By Carlos H. Conde
The New York Times
Published: Aug. 2, 2010
MANILA — A new study of abortion in the Philippines denounces the government for keeping it illegal, causing what the authors describe as a ‘‘human-rights crisis’’ that victimizes tens of thousands of women every year, at least a thousand of whom die from unsafe, often crude, procedures.
The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which did the study that was to be released Monday, said the Philippine government was directly responsible for the crisis and accused it of violating the rights of these women by failing to address the effects of the abortion ban.
‘‘Criminalization of abortion has not prevented abortion in the Philippines, but it has made it extremely unsafe,’’ the report says.
Nancy Northup, the center’s president, said in a statement released Sunday that Manila ‘‘has created a dire human rights crisis,’’ with hundreds of thousands of women resorting to unsafe abortion ‘‘to protect their health, their families and their livelihood. Yet, the government sits idly by, refusing to tackle the issue or reform the policies that exacerbate it.’’
Abortion is outlawed without exception in the Philippines, the largest Roman Catholic country in Asia, where poverty can be extreme. Efforts to legalize it, or even mitigate its impact through the promotion of a sound reproductive health program, have been met with intense opposition from the church, which still has considerable influence.
Poor women with no means for acquiring reproductive services often resort to illegal and mostly unsafe abortions. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, more than half a million Filipino women undergo illegal abortions every year. Of this number, 90,000 suffer complications and a thousand eventually die, the center said. Abortion-related complications, it said, is one of the top 10 causes of hospitalization among Filipinas. According to the World Health Organization, 20 percent of maternal deaths in the country are a result of unsafe abortions.
Among the abortion methods the study mentions are intense abdominal massages, consumption of anti-ulcer drugs like Cytotec to induce contraction, ingestion of herbs and concoctions, and even insertion of catheters into the uterus.
These often cause complications like hemorrhage, sepsis, perforation of the uterus, damage to other internal organs, even death, the study says.
The report says most of the women interviewed by the center ‘‘had resorted to abortion more than once and they had tried more than one risky method each time.’’
The ban has likewise stigmatized abortion, the study says, and ‘‘despite the fact that post-abortion care is legal, women who seek treatment for complications arising from illegal and unsafe abortions are often viewed as criminals and denied compassionate and lifesaving care.’’
It cites cases of women seeking post- abortion care being harassed, intimidated and abused. In some instances, the study says, doctors and nurses have even threatened to report these women to the police. In extreme cases, doctors deliberately delayed caring for such patients ‘‘in order to teach them a lesson.’’
Apart from outlawing abortion, the Philippines proves inadequate in providing access to contraceptives, thus forcing women to turn to unsafe abortion, the center said. In some instances, local leaders, fearful of possible backlash from the Catholic Church, have disallowed the distribution of condoms and pills, among other contraception methods, by public health clinics.
‘‘If women had greater control over their fertility through effective methods of family planning and access to unbiased, truthful medical information, there would be far fewer unplanned pregnancies and less women would be compelled to resort to unsafe abortions,’’ the study says.
The center urged the Philippine government to implement reforms to address the problem. ‘‘Government actors and key stakeholders have an obligation to break the silence around the issue of unsafe abortion and enable the voices of women to become a basis for change,’’ it says in the report.
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