Mayor calls meeting on anti-contraceptive barangay ordinance

MANILA, Philippines –  Saying the issue surrounding Barangay Ayala Alabang’s controversial anti-contraceptive ordinance is “getting out of hand,” Muntinlupa Mayor Aldrin San Pedro called for a special meeting with the members of the city council and the village executives yesterday.

The three camps agreed to hold dialogue with the public on March 19 to discuss the village’s ordinance titled “Protection of the Unborn Child Ordinance of 2011,” said Omar Acosta, city public information chief.

The tentative venue will be at the Alabang Country Club at 9 a.m. The mayor’s office will shoulder the production cost needed for information dissemination, said Acosta.

During the closed-door meeting, barangay chairman Alfred Xerez Burgos Jr. also clarified that the ordinance, which they passed and approved on Jan. 3, has not yet been implemented, contrary to what lawyer Luis Sison, the barangay’s spokesman on the ordinance, claimed earlier.

The city council’s health committee has remanded the village’s ordinance after finding some of its provisions in conflict with existing national laws.

The ordinance bans the sale of contraceptives without a prescription and any form of contraceptive advertisement within the village’s jurisdiction.

Educational institutions were also prohibited from teaching compulsory sex education without prior consultation and written permission from the parents or guardians of minor students from public and private schools.

Barangay employees and its agencies are banned from soliciting, accepting, or dispensing contraceptives. Violators can be fined P1,000 to P5,000 and face imprisonment of six months to one year.

Sison, in an earlier interview, said he is not aware of any law violated by the ordinance as it was based on Section 37 of Republic Act 5921, the country’s pharmacy law, which states that “no drug or chemical product or device capable of provoking abortion or preventing conception as classified by the Food and Drug Administration shall be delivered or sold to any person without a proper prescription by a duly licensed physician.”