Manila women fight back against contraception ban
Twenty low-income women in Manila are fighting a legal battle against what they say is a ban against contraception.
The group - 16 women and four of their husbands - are fighting a policy which they say denies them access to condoms, to the pill and other effective forms of family planning.This has had a devastating effect on their lives, they argue, causing unwanted pregnancies, pushing them further into poverty and harming their health and wellbeing.
It seems a policy touting "natural" family planning ensured (in a roundabout way) that free contraception was removed from local health centers, making access pretty much impossible. Just horrible.
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i am really to excited to see (albeit only four) their husbands involved! i wish more men would get serious about BC w/ their partners.
You can read a report on the horrors of this ban here (the online PDF is free, and although a very hard read, it's well worth your time):
http://reproductiverights.org/pub_bo_imposing.html
Minor pedantic point, but 16 women and 4 husbands isn't "twenty low-income women".
This is why I left the Catholic Church (well, that and the shuffling of abusive priests between churches instead of locking their asses up. But that's a whole other rant). Two thousand years and they have yet to learn that centuries-old dogma shouldn't trump common sense.
I find it interesting that the Phillipines has a constitutional amendment giving married couples the right to plan their families in accordance with their religious beliefs. Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but I'm taking that to say that people who choose not to be devout Catholics have a constitutional right to birth control if not abortion.
At any rate, it's interesting to see that, at least on paper, some countries define "liberty" with respect to adult agency rather than the "liberty" of a fetus to live off of an unconsenting mother. Hopefully these people will win their case and that right can be enforced in Manila again.