up at the medical clinic, leaving his wife and kids in the car, and races inside.

“We’re leaving on vacation, and my wife says I need to be vasectomised immediately!”

The doctor is surprised, but makes the guy happy. Snip, snip, and it’s done.

So the guy shuffles back to the car and gingerly lowers himself back into the driver’s seat.
“So, are you vaccinated, then?” asks his wife.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com