For over a century, abortion has been criminalized in the Philippines. Not only is this an infringement on a woman’s right to make her own choices, but abortion is not even practiced when it comes to saving the life of a pregnant woman due to the stigma and fear among health professionals, which greatly jeopardizes the health of many.

However, no amount of laws can completely prevent abortions happening and – similar to other countries where abortion is restricted – abortion is still a common practice in the Philippines.

Instead, its criminalization has forced the procedure underground, making it unsafe and potentially deadly for millions of Filipino women. This is exemplified by the fact that as many as 75% of pregnancies in the Philippines are unwanted, leading to 600,000 unsafe procedures a year. Of this number, at least 3 women tragically die from complications caused by the procedure every day.

There are also several misconceptions about abortion in the country – one of the most prominent being that as a predominantly Catholic country, policymakers treat abortion as a religious and moral issue, when in fact it is a public health issue.

To combat this, global women’s rights movement SheDecides and the Philippine Safe Abortion Advocacy Network (PINSAN) have come together to decriminalize abortion in the country. They are working to achieve the full realization of Filipino women and girls’ human rights, and to ensure that every woman has the right to make her own decisions over her body, which includes the right to access a safe abortion. As part of these ambitions, PINSAN recently drafted a bill which, if passed, would overturn the antiquated 1930 Revised Penal Code on abortion, which to date has threatened hundreds of thousands of women’s lives. Further support for the bill is being generated through PINSAN’s petition, which SheDecides Philippines supports.

Alongside this, on International Safe Abortion Day (September 28), PINSAN and SheDecides Philippines hosted an open house event where many young people came together in a safe space to share their own stories and experiences, and to create artwork aimed at breaking down the stigma surrounding abortion. Stigma and taboo are some of the main reasons why health professionals refuse to perform safe abortions, even when a woman’s life is in danger.

The event was attended by over 100 people and viewed by more than 1,000 people on Facebook as part of the wider campaign #WhyAbortionWhyNow, which has been designed to encourage people to stand up and speak out for abortion rights.

If women are not granted access to sexual reproductive health services, their quality of life and agency are threatened, causing further harm to the wider community as a whole. This campaign is needed now more than ever based on the far-ranging consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, which UNFPA estimates to have resulted in around 7 million unintended pregnancies due to the lack of access to contraceptives and other external factors.  

The number of clandestine abortions in the Philippines illustrates that criminalizing abortion does not prevent people from seeking or going ahead with one. It is not the answer. All it does is force a woman to pursue unsafe procedure methods, thereby putting their life at risk. In choosing to decriminalize abortion, we are choosing to save the lives of our wives, our daughters, our girlfriends, our nieces, our granddaughters, and our sisters.

Now is the time for the Philippine government to comply with international human rights obligations and ensure all women in our country have access to non-judgmental, full, and safe abortion care. – Rappler.com

Jona Turalde is a SheDecidesChampion and member of the SheDecides Guiding Group.