Gabriela Solons Seek Amendments To RH Bill, Assert a Population Control Bill Can Never Be Pro-Women Nor Pro-Poor

“Gabriela Women’s Party supports the call to end the period of interpellation on the RH Bill. It is time that we work on amending the bill to make it more responsive to the health needs of poor women. We support the vote to end the debates with the aim of pushing for amendments to three incongruent provisions of HB 4244 that continue to drumbeat population control as the solution to poverty. We believe that the bill cannot fulfill its purpose to recognize and respond to the health needs of women if it carries the population control agenda which will limit its capacity to uphold the rights of women to full access to comprehensive reproductive health services,” said Gabriela representative Luz Ilagan in a press conference led by the Makabayan bloc of party list groups.

The Gabriela solon was referring to three provisions in HB 4244 -- section 3 which states that “the limited resources of the country cannot be suffered to be spread so thinly to service a burgeoning multitude making allocations grossly inadequate and effectively meaningless”, section 12 which calls for integrating responsible parenthood and family planning into all anti-poverty programs, section 25 which enlarges the role of the Population Commission (see attached).

“Asserting women’s full access to free and accessible reproductive health services and programs should not be reduced to the issue of contraception and population control. We take umbrage over President Aquino’s conceited assumption that HB 4244 is his Responsible Parenthood bill. We worked hard and continue to fight hard to introduce positive provisions in HB 4244 that are responsive to the health needs of poor women. We will not allow a credit-grabbing President to undermine poor women’s voices and convert HB 4244 into a piece of legislation whose main aim is to ram the population control agenda down our throats,” added GWP Rep. Emmi De Jesus.

“At the end of the day, what poor women need is a national policy on genuine, pro-poor, and comprehensive reproductive health care so that women will have the basis from which to assert their right to proper health care. Our amendments are non-negotiable because population control can never be pro-women nor pro-poor,” Rep. Ilagan ended..###