Word: bans
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Bing planned on having one child, but birth control was never an option. For much of the last decade, the City of Manila, one of Metro Manila's semi-autonomous municipalities, has engaged in a campaign against modern contraception. In 2000, Mayor Lito Atienza issued an order effectively banning birth control from city-funded clinics. Eight years and a new mayor later, the ban persists. The city's affluent minority buys birth control from private clinics or procures condoms on the sly, but poor women, like Bing, go without...
...hoping that will change. Backed by local women's groups and the Center for Reproductive Rights, Bing and a group of 19 of Manila?s poorest residents have taken the city to court. Their potentially precedent-setting lawsuit contends that the ban damages women?s health and violates their rights. They've marshaled compelling evidence: a relative increase in maternal deaths, reports of botched back-alley abortions, and children born into families that can't afford to raise them. "The consequences are far-reaching," says Aya Fujimura-Fanselow, a legal adviser to the Center for Reproductive Rights...
...architects of the ban deny a link between population and poverty. "I reject the notion that we are poor because we are plenty," says former mayor Atienza. "Poverty is caused by mismanagement, not by the number of people." He?s partly right, of course. Endemic corruption and sluggish agricultural production helps keep the Philippines poor. But government statistics and a host of studies show that population is part of the problem. Access to nutrition, education and employment decreases dramatically when a family outgrows its means...
...Catholic Bishop's Conference in the Philippines, calls birth control advocates "propagandists of a culture of death." Sex, he says, is a privilege and should always be open to the transmission of life. Former mayor Atienza agrees. Family planning advocates have been "brainwashed" by the West, he says. His ban succeeded, he adds, by teaching Manila's "innocent and ignorant" women "true" Filipino values...
Since they filed suit in January, the petitioners say they've seen small signs of change. Outreach workers say it's getting easier for them to provide family planning services independently. And, though he's yet to speak out against the ban, Manila's new mayor, Alfredo Lim, has met with pro-family planning groups and expressed some willingness to collaborate with NGOs. Roberto Ador, executive director of the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines, says the suit comes at an opportune time. He sees it as part of a nascent nationwide push for reproductive rights. "We're hoping this...