Catholic school ban on ‘out of wedlock’ ma unconstitutional, Ilongga solon maintains
Academic freedom ends where basic human rights begin. While at it, a case of clear discrimination and “hypocritical” too.
Such summed up the strongly-worded press statement of Representative Janette Loreto Garin (First District, Iloilo) on the renewed controversy hounding the Magna Carta of Women.
With latest talks triggered by an earlier pronouncement of A-TEACHER party-list Representative Ulpiano Sarmiento III, the Ilongga solon issued a reaction in defense of the Magna Carta.
Sarmiento in an official stance cried foul on a provision that disallows Catholic institutions in the country from preventing employment or enrollment of Filipino women pregnant or who got pregnant out of wedlock.
The Magna Carta on Women in its current version is clear about this prohibition. The Magna Carta states that no Catholic school or university can deny a woman applicant with a child out of wedlock from being a part of the academe.
Sarmiento said the prohibition is tantamount to stepping on the idea of academic freedom. Such as his position upheld that Philippine Catholic schools and universities can very well keep an all “holy” academe.
“While the good party-list Congressman is correct in saying that schools should enjoy academic freedom, I firmly believe that the said right of academic institutions ends when the impingement on human rights of an individual begins,” Garin in a press statement sent to The News Today (TNT) said. “In keeping with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the State condemns discrimination against women in all forms. Denying them of their right to education and employment on the account that they got pregnant out of wedlock is a clear discrimination against women.”
“Why should we then expel or deny enrollment of female students and refuse employment to female teachers who are single parents? What equality are we talking about when these Catholic schools only expel the pregnant women and not impose the same to the men who fathered them?,” Garin further asked as she clarified, “In the Magna Carta of Women, the issue is not about violating the academic freedom of schools but the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.”
Added came more clarifications that Garin pointed out caused for the Magna Carta to be pushed in the Philippines.
“The very reason it was passed because of instances like these that encourages the society to look down on women just because their decisions does not conform with what is said to be morally upright in the country…..As a woman I take offense to these forms of discrimination happening in schools. As a parent and policy maker, I lament the quality of education in our country if these are the values being inculcated to our children,” Garin said.