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Interfaith groups to SC: Restore RH law’s penal provisions

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Interfaith groups to SC: Restore RH law’s penal provisions
It is violation of women's rights when the law allows health service providers to refuse referring patients to other providers based on their moral beliefs
MANILA, Philippines – Select interfaith groups appealed before the Supreme Court (SC) to restore the “penal provisions” of the reproductive health (RH) law, saying their absence disempowers Filipino women.
The groups filed on Monday, April 28, a motion for reconsideration, asking the high court to review and eventually reverse its ruling striking down RH law provisions that would punish the following:
  • public officials who withhold support for RH services if their conscience objects to the RH services
  • RH service providers who refuse patient referrals if their conscience objects to the RH procedure
  • RH service providers who deny service to women and pregnant teenagers due to lack of spousal and parental consent, respectively.
“Women bear the brunt of unintended/unwanted pregnancies, early sex, risky sexual behavior, childbirth, and lack of access to safe and legal abortion…. We urge this Honorable Supreme Court to reconsider its decision and decide the constitutionality of the RH law in a way that upholds reproductive rights to the fullest extent,” the motion for reconsideration read.
Among the petitioners before the SC are the Filipino Catholic Voices for Reproductive Health (“C4RH”) Incorporated; Interfaith Partnership for the Promotion of Responsible Parenthood (IPPRP); Emeliza Bayya Mones, former national Council Representative of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines; and Zahria Mapandi, executive Director of Al-Mujadillah Development Foundation Incorporated.
The SC on April 8 upheld the constitutionality of the RH law but struck down select provisions. The 106-page decision was penned by Justice Jose Mendoza read. (READ: SC declares RH law constitutional)
Conscientious objection
The SC decision thus allows specialists to refuse referring RH patients to other service providers when they do not want to attend to them based on the dictates of their conscience. It also allows public officials to withhold support from RH programs based on their moral convictions.
“Once the medical practitioner, against his will, refers a patient seeking information on modern reproductive health products, services, procedures and method, his conscience is immediately burdened as he has been compelled to perform an act against his beliefs,” the court said.
The text of the RH law as it was passed in Congress already allowed conscientiously objecting RH service providers to refuse providing the RH service and information to patients. What the SC ruling did was to take out another layer of compulsion, this time allowing RH providers to also refuse giving patients referrals so they could see other service providers who don’t object to RH procedures.
The court, in establishing the argument on conscientious objection, said that only a “compelling state interest” justifies thwarting religious practice.
“Only the prevention of an immediate and grave danger to the security and welfare of the community can justify the infringement of religious freedom. If the government fails to show the seriousness and immediacy of the threat, State intrusion is constitutionally unacceptable,” the court ruled. 
“After all, the constitutional safeguard to religious freedom is a recognition that man stands accountable to an authority higher than the State,” the SC decision read.
Antiquated, dangerous
But petitioners believe the argument for conscientious objection is antiquated, dangerous, and unduly perpetuates women’s sufferings.
“Conscientious objections are over twenty-five years vintage. These are dangerous religious practices that propagate discrimination against women and should be dismissed as such. Discrimination against women must  not be allowed to hide under the cloak of ‘religious freedom’ and ‘conscientious objections’ and must be viewed as outright gender-based discrimination which, in reality, is being used as a means to control women, perpetuate subordination of women and effectively maintain sexism and patriarchy,” their motion before the SC read.
“In truth, the petitioners are imposing ultra conservative religious standards through our laws in an effort to control women’s bodies. These ultra conservative religious standards propagate subordination of women where women’s decisions including personal decisions related to pregnancy and childbirth are totally disregarded,” they added.
“Allowing healthcare service providers and local government officials to erroneously claim religious freedom leads to further violations of women’s human rights,” they said.
Leonen on patients’ rights

Justice Marvic Leonen, the sole magistrate in the high court who voted for the constitutionality of the RH law in its entirety, also warned against the undue influence of the majority religion in the context of medical care.

“We should tread carefully when what is involved is a religion that is not a minority. Invocations of religious freedom can be a disguised way of imposing the dominant faith on others. This is especially true in physician-patient relationships,” the justice said.

“Doctors routinely take an oath implying that the primordial consideration in their services is the welfare of their patients…. Many of those who specialize in the ethics of the health profession emphasize the possibility of a health service provider inordinately abusing conscientious objection over the welfare of the patient,” Leonen said in his dissent.

“If the first and primordial consideration is the health of her or his patient, then the beliefs of the service provider even though founded on faith must accommodate the patient’s right to information,” he added.

He added that the refusal of an RH specialist to provide service because his religious belief prevents him from doing so “implicitly imposes a religious belief on the patient.”

SC ruling makes an exemption

The court, in explaining why there is no need to infuse “coercive measures” in the law, said there are other means to satisfy the RH needs of a patient without having to restrict the religious freedom of conscientiously objecting RH service providers.

The patient can go to RH service providers who are willing and need not abandon their personal religious beliefs to provide the treatment.

“The health concerns of women may still be addressed by other practitioners who may perform reproductive health-related procedures with open willingness and motivation,” the SC explained.

It, however, set forth the threshold: The case must be a matter of life and death for it to warrant compulsion.

Only in instances when the patient in need of an RH procedure is in a life-threatening condition can government compel the services of RH specialists whose conscience would order them to do otherwise – even if that service is simply in the form of a referral.

“While generally healthcare service providers cannot be forced to render reproductive health care procedures if doing it would contravene religious beliefs, an exception must be made in life-threatening cases that require performance of emergency procedures,” the court said.

“In these situations, the right to life of the mother should be given preference, considering that a referral by a medical practitioner would amount to a denial of service, resulting to unnecessarily placing the life of a mother in grave danger,” the Court added, making it a rule for conscientiously objecting RH service providers to refer patients in moribund cases to the appropriate specialist. 

Spousal, parental consent

Likewise, the court essentially required all minors their parents’ consent, and married persons their spouses’ consent, before they could undergo RH procedures.

The requirement of parental and spousal consent, however, only applies to the availment of RH procedures and not mere RH information.

“There must be a differentiation between access to information about family planning services, on one hand, and access to reproductive health procedure and modern family planning methods themselves, on the other,” the court explained.

In deciding in this manner, the Supreme Court said it sought to uphold “the constitutional mandate to protect and strengthen the family.”

“It bars the husband and/or the father from participating in the decision making process regarding their common future progeny. It likewise deprives the parents regarding their common future progeny. It likewise deprives the parents of their authority over their minor daughter simply because she is already a parent or had suffered a miscarriage,” the court said. 

The minor who has been pregnant in the past or had a previous miscarriage “needs the comfort, care, advice, and guidance of her own parents…. To say that their consent is no longer relevant is clearly anti-family. It does not promote unity in the family as an inviolable social institution,” the court said.

But petitioners argue that requiring spousal consent “disregards women’s right to decide on their own bodies.”

“Authorizing healthcare service providers to refuse ligation to women due to absence of husband’s consent perpetuates discriminatory traditional cultural beliefs where the decision-making of men prevails over women,” petitioners said.

“Permitting this to creep into Philippine law perpetuates discrimination against women and inequality of women in law in clear violation of women’s right to equal protection of the law and women’s right to privacy, they added. – Rappler.com

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