25 congresswomen support RH Bill

MANILA, Philippines – Twenty-five of the 53 female members of the House of Representatives, mostly mothers, are among the 108 legislators supporting the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill the Catholic church has vigorously opposed.

This was revealed by Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin, one of the main authors of the Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development or House Bill 5043, now undergoing plenary debates in Congress.

“Out of the 53 women, seven are neutral and 21 are against it. Out of the 25 who are supportive, two of them are single while the rest are married and are mothers,” she told The STAR.

While female lawmakers are divided on the issue, the obstetrician-gynecologist who has earned the ire of church officials, particularly in her district, said they couldn’t do anything but respect the stand of their colleagues.

“Usually, commitment sa church leaders ang reason nila. We respect them na lang. We also don’t want their political districts to be affected,” the Visayan congresswomen explained.

Garin and main author Rep. Edcel Lagman of Albay are optimistic the bill will be approved soon. The measure has been filed since 1994 and refiled every three years when a new Congress assumes office, but it never took off.

Another RH co-author, Rep. Risa Hontiveros of party-list Akbayan, had earlier called for “women power to counter efforts by anti-RH legislators to stall plenary debates by questioning the quorum.”

“We female legislators must not turn our backs on our fellow women. At the very least, we must give the bill its fair chance and have Congress debate on the merits of the bill,” the deputy minority leader said.

Hontiveros said the 14th Congress is “historical” because it has the highest number of female legislators. “Let us not allow a fundamental women’s issue to be killed because of something as frivolous as absenteeism.

“We may not be united in supporting the RH bill, but we must at the very least recognize that reproductive health is a women’s issue. It is us, after all, who bear and nurture the child,” she asserted. – WIth Edu Punay