Art by Jezrah Gamutin
Humanity has already surpassed the 8 billion global population mark by 2022, and on today's celebration of World Population Day, the Philippines- with an exponential increase in its national population- has to take more measures that go beyond an insubstantial acknowledgment of the birds and the bees.
Two years ago, the United Nations announced that the global population had surpassed the 2 billion-mark. On this day, July 11th was declared by the UN as ‘World Population Day’. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, World Bank data from 2022 reveals a roughly 116 million population of Filipinos.
With a majority of its population being between the ages of 15 to 64 according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), followed by youth under 15 years old, it is safe to say that it is high time for the Department of Education (DepEd) to strengthen its implementation of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in order to address the next generation's right to reproductive health, specifically access to information.
Contrary to the times of great need, however, it wasn't until April when DepEd finally proposed a new draft of the K-10 curriculum, which shall teach sexual reproductive, health rights as early as the third quarter of Fourth grade, wherein students are around 8 to 10 years old.
Furthermore, for the larger part of the Philippine population ages 15 and up, access to reproductive health rights would be a graver concern. With nearly a majority of Filipinos with access to the internet, even setting a record consumption of online pornography in 2021, the juxtaposition of lack of basic CSE and exposure to unreliable access and sources of information on reproductive health has already taken its toll.
Apart from the unpreparedness of standardized CSE, in a 2022 Philippines National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), lower-income households exhibited higher fertility rates (thus birthing more children) in comparison to higher-income households. Taking into consideration their capability to access family planning, the current available methods of family planning need to be revisited, if not entirely revamped.
A report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the 2022 State of World Population Report (SWOP), further highlights the need for a breath of fresh air in the exercise of reproductive health rights for Filipinos: A staggering half of all pregnancies are reported to have been unintended. Every year, 71 of 1000 women face unintended pregnancy, ranking the country 56th of 150 others in the number of unintended pregnancies. Noting the fact that these pregnancies may have occurred even after family planning, other avenues of reproductive health rights and exercise of bodily autonomy are out of the question for the women of the Philippines. The latter includes abortion, which to this day, remains punishable by law.
To reiterate, abortion to this day is criminalized by the Revised Penal Code, as stated in Articles 255 through 259, under Crimes Against Persons, Destruction of Life, Section Two: Infanticide and Abortion. The Commission on Human Rights (CHR), in fact, was threatened by Senator Jinggoy Ejercito Estrada with zero budget for having expressed support for basic women’s rights in November last year, during deliberations of the annual national budget. The criminalization of abortion led to women having to turn to unsafe conditions in order to address their unwanted pregnancies, leading to complications and even death in the worst-case scenario.
In contrast, the measures taken so far for unintended pregnancies that do not involve criminalization are limited to various programs by different public sectors such as the Commission on Population and Development (PopCom) and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). While RA 10354 or ‘The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012’ exists, even its declaration of policy which guarantees the State’s support of human rights, including the right to choose and make decisions for themselves in accordance with religious convictions, cultural beliefs, is moot. The majority of the country’s religious alignment that practically dictates its laws made sure of that.
Any other aforementioned actions such as DepEd’s CSE integration have been revealed to only be minimally implemented, with as little as 15 percent of teachers having integrated it, as reported by a 2018 study of the Center for Health Solutions and Innovation Philippines Inc. While reproductive health rights are no longer being treated as a can of worms, the indiscriminate shutting down even of deliberation over rights by irrelevant authority, but NOT by the subjects themselves, on the grounds of religious belief, ensures that the Philippines won’t move forward from barely addressing its population concerns.
By stubbornly ignoring the obvious and glaring answers, the only thing that can be expected by the women of the Philippines, with its whole population by extension, are bridges already burnt even before they got to cross them, never being given the chance to go beyond the talk of the birds and the bees.
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