'High incidence of unsafe abortions blamed on criminalization'

MANILA, Philippines – Many Filipinas are forced to patronize life-threatening methods to terminate pregnancies because abortion is a criminal offense in the Philippines, according to the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights.

Unsafe abortion in the Philippines has caused some 560,000 induced abortion in 2008, according to the report “Forsaken Lives: The Harmful Impact of the Philippine Criminal Abortion Ban.”

The report said 1,000 Filipinas died and as many as 90,000 were hospitalized for complications due to unsafe abortions.

“The high incidence of illegal and unsafe abortion in the Philippines is a direct consequence of the restrictive abortion law,” the report said.

“The criminal ban in the Philippines has made abortion, a medical procedure necessary to protect the health of women, unavailable to them, even under grievous and life-threatening circumstances.”

The report assailed the government for succumbing to the Catholic hierarchy to criminalize abortion.

“By allowing pressure from the Catholic hierarchy to deprive women of a full range of reproductive health services, the government of the Philippines has violated its human rights obligation to refrain from allowing ideologically driven laws to violate women’s rights,” the report said.

“The government’s failure to ensure legal recourse for such acts of discrimination and abuse has led to impunity in the health system, making it a frightening place for women in need of lifesaving medical care.”

Melissa Upreti, the Center’s senior regional manager and legal adviser for Asia, said the government had violated local and international laws protecting women’s rights to health in continuing to ban abortion.

“The criminal ban is a harmful law, it is an ineffective law,” she said. 

“It has made abortion unsafe. Women now try to use unsafe methods to terminate their pregnancy instead of going to trained (healthcare) providers.”

Upreti said the state should not formulate laws on bias of religious policies but based on the needs of the people.

“While women’s reasons for abortion may vary, because of the criminal ban any decision to terminate a pregnancy leads in just one frightening direction – toward painful, risky and potentially fatal methods of pregnancy termination,” she said.

Unsafe abortion methods are:

• Painful abdominal massage by traditional midwives,

• Inserting catheter into the uterus,

• Medically unsupervised taking of Cytotec (the local brand name for a drug containing misoprostol) to induce uterine contractions, and

• Ingestion of herbs and other concoctions sold by street vendors.

Common physical complications from these procedures are: hemorrhage, sepsis, perforation of the uterus, damage to other internal organs, and death. 

In some cases, a hysterectomy is needed to treat complications that could lead to permanent loss of woman’s child-bearing capacity.

 Payal Shah, legal fellow of the Center for Asia, said the Philippines, Nicaragua, Chile and Egypt are among the few countries that ban abortion without exception like in cases of fetal impediment, rape and to save the mother’s life.

 “But there are Catholic countries, like Colombia and Brazil, where (abortion is) legal,” she said. 

“The Philippines is among the countries in Asia with extreme or restrictive laws.”

Other countries where abortion is legal are China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia.

Dr. Florence Macagba-Tadiar, chief executive officer of the Institute for Social Studies and Action, has urged the Aquino administration to look into rampant violation of women’s rights to health stemming from the abortion ban.

The government must respect its commitment to various international conventions and treaties that supposedly guarantee such basic human rights, she added.