MANILA — After a ferocious national debate that pitted family members against one another, and some faithful Catholics against their church, the Philippine Congress passed legislation on Monday to help the country's poorest women gain access to birth control.
Aaron Favila/Associated Press
Visitors to the Philippine Congress viewed portraits of members during Monday's vote on birth control.
Jay Directo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Supporters of a landmark reproductive health bill celebrated as the Philippine Congress passed legislation on Monday to help the country's poorest women gain access to birth control.
"The people now have the government on their side as they raise their families in a manner that is just and empowered," said Edwin Lacierda, a spokesman for President Benigno S. Aquino III, who pushed for passage.
Each chamber of the national legislature passed its own version of the measure — by 13 to 8 in the Senate and 133 to 79 in the House of Representatives — and minor differences between the two must be reconciled before the measure goes to Mr. Aquino for his signature.
The measure had been stalled for more than a decade because of determined opposition from the Roman Catholic Church. Roughly four-fifths of Filipinos are Catholic.
Birth control is legal and widely available in the Philippines for people who can afford it, particularly those living in cities. But condoms, birth control pills and other methods can be difficult to find in rural areas, and their cost puts them out of reach for the very poor.
"Some local governments have passed local ordinances that banned the sale of condoms and contraceptives and forbid their distribution in government clinics, where most poor Filipinos turn for health care," Human Rights Watch said in a statement on the issue, adding that the new bill would override such ordinances.
The measure passed on Monday would stock government health centers, including those in remote areas, with free or subsidized birth control options for the poor. It would require sex education in public schools and family-planning training for community health officers. The Philippines has one of the highest birthrates in Asia, but backers of the legislation, including the Aquino administration, have said repeatedly that its purpose is not to limit population growth. Rather, they say, the bill is meant to offer poor families the same reproductive health options that wealthier people in the country enjoy.
The United Nations Population Fund estimates that half of the 3.4 million pregnancies in the Philippines each year are unintended, and that there are 11 pregnancy-related deaths in the country each day, on average. Most of those could be avoided, the organization says, through improved maternal health care, a need that proponents say the new legislation will directly address.
Catholic Church officials took a hard line against the measure, saying it was out of line with the beliefs of most religious Filipinos. The church equated contraception with abortion, which is illegal in the Philippines.
"These artificial means are fatal to human life, either preventing it from fruition or actually destroying it," the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines said in a statement on the eve of the votes in Congress.
The statement cited health risks associated with some forms of birth control, but the bishops' strongest objections have been lodged on moral rather than medical grounds. In a pastoral letter, they said: "The youth are being made to believe that sex before marriage is acceptable, provided you know how to avoid pregnancy. Is this moral? Those who corrupt the minds of children will invoke divine wrath on themselves."
The legislation prompted a heated national debate in the Philippines over the role that government should play in family planning and women's health.
"This bill no doubt has inflicted a very wide chasm of division in our society," said Juan Ponce Enrile, the president of the Senate. "Families are even divided, mother and daughter differing in their views, husband and wife differing in their views." Mr. Enrile opposed the bill; his son, Juan, a congressman, voted in favor of it.
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