Women's rights glaringly absent in Duterte's 3rd SONA — advocacy group

Advocacy group EnGendeRights, Inc. on Monday slammed President Rodrigo Duterte for excluding from his third State of the Nation Address any discussion on women's issues.

Duterte in his short speech omitted any endorsement of divorce, safer cities for women, marriage equality, and decriminalization of abortion.

“In President Duterte’s SONA speech, the rights to safe and legal abortion, divorce, marriage equality and women’s affirmative action were blatantly missing," lawyer Clara Rita Padilla, executive director of EngenderRights, was quoted as saying in a statement shared with the press.

She added, "If we recall, after the recent President’s meeting with the CBCP, it was mentioned in the news that President Duterte and the CBCP were in agreement as regards the issues on divorce, abortion, and marriage equality.  It is unfortunate that the passage of laws that would have far-reaching impact on the rights of women and LGBTI people were absent in his speech.”

Although Duterte notably pressured the Supreme Court to act on the Reproductive Health and Responsible Parenthood Law in his 2017 SONA, he also bluntly declared that he is against abortion.

Padilla explained that this stance is misguided, as there are many cases where therapeutic abortions are permitted by the law, including "to save the life of a woman or to prevent disability. 

"Pregnant women with conditions such as dwarfism, hypertensive disorders, tuberculosis, diabetes, bronchial asthma, goiter, HIV, malaria, severe anemia, malnutrition, and pregnant women who are less than 18 or greater than 35 years of age, have a fourth or more children, are battered by their husbands or partners, and have spinal metal plates may die from complications from pregnancy and childbirth and may need access to safe abortion to save their lives and prevent life-long disability."

She cited the case of Geluz v. CA (1961) to highlight the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled that therapeutic abortions are necessary to save the life of a woman, where it states:

"It is no answer to invoke the provisional personality of a conceived child (conceptus pro nato habetur) under Article 40 of the Civil Code, because that same article expressly limits such provisional personality by imposing the condition that the child should be subsequently born alive: 'provided it be born later with the condition specified in the following article'. In the present case, there is no dispute that the child was dead when separated from its mother's womb."

Padilla called on Congress to repeal restrictive provisions in the Revised Penal Code that only serve to make the procedure more risky for women who need it for whatever reason.

Data from 2012 provided by the EnGenderRights showed that 70 Filipino women induce abortion every hour and 11 of them are hospitalized every hour due to complications. Women who seek medical treatment for these complications also face harassment from healthcare providers, whose personal beliefs overshadow their task to care for patients.

Worse, three Filipino women die every day from complications due to unsafe abortions. It is the third leading cause of maternal death.

"I hope our representatives in the Philippine government will realize how these human rights violations are so pervasive in our society and they just simply can’t turn a blind eye on this important issue.  I hope the Philippines will soon decriminalize abortion since presently abortion is only recognized in our country to save the woman's life and for medical necessity based on a 1961 supreme Court decision,” added Padilla. — LA, GMA News