EU hopes Congress will approve RH bill

MANILA, Philippines - The European Union (EU) hopes the House of Representatives and the Senate will approve the Reproductive Health (RH) bill despite lawmakers’ pronouncements that the measure is not among the priority legislations in 2011.

“I would very much hope both houses will take serious account of the importance of addressing poverty and the importance of preventing abortion,” EU Ambassador Alistair MacDonald told The STAR.

“We have all seen the figures on illegal abortion a year in the Philippines and I very much hope that both Houses of Congress will take these issues into account in producing a reproductive health legislation which will really help people make their own choices and to provide for their families,” MacDonald added.

At least six bills related to the RH have been filed in the House.

House committee on population and family relations chairman Biliran Rep. Rogelio Espina said, however, that they do not plan to rush the passage of the proposed measures.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said the RH bill is not among the priority legislations of the Senate next year.

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago filed Senate Bill 2378 or “An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health and Population and Development.” The measure seeks to guarantee universal access to medically safe, legal, affordable, and quality reproductive health services, methods, devices, supplies, and relevant information on the matter.

The ambassador had said that lack of effective access to reproductive health services in the Philippines was “antithetical” to the country’s struggle against poverty and to efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

Although he acknowledged that the debate on reproductive health in the country is a sensitive one, MacDonald pointed out that Filipinos often have strongly held views on different sides of the debate.

MacDonald said at the launching of the Emphasis-RH project that lack of access to reproductive health services is anti-poor, anti-women, anti-children and anti-development.

He noted that the total fertility rate (TFR) for the richest quintile of the population is 2.0, while the TFR of the poorest quintile is 5.9. The TFR for women with college education is 2.3, about half that of women with only elementary education (4.5).

He also said the lack of access to RH services is anti-women, citing the slow decline in maternal mortality ratio in the Philippines.

He also said surveys suggest that the total wanted fertility rate for the Philippines is 2.4 children, or below the actual TFR of 3.3 children.

“It seems to me extremely unlikely that the Philippines will be able to meet its commitment under the MDGs under the present policy,” he said.

“The risk of childhood diseases and child mortality associated with large numbers of unplanned pregnancies is frightening, to think of the opportunities which children in the country are being denied because of the strain on health services, on education services, and the lack of employment opportunities, in a country which is straining at the seams,” he said.

“And even more immediately, infants and children have a greater probability of dying if they are born to mothers who are too young or too old, if they are born after a short birth interval, or if they are of high birth order,” he said.

“There is, however, one issue where the absence of effective RH services is not ‘anti.’ I have to underline that the lack of access to RH services is not anti-abortion – rather it serves to encourage abortion, to create a situation in which there are more than 500,000 illegal abortions per year in the Philippines,” MacDonald said.

He cited the “astonishingly high proportion of abortions” at 15 percent of total pregnancies.

The EU’s current poverty reduction program in the Philippines is focused on the health sector.

The EU is working with the Department of Health to reduce maternal and child mortality, as well as strengthen access to reproductive health services.

The EU has extended a 45-million euro (approximately P2.9 billion) grant to the DOH. It has approved another 36-million euro grant, while an additional 7 million euros is in the pipeline.