AS SEEN ON TV
Investing on Women
Our weekend laundry woman Nelia has not reported for work for months now. Nelia, is 6 months pregnant with her 3rd child. The last time she reported for work, she looked more “malnourished” than pregnant. Her protruding belly looked heavy for her frail, stick-like frame. My wife limited chores to ironing that day, because she looked like she could not do laundry in that state.
Nelia is a personal charity. We pay her substantially for light work because she needs to augment her husband’s earnings from seasonal construction work. They live in a shanty along an estuary in Novaliches Quezon City, among an ocean of slum dwellers.
When asked if her pregnancy is deliberate, Nelia said they left nothing to planning, as with other major or minor decisions in the house.
“Nangyari lang po kuya anong magagawa ko?” she said.
Contraceptives are not a priority for her family of 5 subsisting on about one hundred pesos a day, very low by Manila standards and extremely miniscule against Nelia’s family’s basic needs. Besides to Nelia, bearing children is a god-given role and she’s not about to go against the church’s teachings, “that children are to be welcomed with open arms”.
But more than Nelia’s future or the future of her existing children and upcoming child, we worry over her health. If (God forbid), serious pregnancy complications arise, the family barely on its feet, will be brought down to its knees.
Life would have been easier for Nelia, if she has access to information on family planning and reproductive health, and if her government gives poor women free medical services such as pre natal check ups and follow through during pregnancy. As a work horse for her family, it is incumbent upon Nelia to be healthy.
Sadly the Reproductive Health Bill that gives all these sits idle in congress, dismissed as “least priority” as with any other health, education or social legislation. And the dilly dallying on its passage is taking its toll on the country’s women.
A report by ABSCBNNews.com quotes health research group Guttmacher Institute that the average number of women who die of childbirth or complications arising from pregnancy has doubled in the Philippines in the last 4 years.
This is backed by figures from the Philippine Health Statistics which recorded 1,783 pregnancy-related deaths in 2004 versus the 3,500 pregnancy-related deaths reported by Guttmacher institute for 2008.
A law that upholds reproductive health is supposed to give Filipinos access to information on the risks of child birth or pregnancy especially the poor. A reproductive health law also opens family planning options (whether natural or artificial) to prevent unwanted pregnancies and other associated health risks.
But why are congressmen not keen on pursuing its passage despite the alarming rise in pregnancy related deaths?
In a predominantly Catholic country where Family Planning is encouraged only within natural bounds, a vote for the Reproductive Health Bill could be political suicide. That’s partly why many congressmen avoid this contentious issue like a plague.
Besides there’s no money in Reproductive Health. Opportunities for kickbacks come way after it is passed hence support for the bill is unappealing to the corrupt.
The Reproductive Health Bill may be pushed further into oblivion with the global economic crisis. On World Population Month, the World Bank and the United Nations Population Fund warned that family planning and other programs vital to poor women had “fallen off the development radar of many low income and donor country governments and international aid agencies”.
I hope our very government does not use that as an excuse to further derail efforts for the passage of our own Reproductive Health Bill. The country really needs to invest on women. As partners in family building (and in many cases these days, they are the main breadwinners in the family), women like Nelia, deserve to stay alive.
(Comments or reactions are welcome. Email: stanley.palisada@gmail.com)