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Natividad Columbia 0054D 10693 PDF
Natividad Columbia 0054D 10693 PDF
Natividad Columbia 0054D 10693 PDF
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
2012
© 2012
Maria Dulce F Natividad
All rights reserved
ABSTRACT
Reproductive controversies are never only about reproduction and health. They serve as proxies
for more fundamental questions about citizenship, the state, national identity, class and gender. In a
post-colonial context such as the Philippines, where a particular historical relationship between the
Church and the state has developed, policymaking on reproduction, sexuality and health answers to
both development goals and religious norms. At the same time, women’s everyday frameworks of
(reproductive) meanings are also inextricably bound with state policies and popular culture.
reproductive politics, and competing understandings of embodied sexual morality. My study argues that
at the heart of the complex politics involved in policymaking on reproductive health in the Philippines is
the entanglement of national and religious identities. Reproductive policy then operates as a frame
through which the politics of the nation, religion and the state get filtered and played out. Taking the
Philippines as a case study, I focus on women’s ‘lived religion’ and practices; the local, national and
international institutions and actors that exert influence on reproductive policy and popular sentiment;
and how these shape women’s reproductive practices in the context of everyday life. Through the
women’s narratives, I show how class, gender and religion work in tension with one another. Lastly, the
study also investigates how the historical entanglement between religion and the state configures
Acknowledgments ii
Dedication v
Bibliography 224
i
Acknowledgments
This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of
many individuals, groups and communities. First, I wish to thank the women of Sangandaan for sharing
their life histories with me. I am grateful for their openness and trust. I extend this gratitude to
everyone who participated in my research. I also thank the Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund
and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University for supporting both my preliminary
I want to thank the members of my dissertation committee: Drs. Carole Vance, Richard Parker,
I count myself lucky for having a wonderful and dedicated mentor in Carole Vance. Her thorough
review of my writing and her challenging comments on my drafts, as well as her tireless focus on my
progress, provided a steadying guide throughout the difficult process. She has put a lot of her energy
and time into helping me achieve my best. For this, I cannot thank her enough. By her example, I have
Graduate school is an environment for achieving, but it is also a place of survival. I am grateful
for the unconditional support that Richard Parker has given me from the time I finished my coursework
until now. He trusted me with work, training me in areas of research, writing and academic publishing,
and introducing me to a broad network of academic-activists, while at the same time ensuring my
survival. All this has informed my own work and will serve me well in my future. I valued greatly the
For never tiring of being excited about my work, Lesley Sharp has given me a generous gift. She
always saw the potential and strengths of my research. My conversations with her were for me sessions
for crystallizing and messing up ideas. Her urging that I let the voices of my respondents speak is now
ii
Despite her move to another university, Ali Miller sustained her commitment to be on my
committee. The questions she posed always opened a different complex perspective. Beyond the call of
duty, she offered her lovely home as refuge and work space as I finished my revisions.
Stepping in at a final and crucial stage of my dissertation work, Jennifer Hirsch was perfect. Her
In the course of my academic work, Drs. Monica Maher and Edgar Rivera Colon, also served as
members of my committee for a time. They both helped me work out certain aspects of my dissertation.
I wish to acknowledge other faculty whose quiet support I appreciated a lot. They include Kim Hopper,
Amy Fairchild, Marita Murrman, James Colgrove, Miguel Munoz-Laboy and Robert Sember. I thank
Marni Sommer for her heart and caring for my well-being. Theo Sandfort, my adviser when I did my
MPH at Columbia, deserves special mention. He took me under his wing when I first came to New York.
I also want to give a special mention to my friends, Ernesto Vasquez, Carmen Yon-Leau, and
Shaohua Liu. Although we met each other when were at different stages of our academic lives, the four
of us managed to form a tight group of international students. I cherish the love and support they have
given me, and miss the laughter and stories that we shared.
For their friendship and being there during the last stages of my dissertation writing, I thank
Ephraim Shapiro, Nancy Worthington, Laura Murray, Raziel Valino, Emily Vasquez, Robert Frey, Jonathan
Garcia and Yessica Diaz. They all made life easier for me.
My Filipino community in New York was a source of immeasurable support. I thank Toinette
Raquiza, Vince Boudreau, and Myrna Alejo, who also live academic lives, for being generous with their
advice, opening their homes to me, and comforting me with food. Nora Angeles, another friend and
academic based in Vancouver, commented on the rough draft of my dissertation. The Reyes family,
Vicky, Romy, Mark and Anne, welcomed me into their New Jersey home and made me a part of their
family.
iii
To my friends and colleagues in the Philippines who served as my cheering squad and updated
me on news from home, I say thank you. Jing Pura, Mia Aquino, Lai Mendoza, Mags Lopez, Jojo Garcia,
Alan Ortiz, Randee Cabaces, Chris Bantug, Agnes Camacho, Sheila Espine, Mela Sarenas, Roy Choco, Gus
Cerdena, Mye Cruz and Doby Pineda sustained my spirit. They understood my unwillingness to be
distracted by Facebook and endured the inconvenience of regular email to continue communicating
with me. Princess Nemenzo, Mercy Fabros, Fe Manapat, Fe Sarmiento, Melvi Gelacio, Bing Concepcion
For keeping me company from far away and for many nights, I thank Ian Rintoul.
Lastly, I wish to thank my family for their constant love and support. I thank my siblings, Kuya
Dominic, Doreen, Desiree, and Delight, for keeping me connected to home; and my nephews, Andre and
Jack, and my nieces, Faith and Kim, who give me infinite joy. I owe my parents, Jun and Celia, everything.
I thank them most for believing in me. And although he did not see me finish, my father would have
iv
For my parents, Jun and Celia
v
1
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Years ago, I took a political science course that introduced students to the policy process and
outlined the steps involved in passing legislation: the drafting of the bill to its subsequent first and
second readings, the period of interpellation, the introduction of amendments, voting on the bill, the
third and last reading, and finally, the possible exercise of the Presidential veto. This, is how a bill
becomes a law. Implied in this step-by-step presentation was an objective analysis of a social problem, a
rational sifting of arguments, and a deliberate crafting of the solution to the problem. Understanding
Far from being an external force that unfolds objectively and which political actors must then
take pains to follow, in reality, policymaking and policy itself have complex “social lives” as they may be
understood as being embedded within contexts and meanings. As people engage in policymaking, they
construct and deploy their own interpretations and meanings of policies, creating new social, political
and bureaucratic dynamics. As such, policymaking is a highly contested and unstable process, revealing
“political processes in which actors, agents, concepts and technologies interact in different sites,
creating or consolidating new rationalities of governance and regimes of knowledge and power” (Shore
et al. 2011: 2). Shore, Wright and Peró (2011) use the term “policy worlds” to refer to this whole
complex interactions.
In this study, I investigate the policy worlds of the Reproductive Health Bill, first proposed in the
Philippine legislature in 2001. After years of raging public debates, the bill continues to be a source of
political eruptions and moral questioning, intensely contested for more than a decade due mainly to
opposition from the influential Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is not alone: also engaged are
2
affiliated groups, policymakers and their legislative staffs, the state and its different agencies, women’s
NGOs and other reproductive health advocacy groups, business and other sectors, as well as diverse
media. Instead of focusing solely on the policy text, my research takes the national controversy ignited
by the Reproductive Health Bill as its subject, examining the many competing moral perspectives,
cultural meanings and political interpretations attached to the policy, as well as the backgrounds of the
various interacting actors and the histories they bring to this policy world.
The narrative of the Reproductive Health Bill is not about how a bill becomes a law; rather it is
about how a bill continuously fails to be enacted into law despite having public support, and yet, year
after year, survives certain death in Congress, to be revived the following year. As an ethnography of
policy, this study looks at deeply embedded historical identities and political relationships and how
these are implicated in the making and unmaking of policy. To understand this, I analyze the Philippines’
colonial history and how it has shaped the country’s political institutions and traditions, embedding the
Catholic Church in the life of the nation. Intertwined with this religio-political history is the development
of Filipino national consciousness, identity and ethics. This history has enabled the Catholic Church to
generate a powerful narrative of a Filipino nation whose essence is Catholic. As I show in this study,
long-held beliefs about what it means to be a Filipino and what it means to be Catholic have exerted a
strong influence on ordinary Filipinos, politicians and state institutions, shaping their responses to the
policy debates.
The protracted social conflict over reproductive health, however, has opened spaces for shifts
in Filipinos’ religious identities and ethical perspectives, as well as potential changes in the politics of
Church and state in relation to those governed. A marker for this changing religio-political landscape is
the emergence of Catholic voices that advance women’s reproductive justice and reproductive health
programs, simultaneously claiming their Catholic identities and challenging Catholic Church dogma and
political practice.
3
With the legislative discussions, the policy arena inevitably draws all the actors into its process.
In this instance, the policy process created and mediated the environment for the political engagement
between the Catholic Church and its allies, reproductive health advocates and the state. But this is an
engagement that refuses to be contained within the halls of Congress, as actors scramble to gain
legitimacy for their respective positions at other levels and branches of government – local and
international, executive and judicial. As policy travels through governmental spaces, the contradictory
responses at these different levels reveal disjunctions in the system, and the multiple channels through
which power and resistance flow. This research examines this political interaction and analyzes the
Politics is about the distribution of power in society. The policy world of reproductive health
reaches long and deep, and it is crowded and noisy. In debating reproductive health, many diverse
voices have entered the political sphere and the question of power arises in considering whose voices
and decisions matter in shaping policy responses. This study attempts to bring together these many
voices – religious and secular, public authorities and social movements, policymakers and program
implementers, institutions and individuals - and to describe the political spaces that they inhabit. In
doing this, however, I have tried to articulate the experiences and sentiments of urban poor women,
whose life conditions form a background to the policy discussions but whose actual voices are almost
never heard. For, as crowded and noisy and all encompassing the reproductive health policy world is, it
reserves its margins for these women, marking them as both inside and outside of this world. Much like
the slum communities in which they live, policy renders urban poor women invisible, while in plain
sight.
4
FRAMING QUESTIONS
Reproductive controversies are never only about reproduction and health. They serve as proxies
for more fundamental questions about citizenship, the state, national identity, religious identity, class
and gender. In a post-colonial context such as the Philippines, where a particular historical relationship
between the Church and the state has developed, policymaking on reproduction, sexuality and health
answers to both development goals and religious norms. At the same time, women’s everyday
frameworks of (reproductive) meanings are also inextricably bound with state policies and culture.
This study examines the relationship between state governance, religion, reproductive politics,
and competing understandings of embodied sexual and reproductive morality. Taking the Philippines as
a case study, I focus on women’s ‘lived religion’ and practices; the local, national and international
institutions and actors that exert influence on reproductive policy and popular sentiment; and how
these shape women’s reproductive practices in the context of everyday life. The study also investigates
how the historical entanglement between religion, nation and the state configures practices of
meetings, mundane conversations, before and after public mobilizations, this study highlights religion,
not as prescribed experience, but as a social practice constantly in the making (Beckford, 2006).
Combining an ethnography of religion – how the institutional church, religious groups, government
agencies, and individual women ‘do religion’ in everyday contexts, and an ethnography of the state –
how state policies on reproduction claim the social body, are incorporated in women’s daily lives, and
are experienced by citizens (Kligman, 1998), this research attempts to integrate everyday practices with
Moreover, in examining the historical and contextual relations between religion, nation and the
state, this study attempts to present an analysis of a reproductive health controversy that veers away
5
from the framework of religious fundamentalism. Instead, by looking at the political dynamics at play,
this study suggests that the intertwining motivations, positions and visions of the state, the nation and
the Catholic Church do not make for easy dichotomies between religious and democratic agendas.
Demands to strictly observe secular rules in policymaking, therefore, do not necessarily resolve the
This study examines three central questions: What is the relationship between the institutional
church, ‘lived religion’ and women’s reproductive practices in everyday life? How does the engagement
between religion, the state and civil society shape governance and policymaking regarding gender,
sexuality and reproduction? How do sentiments and the politics of the nation and of religion intersect
Studies on religion point to the tensions between institutional religion, popular religion and
personal belief and behavior (Smith 2008; Shepard 2006; Sutcliffe 2004; Tentler 2004). Central to my
research is the question of what people actually do, say, think and believe in regard to religion, how this
is mediated by family, economic and other social contexts, and what are their implications for
reproductive practices. A related question asks how people understand the role and relevance of
religion in their lives and how this impacts reproductive decisions. Derivative questions include: How do
women negotiate and construct everyday morality in relation to religious teachings and doctrines? How
do women interpret, resist and integrate religion in their reproductive and sexual practices and decision-
making? At the same time, my research explores how the institutional church accommodates women’s
understandings of religious teachings and adjusts its local practices on sexuality and reproduction to
take women’s perspectives into account. Lastly, I investigate the consequences of the church’s positions
State relations in the Philippines in order to understand how these relationships have shaped practices
6
of governance, especially policymaking. I ask: what kinds of state and policy actions are made possible or
constrained by the interaction between religious institutions and groups, government agencies, and
public culture? What are the discourses and technologies deployed by these political actors to influence
policies on gender, sexuality and reproduction? How do these engagements shape Filipino notions of
gender, sexuality and reproduction? Further, recognizing that class and gender are dimensions of
politics and culture, do poor women participate in politics and policy-making, and if so, how?
Based on these questions, this study describes how religion, the state, social movements and
private lives interact to shape everyday sexual morality and policies on reproductive health. In
proceeding with this, the study analyzes the discourses about reproduction and sexual morality
deployed by religious authorities, the state, media, NGOs and community women, examining how these
define the terms of the debates around reproductive health and rights. At the same time, I also describe
how major institutions advancing programs of sexual and reproductive morality mobilize their
organizational strength and symbolic weight to influence reproductive and sexual health policy. Lastly, I
explore the everyday frameworks of meaning, as well as ‘lived religion and belief’, of poor women who
interpret and follow but also resist religious doctrines and practices, as these relate to reproduction,
Policymaking, especially regarding gender, sexuality and reproduction, has become a central
arena for engagement between the state, religion, and civil society in the Philippines. As in many parts
of the global South, reproductive policies in the country have been invariably tied to the issue of
population control and poverty. With a population of about 95.8 million and 22.6 percent of its people
living below $1.25/day (UN Human Development Indicators Report 2011), the Philippines assumes the
adverse effects of a high population growth on family, community and national welfare and the urgency
of controlling population growth to achieve development. The first national population policy, launched
7
as part of the martial law reforms (Lorenzo 1976), achieved its goal of reducing population growth by
employing rigid demographic targets, a strict quota system for health workers, and economic incentives
and disincentives for poor women (Gorospe 1976). This policy has been criticized as being coercive, its
incentives and disincentives making it hard for women and health workers who had few economic
options to say “no” to sterilization and family planning programs. The policy was abandoned when the
administration of Corazon Aquino, taking counsel from the Catholic Church, halted all family planning
services except for “natural” family planning in the late 1980s. During this period the provision
recognizing “the equal protection of the mother and the unborn child” was enshrined in the 1987
al. 1998). From 1992 to 2001, the administrations of Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada distanced
themselves from religious authority and re-introduced family planning programs which integrated the
language of reproductive health, population management and sustainable development, following cues
from the International Conference on Population Development and the Fourth World Conference on
In the past ten years, a number of legislators with the support of women’s non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) have attempted to pass a bill that seeks to institutionalize policies upholding
sexual and reproductive health and rights, while ensuring programmatic continuity from one
administration to another. Introduced in the same year as the proposed laws on divorce and non-
discrimination (protecting lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people), the reproductive health
care bill (subsequently the Responsible Parenthood and Population Management bill) became a
platform through which the Catholic Church and affiliated groups pursued moral objectives about
gender, sexuality and the family. Religious authorities denounced these bills as “anti-God, anti-family
and anti-Filipino.” The Church’s attack sharply polarized civic discourse and caused some members of
Congress to withdraw support. Recognizing the Church’s strong opposition to the bill, legislators also
8
felt pressured to include Church representatives in committee hearings, opening the policymaking
process to religious interference. Yet even as legislators feel vulnerable to the Catholic Church’s
positions on reproductive issues, annual surveys show that majority of Filipinos, despite the Church’s
teachings, support ‘artificial’ contraception and would vote for candidates who favor family planning
and ‘artificial’ contraception. The monopoly exercised by the Catholic Church over the population may
have ensured the formal dominance of Catholicism, but this may also be the reason why Filipinos adhere
minimally to Catholic Church teachings. It is important to note, however, that Filipinos’ support for
contraception does not translate to practice as only 36 percent of married women use modern family
planning methods (National Demographic and Health Survey [NDHS], Philippines, 2008).
With competing actors influencing policymaking, the result is a reproductive health agenda that
is incoherent and a state discourse on reproduction, sexuality and population that is contradictory. On
the one hand, former President Macapagal-Arroyo poured funds into supporting the Church’s campaign
on ‘natural’ family planning while shifting the responsibility for providing contraceptive pills to NGOs. On
the other hand, health officials raised alarm about maternal deaths and identified reproductive health
and safe motherhood as priority concerns, while economists stressed the risks of a ballooning
population. In the politically charged debate on reproduction, sexual morality and health, the discourses
that posit sexuality and population as threats to moral values, national welfare or development goals
has overpowered women’s sexual and reproductive self-determination. At the same time, discussions
of reproductive and sexual rights have been conflated with the objectives of population and
development. Whether they tend to be ‘anti-natalist’ or ‘pro-natalist’, the main target of these
reproductive policies are poor women, who are viewed as having uncontrolled sexuality and rampant
fertility. Poor women also suffer the impact of these policies, reflected in their stories about guilt and
shame, forced sterilizations, unsafe abortion complications, maternal deaths and a general lack of health
Building on these critical events, this research investigates how religion, the state, social
movements and private lives interact to shape everyday sexual morality and policies on reproduction.
Considering that morality and policies are negotiated spaces, I am interested in the process of
engagement among the multiple actors involved and the effects of this engagement on policies and
people’s daily lives. This research analyzes the different discourses about sexual morality, reproduction,
rights and citizenship deployed by the different political actors engaged in the debate. The
convergences, divergences, continuities and overlaps between these discourses as well as the dilemmas
and contradictions these pose for the different actors involved are examined.
Specifically, the research explores how the interaction between religious institutions and the
state shapes policymaking on reproductive health and rights. I describe the strategies, technologies and
resources that the Church mobilizes in its campaigns. The level of influence that the Church has on state
policies, however, is not only enabled by its institutional capacity; rather, it is the product of the kind of
Church-state relations that have been established historically in the particular context of the Philippines.
Moreover, I look beyond institutions and examine how Filipino urban poor women construct their own
sexual and reproductive moralities as they engage with the teachings of the Catholic Church. This focus
on “lived religion” examines how women interpret, follow and resist Church doctrines and practices as
The debates on reproductive health serve as proxies for more fundamental questions about
citizenship, the state, the nation, and women. The Catholic Church, policymakers and women’s NGOs
are essentially asking the following questions: What are the problems of the nation and who defines
them? What kind of people are Filipinos? What kind of a society will reproductive policies produce?
What future do these policies offer the country? These questions point to implicit beliefs about
progress and backwardness for a “third world” country such as the Philippines, the role of the state in
modernizing the nation, the values of a “modern” and “moral” nation, as well as “modern” and “moral”
10
national subjects, and the place of religion in steering the nation on the right path. More importantly,
they reveal reproduction as a site for the struggle over these issues.
I locate my research within the intersecting scholarship on the politics of reproduction, religion
This research builds on the scholarship that takes reproduction as a site of political contestation
(Petchesky 2003, Jolly and Ram 2001, Obermeyer 2001, Petchesky and Judd 1998, Ginsburg and Rapp
1995, 1991, Correa and Reichmann 1994, Sen and Snow 1994, Van Dyck 1995, Joffe 1986). Reproductive
controversies about abortion, contraception, population and assisted reproduction that debate
questions about sexual morality, the obligations of the state, and the place of women in society are a
particular expression of this political struggle. Social hierarchies such as gender, class, ethnicity, race,
and age shape these struggles, too. These reproductive contestations, moreover, demonstrate how
reproduction becomes a medium through which other forms of power struggles can be waged. Going
beyond the view of reproduction as a biological process, this research emphasizes reproduction as a
process that connects the material, the moral and the political (Thomas 2003, Grayson 2000, Morgan
2000, Neresini and Bembi 2000, Townsend 1997, Inhorn 1994, Strathern 1992, Raphael 1973). As such,
Ginsburg and Rapp (1995) state, reproduction is an “entry point” to the “study of social life” and, as a
political process, “provides an arena for investigating and theorizing about the production of culture” (p.
10).
At the macro-level, reproductive politics finds expression in the link between reproduction and
the survival of the nation. In colonial contexts, women’s sexuality and reproductive capacity were used
as symbols of nationalist aspirations and purity and, thus, had to be protected from contamination from
colonial powers. As such, women were called on to reproduce and sustain the threatened colonized
11
nation (Klausen 2004, Kaler 2003, Briggs 2002, Jolly 2001, Davin 1997, Stoler 1997, Chatterjee 1990,
Yuval-Davis 1997). This same reproductive capacity, however, can be seen as a danger to a nation’s
development and progress. In the context of developing countries, governments have implemented
programs and policies regulating women’s fertility to curb rapid population growth in keeping with
development and economic goals (Maternowska 2006; Rao 2005, Schoen 2005, Robynson 2001, Ram
2001, Whittaker 2001b, Dwyer 2000, Lopez 1998, Ross 1998, Bandarage 1997, Flieger and Smith, 1975).
Conversely, in situations where below-replacement level fertility threatens the growth of labor force
and industries, governments have instituted incentives to encourage reproduction (Hanson 2004, Jolly
2001b, Lock 1998, Horn 1994). Other studies exploring the political and historical processes shaping
struggles around reproduction have focused specifically on the role of religion in these struggles
(Blofield 2006, Shepard 2006, Ortiz-Ortega 2005, Whittaker 2004a, Martin 2000, Gebara 1999, Kissling
1999, Ginsburg 1998, Freedman 1997, Blanchard 1994). These studies emphasize reproduction as a
political process involving negotiation, accommodation, resistance and shifts in perspectives which
My research also builds on studies that investigate reproductive decision-making and the
considerations that inform reproductive choices (Paxson, 2004, Koster 2003, El Dawla et al. 1998, Fabros
et al. 1998, Raj et al. 1998). Studies on reproductive decision-making have shown that women’s
decisions – whether to get pregnant, have more children, undergo an abortion or be sterilized – are
more often a result of negotiated positioning in relation to partners, families, work and economic
situations, community moral prescriptions, and availability of adequate health services. In their multi-
country research, Petchesky and Judd (1998) discuss the notion of “negotiated self.” Reproductive
decisions by women are not experienced as conflicts between self and others; rather, women view
themselves as integrated with others and this relationality is reflected in their reproductive actions and
decisions.
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While studies on reproductive decision-making tend to focus on the immediate context of the
individual or the micro-level, research on political reproductive struggles emphasize the broader, macro-
level processes. My project integrates these two levels by interrogating both the role of religion in
women’s reproductive lives and the institutional practices of religion that impinge on politics and
governance. By doing this, I hope to achieve a more complete picture of the dynamic and complex
At the same time, I also try to elaborate the global dimension by linking the activities of religious
and political institutions and groups in the Philippines to those in the Vatican and the United States.
Considering the strong ties between the Philippine Catholic Church and the Vatican, as well as the
continuing influence of American culture and politics on Philippine institutions and the public, examining
how these global relationships unfold on the ground will clarify how external influences become
women’s reproductive decision-making and the constitution of sexual morality through social position. I
do not suggest that poor women have a separate reproductive agency or subjectivity. But I take
Browner and Sargent’s (1996) suggestion that a “fuller understanding of how ethnicity and social class
mold women’s wishes, expectations and behavior within the reproductive domain” will move us to
“articulating multiple paradigms of maternity held by different groups of women within heterogeneous
societies and their relationship to broader societal principles and structural processes” (p. 232). Further,
I am interested in how social class, gender and religion work in tension with one another in women’s
everyday decisions and how the constraints and opportunities that poor women encounter in their
Reproduction is a process that connects the material, the political and the moral. The notion of
“moral economy” (Biehl 2005, Kleinman et al 1997, Scott 1976) is useful as it may serve as “a tool for
13
understanding the way in which a given society reproduces itself morally and what people do to
maintain or establish what they consider to be a preferable social balance when direct political action is
not on the agenda” of the poor or marginalized (Vike 1997: 197). Vike further notes that what morality
and norms regulate is “not ‘justice’ in an absolute sense, but rather the relationship between people’s
ideas of a reasonable order and what we may call social performance.” In his classic work on the moral
economy of the peasant, Scott (1976) explained that he was not investigating the causes of peasant
rebellion; rather, he was interested in peasants’ notion of economic justice and exploitation, and what
to them were tolerable and intolerable claims on the products of their labor. Particularly instructive is
Scott’s perspective that a study of the moral economy of peasants “can tell us what makes them angry
and what is likely, other things being equal, to generate an explosive situation” (1976: 4). My interest in
moral economy goes beyond exploring women’s covert or overt resistances, accommodations or
negotiations regarding reproductive decisions. Rather, I want to understand how guilt, shame, suffering
and sacrifice get incorporated into religious morality while at the same time these emotions can be
actively deployed by women for their sense of redemption and source of authentic morality. Here I take
into account the marginalization of urban poor women who are targeted by state policies but whose
economic position has excluded them from effectively participating in most socio-political processes
that affect their lives. Political upheavals in the past few years have deepened awareness of class
divisions in the Philippines; masses of urban poor violently protested against the “contempt” with which
society – the elite and middle classes, the government and the Catholic Church – has treated them1. This
contempt extends to the way Filipino upper classes and institutions have viewed poor women with
1
On May 1, 2001, after several days of vigil at the Our Lady of EDSA Shrine, hundreds of thousands of urban poor marched to
the Presidential Palace to protest the ouster of populist president, Joseph Estrada, by the elite and middle classes, the Catholic
Church and the military. For the urban poor, Estrada was their defender. The “Poor People Power,” as it was called by the
media, turned into a bloody, violent riot that lasted for more than twelve hours. With rage as their only weapon, the slum
dwellers, the so-called “masa,” took on the police, the media, and anybody who stood in their way. The rampage resulted in the
death of several individuals and in the injury of countless others as well as in the destruction of property worth millions of
pesos.
14
“undesirable fertility” and “undeserved motherhood”. How does this social exclusion shape the moral
The population issue has long been a quandary in the discourse on reproductive health and
rights, and fiercely debated within the international women’s health movement (Silliman et al 1999;
Johnson and Turnbull 1995; McIntosh and Finkle 1995; Dunlop et al n.d.) In the 1980s up until the 1990s,
opposing perspectives had developed, with one view of population positing the possibility of a feminist
population policy and another view arguing against reproductive rights, viewing it as an individualistic
framework that removed women’s bodies from their wider socio-political context and which the
population movement employed. (For contrasting views, see separate articles by Akhter, Berer, and
Hartmann, Proceedings of International and Women and Health Meeting [IWHM], 1992.) The
experience of population control by women in developing countries served as a critical point in the
debate. While reproductive health and rights would gain international acceptance and consensus during
the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and the Fourth World Conference
contentious (Danguilan, 1997; Johnson and Turnbull 1995; McIntosh and Finkle 1995; Dunlop et al n.d.).
Within the context of the developing world since the 1950s, the population issue has come to be
framed as a crisis and a risk to the nation. In the discourse of demography, “population” was
transformed from a neutral category of people into a volatile relationship among too many people, too
little food, a degraded environment, an unstable political system, poverty and underdevelopment. This
apocalyptic image of the future has fed into the collective imagining of an insecure and dangerous world
that has defined and driven much of the debate around population. This, at times, has reduced the
complexity of the world’s problems to a single issue, paralleling the reduction of historical and dynamic
15
international conflicts to the issue of terrorism. It has been pointed out that the “global crisis model”
debuted during the era of population control (Foley and Hendrixson 2011).
Addressing the “crisis” of rapid population growth became a development strategy in order for
developing countries to achieve progress. This demographic thinking echoed the spirit of progress and
anti-backwardness found in the discourses of nation-building, especially in the context of a “third world”
country such as the Philippines. As a decolonizing nation in the 1960s, the Philippines found itself
embracing this progressive spirit as it aspired to modernize and claim the promised benefits of
development. Following the model of development peddled by the West, the country during the Marcos
Coinciding with the period of martial law, the efforts at industrialization and population control were
undertaken as a nationalist project, one that will ensure the progress of the country and present it as a
modern nation to the international community. But while the fruits of the industrialization program
were eventually partitioned between Marcos and his cronies and the country’s resources drained by
mounting foreign debt servicing and constricting structural adjustment programs, the population control
policy, with its system of incentives and disincentives, had its biggest success at this period.
This project of modernization relied on a development model, which was criticized during the
Marcos years but nevertheless subscribed to by succeeding governments through the years. Resting on
the tenets of liberalization, deregulation and privatization, while unresponsive to the unequal class
borrowed from the West was contested then and continues to be contested until today. An assumption
of this model is that progress in “third world” countries will be achieved if they followed the same
development path taken by developed nations. Demographic and population thinking is embedded in
this modernization theory with its linking of fertility decline with Western-associated socio-economic
modernization, industrialization, modern education and political liberalization (Asdar Ali, 1996). In the
16
Philippines, the formulation and enforcement of population policies is another marker for its continuing
Scholars have written on the relationship between religion and politics, tracing the complex
connections between religion and nationalism, and complicating secular assumptions, especially in post-
colonial contexts (Asad, 2003; Jelen and Wilcox 2002; Menon 2002; van der Veer 2001; Bose 1998; van
der Veer 1995; Moen and Gustafson 1992; Rafael 1988). As broad frames within which to understand
the relationship between religion and politics, these studies explain the ‘rise’ and ‘decline’ in the social
influence of religion as well as the changing dynamics between institutional religion and individual
personal experience. Spickard (2006) identifies five narratives that contemporary scholars have
individualization, and religions as competitors for religious consumers. As a particular case, the
Philippines has interpreted secularization as part of the modernizing process. Yet while the
disestablishment of the Catholic Church in the post-colonial period has officially de-linked state affairs
from religious institutions, the Church hierarchy has retained its political clout. As in Latin America, the
Church in the Philippines has developed its own “institutions of secular powers” such as parochial
schools, universities, radio and television stations, banks and businesses, and community based
organizations (Blofield, 2006, Shepard 2006, Chestnut 2003), which can easily be mobilized to promote
its agenda. Instead of occupying state functions, the Church mobilizes civil society institutions and
groups to influence state actions and policymaking to align the latter with the religious interests.
Because of its hegemonic position, the Catholic Church is not only able to utilize appeals to moral values
but is also able to threaten state officials by virtue of its perceived command constituency. This becomes
crucial during elections when the Church endorses or threatens to campaign against certain candidates
Religious fundamentalism is a standard frame used to explain the rise or reemergence of religion
in the political and public spheres. However, its common usage as a description for a broad range of
religious and political activities and movements has made it a contested term. The uncritical deployment
of the concept to cover all forms of conservative religious beliefs or depict a particular religion as
extremist or violent is especially problematic. Studies have attempted to show how various
fundamentalist movements within the different major religions have emerged historically, examining
how the forces of globalization and modernity as well as specific political contexts became the impetus
for the growth of these movements (Brekke 2012; Mårtensson et al 2011; Bruce 2008). While scholars
recognize that many fundamentalisms exist, they also argue that fundamentalist movements are similar
in both form (Marty 1993; Marty 1991) and in origins (Brekke 2012), notwithstanding the differences in
their ideological content. In the Philippine context, the Catholic Church’s conservative views on gender,
sexuality and reproduction and its opposition to the reproductive health bill have been labeled
fundamentalist. Yet, the Church, in the post-colonial period, has also been viewed as a progressive force
in Philippine politics. While characterizing the Church as fundamentalist may arguably be an appropriate
description and has its utility in political debates, this assertion fails to explain the political dynamics
involved in the policy debates on reproductive health and the relationship between the Catholic Church,
the state and civil society that impinge on the policy arena. I am interested in exploring conceptual
frames that can explain the social and political influence of the Church despite the decline in its doctrinal
exercises a monopoly over the ‘religious market’. As Spickard (2006) notes, however, this monopoly may
have ensured the dominance of Catholicism but this may also be the reason why Filipinos only nominally
practice their faith. This illustrates the religious individualization narrative, which shifts focus from
2
The Philippines has an indigenous Muslim population who are mostly in the Mindano Region. An active Muslim secessionist
movement in the region asserts that Mindano, which was never colonized, is not part of the Philippines.
18
institutional religion to the growing autonomy of believers who choose to not conform to established
church doctrines. Yet not conforming to official religion does not necessarily mean that individuals do
not hold deep religious belief or feelings. In her discussion of folk or vernacular religion, Bowman (2004:
4) describes it as the “unexpressed, inarticulate, but often deeply felt religion of ordinary folk who
would not usually describe themselves as Church-going Christians yet feel themselves to have some sort
of Christian allegiance,” which is not an aberration or a pejorative description but a constant element of
religion. She then further asserts that the relationship between official religion, vernacular religion and
individual beliefs are three components of religious experience that must be studied to get a fuller
interpretations of religion that translate into cultural and political resistances (Gullick 1993, Rafael 1988,
Ileto 1979) and the formation of an ethics of the self (Mahmood 2005, Corrigan 2004, Thomson et al.
2001, Cannell 1999, Howland 1999, Mellor and Shilling 1997, Metcalf 1990, Ayoub 1987), as well as
those that look at the dynamics of state-church relations in colonial and contemporary contexts (Clark
and Kaiser 2003, Douglas and Mitchell 2000, Parekh 1999, Neusner 1996, Haynes 1993, Verhoogt 1993,
Benavides 1987). Ileto’s (1979) and Rafael’s (1988) studies provide critical analyses of the basis in folk
Catholic tradition of Philippine popular resistance movements during the Spanish period. Mahmood
(2005), in her study on the women’s mosque movement in Egypt, and Metcalf (1990), in her translation
and analysis of Bihishti Zewar, the Indian guide for respectable women, both tackle the embodiment of
piety as a cultivation of a gendered, ethical self. These studies illustrate that the re-interpretation and
subversion of religion is a space within which resistances and agency can emerge and which can become
a source of self-mastery or power. The tension between institutional religion and ‘lived’ religion is
highlighted in the way Filipinos conscientiously follow religious public rituals but listen to their
‘conscience’ when it comes to private matters. Yet following one’s conscience does not necessarily
19
mean a guiltless, shameless or sinless life. As one of my informants during my preliminary research said,
the role of the Church in moral matters is “to protect you and redeem you. Guilt is the mechanism by
which that protection and redemption work.” Sometimes we think of moral subjects as acting subjects;
we focus on their concrete actions but forget what happens inside the person. Taking Mahmood and
Metcalf’s focus on the cultivation of the self, I want to explore how forgiveness, suffering, guilt and
shame figure in the formation of a moral subject and relate this to women’s reproductive decisions and
actions.
institutional church, religious groups, government agencies, and individual women ‘do religion’ in
everyday contexts, and an ethnography of the state – how state policies on reproduction claim the
social body, are incorporated in women’s daily lives, and are experienced by citizens. Moreover, I
examine how religion and the Catholic Church, in particular, both in colonial and post-colonial contexts,
have been involved in a process of co-construction of state governance and policymaking in the
Philippines. This has implications on policymaking, governance and development goals for the nation. By
centering on reproductive policies, I hope to complicate the ongoing discussions about religion,
secularism and politics by bringing in gender and sexuality frames (which have been ignored in contexts
Rights are central to the notion of citizenship as they define the legal relationship between
states, individuals and collectivities. Feminist scholars have discussed the struggles to expand the scope
of rights and citizenship to take into account women’s realities. Recognizing reproductive rights and
principles of bodily integrity, personhood, and diversity is viewed as crucial in attaining citizenship for
women (Chandiramani 2005, Chavkin and Chesler 2005, Cervantes-Carson 2004, Silliman et al. 2004,
Takeshita 2004, Pillai and Wang 1999, Correa and Reichmann 1994, Fried 1999). In addition,
20
reproductive rights as part of the right to health, although still heavily contested, have gained legitimacy
after the series of UN conferences in the 1990s (Pillai and Wang 1999, Hardon and Hayes 1997,
Danguilan 1997).
Other feminist scholars have interrogated the conception of citizenship in liberal democracies
(Kapur 2005, Yuval-Davis 1997, Mouffe 1992 , Pateman 1988, Nash 1988, Randall 1988). For these
scholars, citizenship is always gendered and the state incorporates women in different ways than men
(Waylen, 1998). The state’s masculine bias and façade of neutrality excludes women from full
citizenship. As Yuval-Davis (1997: 37) argues, “women’s membership in their national and ethnic
collectivities is of a double nature” for “women, like men, are members of the collectivity” but there are
“specific rules and regulations which relate to women as women.” Given women’s categorization as the
symbol and reproducers of the nation as well as cultural values, what citizenship rights can women who
Being a member of the underclass (viewed with “contempt” and “disgust”) has implications for
the participation of the poor in social and political processes. Thus, I explore how “contempt” and
“disgust” become part of the content and mechanism of citizenship in the way that ideas of equality and
social justice orient the relationship between individuals, the state and civil society.
The research also builds on ethnographic work on policy, particularly the insight that “[policies]
are crowded spaces already filled with moral values and preconceptions” (Shore and Wright (1997: 21).
In this vein, studies on reproductive and population policies, whether pro-natalist (as in Ceaucescu’s
Romania, Kligman 1998, Kligman 1995) or anti-natalist (as in China’s one-child policy, Jing-Bao 2005,
Agnanost 1995), illuminate the practices and competing goals of state and citizens, as well as open
Shore and Wright (1997) propose that anthropologists examine how policies work as
instruments of governance, as ideological vehicles and as agents for constructing subjectivities and
21
organizing people within systems of power and authority. This will entail that policies on sexuality and
reproduction are studied not only in their written form; policies cover the institutional mechanisms of
decision-making in the negotiation of policies, the experience of people in their interaction with
implementors of policies, the language and symbols mobilized to legitimize or undermine policies and
decision-makers, the contradictions emerging from their interpretation and implementation, and the
identities created by these policies. In the Philippine context, this also includes the interpretation of
existing reproductive policies at the constitutional, legislative and programmatic levels to shape the
This work grew from my involvement in the women’s health movement in the Philippines
throughout the 1990s until the early 2000s. My interest in women’s issues was first sparked by the 6th
International Women and Health Meeting held in Manila in 1990, which gathered about 500 advocates
from all over the globe. Listening to all those women discuss reproductive rights and the women’s
health movements in different contexts introduced me to feminist perspectives that would sustain my
commitment to gender equality through the years. At a time when abortion, sexuality, and lesbian rights
were rarely discussed publicly in the country, the conference sparked an explosion of ideas and visions
During this period, reproductive rights and the idea of women’s sexual and reproductive self-
determination became core issues that linked other women’s issues, such as domestic violence, sexual
health, lesbian rights, and economic autonomy. The broader women’s movement mobilized around
reproductive rights, and the issue injected the movement with a new political vigor. At the same time,
because of the strong links of the women’s movement with nationalist and socialist movements in the
country, we made sure to highlight the connections between the struggle for health rights and the
broader call for social justice and equality. This meant simultaneously advancing women’s health issues
22
and mobilizing around issues such as the foreign debt, trade liberalization, privatization of social
services, political reforms and democracy, and imperialism. Although in the period after martial law we
were more at home taking these issues to the parliament of the streets, we had also begun to take
policy advocacy seriously. Proof of this was the eight-year battle to pass an anti-rape law which became
a test of the women’s movement’s mettle in the policy arena, and prepared groups for the longer
Feminists and activists shared a sentiment that viewed the Catholic Church as a formidable
influence in policy questions regarding women’s sexuality and reproduction. However, the Church’s
position in the political milieu represents a conundrum for many, as Church leaders were also important,
even indispensable, allies in other progressive causes. In the early years of the reproductive health bill, a
common response by many groups and individuals to the Church’s political exertions against the bill was
to not engage and avoid tussling with religious authorities. As an act of self-preservation, this was a
pragmatic decision. This stance, however, proved untenable, as the Catholic Church became the single-
Our experiences on the ground have strengthened my belief that any reproductive health
program must consider larger social, economic, and global contexts that structure everyday
reproductive and sexual experiences and health outcomes, attending to inequalities that these
processes produce. This advocacy has focused my attention on marginalized communities that do not
have the capacity to enter or engage in public discussions and whose views therefore are left out of
policy decisions. This work has shaped my ethnographic study on policy, as I made sure to include urban
poor women and show that, even though they were marginal in the reproductive health debates, they
had developed and distinctive opinions and perspectives on an issue that so directly affected their lives.
23
One afternoon in September 2008, I arrived at the North Wing of the House of Representatives,
and was met by a crush of people -- women, some with their children, men, young people -- spilling out
of the driveway onto the lawn in front of the building, waiting in a mish-mash of lines for their turn to
get frisked and for their bags to be scanned through the security area. When I saw a familiar person
assisting the crowd to get through more quickly, I realized that the people were from the poor
communities where members of the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network worked. The glass doors on
the opposite side were also opened for other visitors, including members of the Catholic Women’s
League and Pro-Life Philippines; only, there were no scanners on that side. I opted to go through the
scanner and was waved to the second floor, which I had figured was reserved for less important people.
There, I was stopped by two security personnel who asked, “Kanino kayo?” (“Whose side are you on?”).
Mildly irritated at the way the security staff were directing people into clear-cut opposing camps, which
I felt reinforced a war mentality among the interest groups, I answered coldly, “Wala” (“None”), and
added I was there just to observe. Not knowing how to deal with my answer, the security staff then
While I resisted the categorization of people into warring camps and made an effort to show
independence from both sides, even as I talked and associated with individuals from the two groups, the
sense of war that permeated the events connected to the reproductive health bill made me watchful of
my own behavior and demeanor. Sitting in a gallery occupied mostly by opponents of the bill that
many rallies and demonstrations as a political activist, I have learned that in an organized mobilization
where members, and even common strangers, know each other relatively well, an unfamiliar face can
raise a silent alarm in the minds of members and may arouse suspicion of potential trouble. Having
been told by a pro-life interviewee that she had doubted my research motive, saying I could have been
24
“planted”, and knowing my personal position on the issue, I worried that Pro-life members would think I
was spying.
I felt the same discomfort when I sat in the gallery with reproductive health advocates. As my
involvement in the feminist movement in the Philippines started with reproductive rights, I counted
many in the reproductive health advocacy network as part of my immediate political circle. But during
my research, I was concerned about being spotted and identified with them so much so that at one
point I implored two young male colleagues not to sit beside me during a plenary hearing; and when I
did sit or talk to colleagues, I would unconsciously put on my serious researcher face to strike a
“neutral” pose and communicate to anyone who cared to see that no information was being spilled and
no one was being betrayed. Conducting research among the lead protagonists in the midst of intense
competition between pro-life groups and reproductive health advocates was a hard balancing act, a
balancing act, in fact, that never found a steady fulcrum throughout and which I had resigned to live
Exploratory fieldwork in the summer of 2006, to observe forums, demonstrations, and campaigns
involving religious groups, NGOs, the government and communities, laid the necessary groundwork for
my research. I collected data for this ethnographic research between September 2007 and March 2009,
and this was conducted in multiple sites in Metro Manila, Philippines. Since I set out to investigate
practices, policies, discourses, narratives, and histories of diverse political actors, I moved constantly
between different spaces: the House of Representatives and the Senate, where committee hearings
and plenary sessions on the reproductive health bill were being held; national government agencies and
local government units, through which state responses to the policy battle were being defined and
articulated; the various public and lobbying activities of reproductive health advocacy networks and pro-
life groups, for and against the proposed measure; and urban poor communities in Quezon City and
25
Manila, where I met with women willing to share with me their stories. In these spaces, I talked and
engaged with legislators and their staff, government program officials, Catholic Church leaders and their
representatives, pro-life members and supporters, reproductive health and family planning advocates,
academics and women in urban poor communities. My research methods included participant
observation, life history interviews, in-depth interviews, community case studies, and archival research.
The general site of my fieldwork was Metro Manila, or the National Capital Region, constituting
sixteen cities and one municipality. Metro Manila is a mega city, bursting with frenzied energy from its
more than 11 million inhabitants. In a day’s time, about 20 million people, many of whom come from
nearby provinces, go through the traffic and the busy circuits of the city. Within this urban setting, I
moved between the two major cities of Manila and Quezon City. Both cities are the main sites of state
governance in the country: Malacañang or the Presidential Office, the Senate and agencies such as the
Department of Health are in Manila while the House of Representatives, the Department of Social
Welfare and Development, the National Housing Authority and other government agencies are in
Quezon City. The state university and the major Catholic universities in the country, which all figured in
the public discussions on reproductive health, are also clustered in these cities. Because of their political
significance, both cities have been traditional sites of rallies, protests and mobilizations.
Manila, the country’s capital, was the seat of the Spanish colonial government. As a
consequence of this historical link, the Catholic Church maintains its present offices and popular
cathedrals in the city. Moreover, Manila provides the Rizal Park for the weekly gathering of the
Catholic-supported evangelical El Shaddai movement, whose members are in the millions. Manila’s
connection to religious authorities extends to policymaking as the immediate former mayor of the city,
who is an active member of Opus Dei, successfully instituted an executive order effectively banning the
Quezon City is known as the hub of non-government organizations (NGOs) and advocacy groups,
a significant number of which are women’s groups working on the issue of reproductive health and
rights. Both the Reproductive Health Action Network (RHAN), a coalition campaigning for reproductive
health legislation, and Pro-life Philippines, housed within the Good Shephered Convent compound, had
their offices here. The city has also outpaced Manila in terms of hosting the largest population of slum
dwellers in the metropolitan area. Sangandaan, the community in which I immersed myself, is a
squatters’ village located behind government agencies. It is home to more than a thousand families
living in makeshift houses, without access to proper water, electricity or drainage system. In contrast to
Manila, the Quezon City Council enacted an ordinance providing for reproductive health programs and
Research Methods
My prior work experience with women’s health NGOs in the Philippines facilitated my movement
between and access to these different spaces during fieldwork. It meant that I already have valuable
contacts with organizations and individuals involved in the campaign to pass the reproductive health bill.
Being an insider in the broader NGO community also provided me with knowledge on and links to the
other key actors engaged in the debate, such as Church affiliated groups, legislators, and government
officials. Further, this insider perspective gave me familiarity with the history of the bill, the issues in the
assessment – of the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network. I was also invited to the network’s press
conferences, mobilizations, public events as well as meetings with legislator allies and other informal
conversations. Being plugged into RHAN’s activities gave me access to critical information, such as the
schedule of legislative committee hearings, the filing of the court petition regarding the contraceptive
ban in Manila, and developments in the policy arena. RHAN was also a source of other contacts. Because
27
of my close connections with the members and previous membership in a couple of organizations in the
made clear during a general assembly. This meant I could participate in the discussions, but my ideas
would not be taken as representing the position of any group I was involved in.
At the same time, I was also attending seminars, conferences, mobilizations and prayer rallies
organized by Pro-life Philippines, the Catholic Church and its allied groups. Although my participation in
these activities was not as intense as my involvement in RHAN, it allowed me to establish a respectful
and friendly relationship with a few members of Pro-life. This entailed, when asked, being upfront about
my sentiments about the reproductive health policy, but not letting my own thinking define the course
of the conversations with my respondents. My disclosure was never met with antagonism, except in one
interview session when I thought my respondent would end the conversation even before we had
begun. I had become a familiar face in the campaign environment that on one occasion, after another
tense committee hearing, leaders of pro-life groups invited me to a debriefing meeting. It was an
opportunity that a researcher should grab, but I balked at the idea and declined. I hadn’t found my
political footing then and wasn’t sure if I would be committing an ethical breach should I accept. Given
the animosity between the two camps, my own identity as a women’s health activist and plan to re-
engage with the political movement once back in Manila, I decided that a healthy distance was the
Attending legislative committee hearings and plenary sessions, both in the House of
Representatives and the Senate, was a major part of the research, enabling me to follow the official
policy discourses on reproductive health and to identify other key personalities who were potential
informants. These legislative sessions could be as short as thirty minutes or as long as five hours, and
were always jam-packed events covered by the media. At the time of my fieldwork, House
representatives managed to pass the reproductive health bill at the committee level, finally paving the
28
way for the plenary debates in the Lower House. In the Senate, however, the discussions remained at
the committee level. By the time I left the field, the legislative debates had stalled because hearings on
the budget had to be prioritized. Soon after, the attention of legislators shifted to campaigning for the
Apart from doing participant observation within the context of RHAN, Pro-life Philippines, and
legislative activities, I also conducted in-depth interviews with four groups of informants. These were
legislators and their staff; government health and population officials and program personnel; Catholic
Church officials, representatives, and members of allied groups; and reproductive health advocates,
including academics and former government officials. The semi-structured interviews focused on a)
public discourses on reproduction, sexual morality, and religion, b) state policies on health, sexuality,
reproduction and their significance to women’s lives, and c) the organizational goals and agendas as well
as the personal views of these key actors about the debates on reproductive health and rights. A total of
and came from the ranks of the urban poor herself. Ka Nora Protacio, who was also a recognized urban
poor leader and women’s health advocate, brought me to Sangandaan and introduced me to four of the
women with whom she was working. During that first meeting in a small roadside eatery, I met Mila,
Cora, Hilda and Lourdes, who kindly agreed to talk to other women about my research project. In
subsequent visits to the community, these four women took turns bringing me to the houses of
potential respondents and helped me convince the other women to take part in the research. Mila,
Cora, Hilda and Lourdes would also become part of the group of twenty women who shared with me
Before conducting any formal interview, I organized small group conversations with the women,
holding these in Cora’s house. This was meant to build rapport with the women and to give us an
29
opportunity to get more familiar with each other as we partook of snacks and shared laughter. It was
during one of these group chats that the women assured me that I could ask them anything. As they
casually pointed out, the crowded conditions made it impossible to keep anything private. They said
they had nothing to hide from each other and didn’t have any pretensions about each other’s lives. In
fact, except for one, all of the women wanted me to use their real names in the dissertation.
The life history interviews with each woman took three sessions, with each session
approximately 1-2 hours. Most of the interviews took place in the women’s homes, and a few sessions
were held in the two parks just across the community. A couple of interviews were held in the barangay
hall where a couple of the women did odd jobs. The staggered sessions aided in the reflection process
for the informants, preparing them for subsequent sessions which explored their experiences with
Outside of these interviews, I also visited Sangandaan regularly, going to the women’s homes for
chats, staying for a few hours in the area and participating in community activities and family gatherings.
Through participant observation, I gathered information on the women’s family and community lives as
these reflect their practices and ideas about reproduction, ‘lived religion’, and social issues. The
just be in the background while letting community dynamics to unfold, which would not have been
To get us out of our usual environment, I also organized picnics in the park for the women and
their families. I would bring the food and they would bring the mats and other supplies, and we had
games and prizes. During one picnic, I invited a friend who was a professional photographer and asked
her to take pictures of the women with their partners, husbands and children. My reason for doing this
was simple: I wanted to give the women a real gift, something that did not look like charity, which they
were accustomed to receiving. I also wanted them to have mementos that showed them looking their
30
best and did not showcase their poverty. For the photo session, the women took care to dress up and
gamely posed for the camera. It proved to be invaluable, as I realized that the women, who could not
afford cameras, did not have family pictures. For weeks, the women constantly asked me when they
would get the photographs, and when they finally did, their excitement and appreciation were
undeniable.
The community case studies focused on Manila and Quezon City, providing comparative data on
the factors that shaped policymaking on reproductive health at the local government level. For this
segment of the fieldwork, I attended hearings on the reproductive health ordinance being discussed in
Quezon City and monitored the court petition and activities related to the campaign to overturn the
contraceptive ban in Manila. A total of 22 key informant interviews were conducted, with local
government officials, public health officials and practitioners, NGO practitioners, community women
and clients of clinics based in these areas. The Manila case study also brought me to two slum areas, a
dump site and a notorious port area, to interview women affected by the policy against contraceptives.
For the archival research, I examined documents about health policies and Church-state
relations (historical and contemporary), Constitutional debates on reproductive health and rights,
congressional hearings on reproductive issues, Church policies and statements, and NGO studies. I used
the resources of the University of the Philippines, congressional libraries and the resource centers of
NGOs.
All interviews were taped with the permission of informants. Notes were also taken during the
‘Taglish’, a combination of Tagalog and English commonly used in many parts of the country and is the
main language spoken in Manila. As a Filipino myself, I speak the language and understand the nuances
of the culture. A pool of five persons helped me with transcribing almost all of the interviews. I did all
My research proposal was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Columbia University
and the Research Ethics Committee of the Department of Health in the Philippines. As part of the
protocol, I developed an informed consent form which I discussed with my life history and key
informants at the beginning of the interview. However, to avoid jeopardizing my ability to build rapport
and trust with my informants, I asked for their oral consent (which I recorded), as an alternative to
CHAPTER TWO
On that September afternoon in 2008, the day of the debate, legislators who opposed the
reproductive health bill were ready for the battle. One by one, they took to the podium and raised their
issues. “The bill should be read in full, not only the title,” demanded a legislator, claiming copies were
not distributed. “Why are we rushing this bill?” fumed another. “I am withdrawing my signature on page
8,” a female legislator announced. And finally, “We need a warm body (sic)…There is no quorum, Mr.
Speaker,” asserted a grandstanding opponent, whose English grammar sent snickers across the packed
hall.
In little over an hour, and after the session had been suspended at least thrice, a second roll was
called. The Speaker of the House, affirming the lack of quorum, banged his gavel and declared the first
session of the plenary debates on the reproductive health bill adjourned. Victorious clapping was heard
in one section of the gallery, while indignation hung in the air for others. The hall was filled with noise,
which until then had only been in the background – creaking springs as seats collectively folded up,
footsteps released by a wave of jostling bodies, whispers and chatter ascending into full-blown stories of
frustration. As people streamed outside the gallery, a crowd of supporters had gathered around the
authors of the bill inside the congressional hall, all wanting to hear the inside story about the spectacle
that had unfolded on the floor. In another corner, opponents of the bill could also be seen debriefing
with their legislative allies. Outside, advocates of reproductive health spontaneously congregated,
united by their simmering dissatisfaction, which later erupted into vigorous chants of protest.
33
This was supposed to be a historic occasion, the first time in eight years that a consolidated
reproductive health bill managed to successfully reach the plenary of the House of Representatives,
surviving committee discussions and political pressures. The principal authors of the bill, armed with
data and backed up by a technical staff, had prepared to give their sponsorship speeches and answer
questions during the plenary debate. In a show of massive support, reproductive health advocates
almost filled the three levels of the gallery on both sides of the hall, their white shirts, buttons and
purple bandanas, lending more boldness to their presence. On the left side of the hall, women in dark
blue skirt and blouse uniforms – all members of the Catholic Women’s League – occupied the balcony
closest to the floor, a block of regal silence opposite the sea of energetic colors across the vast hall. One
level up, where I found myself seated to observe the proceedings, parishioners from the different
dioceses of the city, mostly women in their church uniforms, some wearing scapulars, were led by nuns
in white habits, priests in civilian clothes and fussing lay officials. These individuals came to show their
organized opposition to the bill. Anticipating the opening of debates on the controversial measure,
members of the media gathered in the corner right of the Speaker and trained their cameras on the
negotiations and antics unfolding on the floor. No speeches nor arguments were heard that afternoon,
however; the delaying tactics of the opponents proved effective in blocking any discussion on
In the past ten years, a number of legislators, with the support of women’s non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), have attempted to pass a bill that seeks to institutionalize policies upholding
sexual and reproductive health and rights, while ensuring programmatic continuity from one
administration to another. The Reproductive Health or RH bill, officially known as House Bill No. 5043,
“An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population
Development, and for Other Purposes”, traces its rough history to a legislative measure filed in 2001
34
proposing the creation of reproductive health programs and strengthening structures that will
institutionalize these programs. The original bill cited the imperative reasons for such a policy: the high
maternal and infant mortality rates, the 300,000 to 400,000 cases of illegal abortions a year, the high
risk of pregnancy in a developing country, and the unmet need for family planning services among
women. The bill called for a reproductive health care framework that recognizes the sexual and
reproductive rights of individuals and couples; gender equality, equity and women’s empowerment; and
The House bill being discussed retained the ten elements of reproductive health and upheld the
four pillars outlined by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo: responsible parenthood, informed choice,
birth spacing, and respect for life. The bill anchors reproductive health in sustainable human
development, which “is best assured” with “a manageable population of healthy, educated and
productive citizens”. It guarantees universal access to medically-safe, legal, affordable and quality
reproductive health services, methods, devices, supplies and information, while prioritizing women’s
and children’s needs. Further, it recognizes women’s participation in the formulation and
implementation of policy.
the bill was drafted originally by members of the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN). It was
advocate of women’s rights, and co-authored by three other female legislators. This relationship
endured in the years that followed, with NGOs providing information and research support to the
legislator and those who took over as sponsors after Rep. Angara-Castillo finished her term. NGO
involvement in the policymaking process extended to actual revisions to subsequent versions of the bill.
35
As soon as the bill was filed, the Catholic Church hierarchy wasted no time in mounting an
enormous campaign against the measure. Aiming their criticisms towards reproductive health and
modern contraceptive methods as a cloak for abortion, the Catholic bishops denounced the proposed
law as “anti-life”, “anti-God” and “anti-family”. This framing, at an early juncture, set the “moral
parameters” within which the protracted policy battle over reproductive health would be conducted,
and along which lines lawmakers, politicians and reproductive health advocates would be pressed to
define their positions. Introduced in the same year as the proposed laws on divorce and non-
discrimination (protecting lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people), the RH bill was labeled part
of the so-called DEATH bills – for divorce, euthanasia, abortion, total population control and
homosexuality. It thus became a platform through which the Catholic Church and affiliated groups
pursued moral objectives about gender, sexuality and the family. The controversy that it ignited sharply
polarized civic discourse and caused some members of Congress to withdraw support. Recognizing the
strong opposition from the Church, legislators felt compelled to invite Church representatives and allies
to committee hearings to show that the policymaking process was fair, unbiased and democratic.
Thus, began the cyclical life of the bill. Each congressional term, the sponsors would file the
latest revision of the bill; the House committee would hold hearings; supporters and opponents would
mobilize and rehash their positions; Catholic bishops would issue denouncements, politicians would
vacillate, media would cover the developments until the controversy reaches its height, and then the
whole issue would slowly die down, time would run out in Congress, and the bill would be shelved until
a new Congress was elected and reconstituted, after which everything would start all over again. Each
reconstitution of Congress had spelled either the end of term of principal authors of the bill, the entry of
new political forces on both sides of the bill, and even a change in the Presidency. The cyclical life of the
bill, in this dynamic context, was far from a process that merely repeated itself. With the 2007 electoral
outcomes, for instance, reproductive health advocates and opponents must strategize anew to contend
36
with the major political realignments in Congress. And while it would seem that the balance of forces
heavily favored the Catholic Church, significant shifts in the configurations of state power and popular
sentiments, although not enough to get the bill approved, actually allowed the bill to have a life beyond
This chapter has three sections. The first section deals with the debate surrounding population,
development and environment, and gives a background to the shifts in thinking about these issues at
the international arena. This contextualizes the history of the population programs and policies in the
Philippines, which is tackled in the second section. The second section further traces the shift from
population control to reproductive health at the country-level and explores how reproductive health
and population policy becomes a site for the enactment of the intertwined modernizing and nationalist
project of the state. In the last section, I describe the political actors locked in the contestation over
reproductive health and discuss the discourses emerging from their respective positions. These
discourses center on population and development, health and rights, and religious morality, which
respond to the discursive authority of modernity and nationalism. I show how the process of engaging
with each other results in a co-construction of positions that reveal more than the immediate issues
about the provisions of the bill. The positions espoused by opposing actors essentially ask: How do we
define the problems of the nation? What kind of society do we want to build? What kind of people are
Filipinos? What kind of future do we want for the country? How should policy reflect what is best for the
nation? Who should matter in policymaking? These questions imply notions of notions of progress and
backwardness, and calls into question the role of the state in modernizing the nation, the values of a
The debate on population, environment and development has a long history. Thomas Malthus,
an English clergyman turned economist, influenced much of our current thinking on the issue when he
argued in his 1798 “Essay on the Principle of Population” that population increased geometrically while
resources and food grew only arithmetically, causing scarcity and social disorder. His ideas were seized
by the ruling elite who feared the effects of the French Revolution on the discontented poor and needed
to justify their wealth (in Bandarage, 1997). This tension between resources, population and
distribution of wealth has characterized the debate since then. Demographers, environmentalists and
governments in the West have argued that overpopulation is the cause of poverty and
underdevelopment while feminists and Third World activists have argued that unequal social structures,
uneven distribution of wealth, and the history of colonialism are at the root of poverty and deprivation
in the developing countries. Underlying this tension was the basic question: what is the path to
development?
In the first decennial conference on population held in 1974 in Bucharest, four views on
population emerged. Asian and European countries as well as the US took the view that rapid
population growth aggravated economic and development problems and was a matter of extreme
urgency. India and Indonesia supported family planning but only in the context of development. Latin
American and African countries, on the other hand, asserted that population played no role in
development. Another group which included China, Brazil and France argued that population growth
was good for several reasons: to defend the country, to stimulate the economy, and to populate vast
lands. Yet another view, espoused by the USSR and others, pointed out that it was the world economic
system and its inequities that were responsible for social and economic problems (Singh, 1998). Amidst
these divisions, “development is the best contraceptive” became the rallying call of many third world
countries (Sen, 1994). It was a repudiation of the population paradigm that was seen as being imposed
38
by the more developed countries. In Bucharest, more development in the form of improvements in
health and education and not more population control was viewed as the solution to third world
problems.
By the second decennial conference in 1984 in Mexico, the development alternative took a back
seat to the politics of abortion rights that spilled over from the internal battles in the United States (Sen,
1994). Attacks from the religious right on family planning and women’s reproductive choice resulted in
the decrease of financial support for family planning from the US, which had been the major
international source in the past. Moreover, the trend of declining government investment in social
services such as education and health, known as Reaganomics, was ushered in during the 1980s and cast
It is important to note at this point that many countries in the South have implemented coercive
– through quotas, incentives and disincentives, and denial of basic rights -- population control programs
and have received support – in the form of contraceptive supplies and foreign aid – from more
developed countries. Governments in India, Bangladesh, the Philippines were just a few of those who
were criticized for their population control programs. It was during this time that feminists and activists,
especially in the Third World, began linking population control and the manipulation of women’s bodies
into a critique of a development paradigm (based on population control) that willingly sacrificed
women’s rights while ignoring the social inequities created by capitalist accumulation.
Also, since Bucharest, the population paradigm had made modifications in its principles. The
crude number-counting and exhortation of a population bomb ticking off had made way for a more
sophisticated formulation that emphasized the relationship between population, environment and
sustainable development. Carrying capacity was the concept that brought these factors together. In this
formula, population pressures were deemed to have grave consequences for the environment, causing
deforestation, desertification, erosion and other environmental problems (Bandarage, 1997) and thus,
39
In September 1994, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was
held in Cairo, Egypt. Gathering 180 delegates from UN member states, 1,200 non-government
organizations, and hundreds of media representatives, it was a conference that sought a consensus on
the contentious issue of population and its role in development. Hailed as a landmark conference, it was
for many of the actors involved in the process a step forward from a demographic-oriented target-
Although the lack of demographic targets in Cairo was heralded as a new path for population
and development, a closer reading of the ICPD Programme of Action (1994), however, reveals that
curbing population growth remains to be the framework and overall goal of the Conference through
“(promoting) appropriate demographic policies” (para. 3.9) and “(facilitating) the demographic
transition as soon as possible in countries where there is an imbalance between demographic rates and
social, economic and environmental goals, while fully respecting human rights. This process will
contribute to the stabilization of the world population…” (para. 6.3) Clearly, from the above,
demographic targets, although couched in more developmental language, were not subordinated.
Demographic consciousness was embedded in the entire process of the Cairo Conference. While
Petchesky (2003) would argue that this did not necessarily amount to cooptation of the agenda of the
transnational women’s health movement, the population paradigm offered by the consensus in Cairo
The consensus on reproductive health and rights reached in Cairo and Beijing reflects both the
strength and limitation of the United Nations regime. Through an elaborate and exhausting process, it
was able to bring together differing and disagreeing ideologies to draw up two common-ground
documents that advanced progressive language on reproductive and sexual rights. The consensus,
40
however, was blunted by the reservations voiced by more than 40 countries which focused on two
paragraphs: Para. 96 on sexual rights and Para. 106.k on calls to review abortion laws. The Vatican
expectedly expressed reservation on the entire section on health, which contained all the controversial
issues at the conference, which included contraception and family planning. Although non-binding, the
conference documents are the closest that the international community could come to a cohesive
agreement on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Paradoxically, this limitation is also its strength
in that member-States attach themselves to the documents to demonstrate their identification with the
I want to turn briefly to the historical shifts in reproductive policy that inform the present
debates about reproductive health. Reflecting the political preoccupation with the threat that
“population explosion” posed to decolonizing nations, a national population policy was first launched in
1971 under the Commission on Population (PopCom), during the time of President Ferdinand Marcos. It
had massive funding support from the United States and twice the budget of the Ministry of Social
Services, its parent agency (Dixon-Mueller, 1993). (This pattern of uneven external development aid
would continue until the mid-2000s when USAID support for family planning services and contraceptives
remained considerably bigger than the budget of the entire Department of Health). Dr. Conrado Lorenzo
(1976), the first executive director of the PopCom, explained that the institutionalization of the
country’s population policy was based on the assumption that a high population growth, especially in a
country of scarce resources, had adverse effects on family, community and national welfare. The policy
goal of reducing population growth would be achieved through influencing fertility behavior, regulating
internal migration and redistributing the population from heavily congested areas to sparsely populated
regions. A Population Education Program (PEP) was also set up to integrate population concepts into
41
the curricula of elementary and secondary schools, a strategy that was clearly an attempt to package the
Indeed, as Lorenzo (1976) elaborated, while quoting Ferdinand Marcos, the architect of martial
law, the national population program signaled the “arrival of a new consciousness, a new awareness of
our conditions, our necessities and our capacities for self-deliverance” (p. 65) towards economic and
social development. Martial law as nationalist consciousness, for Lorenzo, enabled policy - in this
particular case, the policy on population - to be more responsive to the urgent needs of the people. The
nationalist project rested on a vision of a modern family, a nuclear unit of parents and not more than
four children, within which the benefits of economic development were to be located. The rational
distribution of national resources among the people also relied on a notion of a desirable family size,
which keeps in check the fear of scarce resources. This modern family would be established with a new
consciousness heralded by the proclamation of martial rule, a political and military system that made
radical changes possible, all in the name of national welfare. The national population policy was woven
into the narrative of the Filipino nation and its unfolding potentials. This national social imaginary
echoed Marcos’ declaration in his second inauguration speech in 1969, “This nation will be great again.”
Through the years, the Philippine government has shifted its policy and stance toward the issue
of population. If the Marcos years implemented a coercive population program through family planning
incentives and disincentives and a system of quota (Gorospe, 1976), the administration of President
Corazon Aquino halted all family planning services except for the natural family planning component of
the program. Aquino’s alliance with the Catholic Church, which was instrumental in the People Power
revolution that toppled the Marcos dictatorship and propelled her to the Presidency in 1986, also made
it possible to enshrine a provision recognizing “the equal protection of the mother and the unborn child
from conception” in the new Constitution. This was a reformulation of the original proposal, “right to life
of the fertilized ovum,” which encountered protests from the women’s sector. The victory from reaching
42
compromise revision, however, “belonged more to the church than to the women” (Fabros et al,
1998:228). It was also at this time that the Catholic Church and its allies worked to get Aquino’s
signature on an Executive Order disallowing the use of public funds for the provision of modern
methods of contraception. The discovery of this “behind-the-scene” work of the Church and the
resulting protests by women’s health groups led to the demise of the order.
From 1992 to 2001, the administrations of Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada separated
themselves from the authority of the Catholic Church. During their terms, they re-introduced a dynamic
population policy which now integrated the language of reproductive health and sustainable
development, following its cue from the United Nations International Conference on Population and
Development (ICPD) in 1994 and the Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW) in 1995 (Jain, et. al.,
2002). It is, however, women’s health advocates and non-government organizations, through critical
collaboration with the Department of Health and the PopCom, which have been instrumental in pushing
for a more rights-oriented population policy in this period. As evidence of how reproductive health was
successfully integrated into health programs, Administrative Order No. 1-A series of 1998 (see
Department of Health, 1999) defined the ten elements of reproductive health that were most
appropriate for the Philippine context and guided the work of government health workers in the
national and field offices. The ten elements of reproductive health to be prioritized and addressed,
which were also adopted in the Reproductive Health Bill of 2008, are:
1) family planning, 2) maternal and child health and nutrition, 3) prevention and management of
abortion and its complications, 4) prevention and management of reproductive tract infections, 5)
education and counseling on sexuality and sexual health, 6) breast and reproductive tract cancers and
other gynecological conditions, 7) men’s reproductive health, 8) adolescent and youth health, 9)
violence against women and children, and 10) prevention and treatment of infertility and sexual
dysfunction.
43
The devolution of health services to local governments, however, has meant that unless a
national policy is approved, reproductive health services would still be limited and dependent on how
much priority local executives place on health, in general, and reproductive health, in particular.
Because of its contentiousness, the availability of reproductive health services becomes subject to the
The 2008 Reproductive Health Bill filed and debated under the government of Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo. Macapagal-Arroyo, who, with the legitimizing blessing of the Catholic Church,
ascended to the Presidency after People Power 2 ousted Joseph Estrada. Macapagal-Arroyo, exhibited a
wily incoherent stance toward the issue, releasing statements meant to keep the support of the Catholic
Church hierarchy while courting the allegiance of the business sector and women’s NGOs. This
ambiguous position has threatened to erode the gains made toward a more comprehensive approach to
The latest version of the proposed legislation seeks to adopt an “integrated and comprehensive
national policy on responsible parenthood, effective population management and sustainable human
development” anchored on the rationale that “development is better assured with a manageable
population of healthy, educated and productive citizens”. This time, however, the modern project of
population management (as opposed to population control), highlights its internationalist perspective
by invoking its conjunction with the consensus reached in the series of UN conferences in the 1990s
recognizing individuals’ reproductive rights and right to development. In addition, proponents of the bill
have also argued for the relevance of instituting a population policy in achieving the Millenium
Development Goals (MDGs), citing economist Jeffrey Sachs’ statement, “Population management is
crucial in reducing poverty by half” (PLCPD, 2005a). The nationalist values of “greatness” and
“potentiality” now combine with a global perspective that proves the progressiveness of instituting a
population policy that is in keeping with the ever modernizing and globalizing times.
44
What is not lost through these historical shifts in policy is the association of the national
population policy and its complementary family planning program with the national development of the
orientation, the population issue as reflected in policy has always engaged with nationalist values and
developmentalist concerns. And as a strategy that will modernize Filipino life, the changing policy on
population (cum reproductive health) incorporates not only a vision for the nation but also a framework
that allows it to be embraced into the civilizing arms of the international community.
In this section, I introduce the major actors contesting reproductive health in the policy arena
and the positions they take regarding contraception, abortion, population, and health rights. These are
Pro-life Philippines and allied groups, and the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN), which
represent the most assertive voices in the public debates on reproductive health, inside and outside of
Congress.
Pro-life Philippines
According to its publication, Pro-Life Philippines is “a national body coordinating pro-life groups,
providing education and documentation of life issues, and raising the consciousness of Filipino people
on respect and responsibility for human life” (Pro-life Philippines commemorative issue, 2008). It had its
start in the country in 1974 when a young nun, Sister Pilar Verzosa, RGS, attended a seminar with an
American priest, Fr. Paul Marx, OSB, who talked about abortion and the US Supreme Court ruling in Roe
v Wade that upheld in the previous year women’s right to abortion under privacy principles. Fr. Marx
founded the Human Life Center in 1971, which later became Human Life International, the first and
largest international pro-life organization. The seminar, held at the Department of Health in Manila,
showed pictures of “aborted babies” which so horrified and moved the young nun that by the end of the
45
priest’s talk she had managed to ask for information materials, including the film, “Abortion – A
Woman’s Decision”. Armed with the film and a 16 mm film projector that Fr. Marx also gave her, Sister
Pilar, who was trained as a nurse and then worked in the Good Shepherd Home for Single Mothers,
began her mission of going around schools, parishes and communities showing the ‘horrors’ of abortion
and speaking about the right to life of the unborn. Sister Pilar’s pro-life advocacy overlapped with her
identity as an activist nun who fought the Marcos dictatorship; at one point, she was detained by the
military for joining a civilian fact-finding mission investigating the killings of farmers in Southern Luzon.
This broad-ranging political engagement also characterizes the way Pro-Life Philippines has approached
its mission. As Sister Pilar explains the difference between the Pro-Life in the United States and her
group:
…Pro-life in the US (is) anti-abortion mainly. They don’t take other issues except
this -- that life begins from the moment of conception, or fertilization. For us,
(our issues are) from conception all the way (to) euthanasia and all the other
issues that would cover respect and care for human life, even all the
environmental issues that would affect human life. And because human life is
created, (it also includes issues about) conception, fertilization, fertility, (which)
are attached to sexuality, marriage, family…They all come in.”
Indeed, in one political rally denouncing the corruption and lies involving the Philippine president and
her family, Pro-Life was in attendance, hinting at how the group saw itself as part of a broader social
While tracing its beginnings to the initial ties with the US-based Human Life International, Pro-
Life Philippines nonetheless relied at that stage on “family-oriented Catholic organizations like the
Christian Family Movement of the Philippines, Couples for Christ, Marriage Encounter, Parish Family
Life” for crucial support in organizing meetings and conferences. Today, Pro-Life Philippines counts
among its network of organizations the traditional Catholic Church affiliated groups like the Catholic
Women’s League, Knights of Columbus, Daughters of Mary Immaculate, Singles for Christ; pro-life NGOs
such as Family Media Advocacy Foundation, A Home for the Angels, Human Life International-
46
Philippines; Catholic private schools represented by the Catholic Educators Association of the
Philippines; and Buhay (Life) Party, a political party which was elected into the House of Representatives
in 2004 by garnering the most number of votes among all party list candidates and getting three seats in
the lower House. Buhay Party, whose leadership and staff come from other allied pro-life groups,
identifies three core issues in its agenda: promotion of pro-life issues, elimination of government
corruption, and provision of social services. These groups, together with the Catholic Bishops
Conference of the Philippines, act in concert and as a collective in campaigning against the reproductive
health bill. Contrary to common perception, however, Pro-Life, according to Sister Pilar, is not a Catholic
organization, adding humorously, “Your uterus is not Catholic.” While the group could have been given
the status of a Church-mandated organization, the founder explained that they opted to be independent
from the Catholic Church, enabling it to do its work outside the mandate of the Parish Council or any
Episcopal Commission, in short, outside the hierarchy of the Church. However, the group serves as a
resource for the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, providing information and research on
issues pertaining to pro-life advocacies. While Sister Pilar asserts that her group is an interfaith group
with Muslim and non-Catholic members, a look at its Board of Trustees and Advisers would show names
of Catholic bishops acting as its spiritual advisers, hinting at the influence of the Catholic Church at an
institutional level. The prominent presence of Pro-Life in mobilizations organized by the Catholic Church
as during the mass rally for the 40th anniversary of the Humanae Vitae and the message of support from
the latter for Pro-Life’s Silver Jubilee celebration speak to the close relationship between the two.
My first introduction to Pro-Life came when I attended their youth conference on reproductive
health and sexuality held in an exclusive girls’ Catholic university. The conference gathered male and
female high school and college students from different schools and colleges to listen to speakers’
testimonies on finding true love; the emotional and moral dangers as well as disease risks of premarital
sex; how sex is like catsup (that is, when you’re eating hamburger and catsup drips on your shirt, that
47
catsup is seen as a stain because it is not in its proper place, which is like what happens to sex – it
becomes dirty – when done outside marriage, according to the speaker); and the virtue of leaving one’s
marital or sexual destiny to God. Through workshops, song and dramatization, the student participants
expressed their hopes for an ideal spouse and their vision of family life. An exercise, in particular, asked
these young people to imagine their future child, what their dreams for the child were, and how they
would prepare themselves right now to be the right parent for that child. This conference, attended by
over a hundred students, showcased Pro-Life’s capacity to reach out to young people and get out its
message about the “culture of life”, linking it to pure romance, lasting love, a steady family, the certainty
of God and a moral life. While these students could be considered a captive audience, coming as they
did from Catholic institutions, their readiness to embrace these ideas, however, indicated that Pro-Life
was effective at some level in cultivating a new generation of “pro-lifers”. Other activities that the group
organized, and which I was able to attend, included seminars on pro-life counseling regarding teenage
pregnancy, abortion and related issues; natural family planning; responsible parenting; and post-
abortion trauma syndrome. The chief participants were teachers and counselors sent by their Catholic
The alliance between pro-life groups and the Catholic Church is further evident in congressional
hearings. To ensure that legislators realize the extent of opposition to the reproductive health bill, Pro-
Life, its affiliate groups and the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines mobilize their
constituents – majority of whom are students from Catholic schools and members of parishes -- and
present their separate position papers during congressional hearings in the Lower House and the
Senate. Like any conscientious lobbyists, pro-life advocates, priests and, especially, the bishops do their
work behind the scenes, making personal phone calls to legislators, meeting and ‘dialoguing’ with
authors of the bill, vigilantly monitoring the movement of the measure in Congress, and updating their
support base through email, newsletters, and public meetings. The radio station, newspaper, parish
48
newsletters, pastoral letters and the hundreds of pulpits owned by the Catholic Church collectively serve
as a media network for updating its constituents and followers, and for publicly attacking politicians who
support the bill. In the congressional archives, boxes of petition papers from dioceses from all over the
country and personal letters from individual Catholics demanding that legislators reject the bill attest to
The Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN) is a national coalition of more than 25
organizations that came together to advocate the passage of a law on reproductive health. It is
composed of family planning and development groups, women’s health NGOs, feminist organizations,
community-based youth groups, and NGOs working in various fields such as the media, community
organizing, rural development, health service provision, legal reform and policy advocacy. In its
A Filipino society where every Filipino has access to safe, affordable and
quality gender responsive sexual and (reproductive health) services they
need in all stages of their life, achieved through the State’s promotion,
respect and protection and fulfillment of (sexual and reproductive
rights) as an integral part of Human Rights (sic).
While this vision holds the network together, member organizations are well aware of their
differences in viewpoints and politics, coming as they do from diverse, even conflicting, political
orientations and traditions. From the perspective of individual members, their advocacy of reproductive
health had different, and contradictory, origins: some members were involved in the population
program of the Marcos regime in the 1970s; some started their work in the primary health care and
maternal and child health in past decades; others had long-term commitment to feminist causes; a few
saw its connection to their work in the area of family law and human rights; and others saw it as a
critical issue in the communities they work in. The unity of these different groups on issues such as
49
population, abortion, even emergency contraception, were never assumed, and often debated and
wrestled over. Members admit that this lends dynamism as well as constraint to the network’s actions.
As a network, RHAN casts a broad net and has drawn other movements and groups into its advocacy.
Among its active supporters are lesbian, gay and transgender groups, HIV and AIDS networks, inter-faith
organizations, and the business sector. In particular, the alliance between reproductive health
advocates, LGBT groups and HIV and AIDS networks has had a long history as many of these groups and
individuals work on the intersecting fields of health, sexuality, reproductive health, and human rights. In
addition, given that another bill addressing discrimination against LGBTs is pending in Congress and also
being opposed by the Catholic Church, the mutual support and solidarity between reproductive health
RHAN was instrumental in making reproductive health a major legislative advocacy issue.
Collaborating with policymakers, individual members of RHAN drafted the original bill, which was
advocate of women’s rights, and co-authored by three other female legislators. This relationship
endured in the years that followed, with network members providing information and research support
to the legislator and to those who took over as sponsors after Rep. Angara-Castillo finished her term.
RHAN’s involvement in the policymaking process extended to actual revisions to subsequent versions of
the bill.
At the core of the network are the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and
Development (PLCPD), an NGO created by legislators to advance issues related to population and
development through a policy research arm; Likhaan, a women’s health NGO that provides health
services to urban poor communities and uses community organizing to push for reproductive health and
rights; and the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines, a national organization which serves as
the secretariat for the RHAN. While other RHAN members actively participate in the activities, shape
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the direction of the network, and contribute resources to the campaign, it is the three organizations that
steer the whole network, by virtue of the number of staff they can deploy to focus on the campaign, the
funds they can commit, and the consistency with which they have been able to sustain the advocacy,
PLCPD, which holds office within the House of Representatives and has direct daily contact with
legislators and their staff, provides a critical link and interface between RHAN’s advocacy work and the
tangled legislative process. This role has facilitated the network’s movement within and access to the
Lower House and everything connected to the reproductive health bill. This has also enabled the
network to respond to emerging developments regarding the bill. PLCPD has developed its political
mapping skills, identifying lawmakers who are prepared to champion the bill, who will support it publicly
and who will support it quietly, who will oppose it or have withdrawn their support, and who have
remained neutral and uncommitted. Based on this mapping, member organizations divide the task of
approaching uncommitted legislators to get their support and maintaining relationship with already
committed legislators.
Bolstering PLCPD’s insider position within Congress are its Board members, all of whom are
elected Representatives. As a policy group that also provides technical support to legislators, PLCPD staff
are able to act on behalf of their legislator-Board members, attending congressional meetings and other
activities. Their knowledge of the daily operations at the House of Representatives, in particular, has
allowed PLCPD staff to influence the composition of committees tasked to hold hearings on the
reproductive health bill. They managed this by informing supportive legislator-allies of the
developments in the formation of committees at the beginning of a new legislative session. In particular,
anticipating that the Committee on Health and the Committee on Population would be critical, PLCPD
staff monitored the membership of these committees and urged allies to volunteer as members, thus
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populating the relevant committees with supporters to boost the bill’s chances of being passed at this
level.
While PLCPD enjoys privileges because of its congressional affiliation, its presence in the halls of
the Lower House, however, has been questioned. It was accused of being a “foreign agent” by the pro-
life Deputy Speaker because it received funds from the Packard Foundation, which, according to the
legislator, is a US-based “population-control” group. Yet, in a bizarre twist, it was later revealed that the
Likhaan, with its track record in delivering reproductive health services and organizing work in
urban poor communities as well as its feminist orientation, is recognized as leading the more radical
edge of the RHAN campaign. Because of its open and unhesitating support of emergency contraception
and abortion rights, it has been singled out and tagged as “pro-abortion”, with its connotation of
“killer”, in my interviews with Pro-life members. On another front, Likhaan initiated actions that led to
the filing of a constitutional petition challenging a local policy “discouraging” the use and distribution of
“artificial” contraceptives in Manila’s public hospitals and clinics. By bringing the fight for reproductive
rights to the courts, this initiative has fed into the RHAN campaign, providing yet another vehicle
through which member organizations could be involved and intensify their advocacy. Together with
DSWP and another member, WomanHealth, which have direct links with grassroots communities,
Likhaan is relied upon by the network to mobilize hundreds of women – the “warm bodies” -- mostly
from the slum areas, for the plenary debates in the House of Representatives. In RHAN assessment
meetings right after the plenary sessions, each member would be asked what it could commit – in terms
of funds and people – for the next round of plenary sessions, and Likhaan always provided the crucial
The Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines (DSWP) is a national federation of 157
community- and sector-based women’s groups that works on issues of economic marginalization,
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violence against women, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and women’s political participation.
While most of RHAN’s members have links with groups in places outside Metro Manila, DSWP’s
organizational base has a national reach that has proved beneficial as the network recognized the
necessity of extending the campaign to the provinces and organizing support at the local level to exert
political pressure on local representatives. Beyond its secretariat role, DSWP also focused on and
The Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP), the oldest family planning institution
in the country, and The Forum, a policy advocacy NGO which boasts of a Board composed of prominent
figures like former President Fidel Ramos, are able to attract individuals and groups that would
otherwise not be reached by the network. Together with other network members, they organized a
gathering of members of the economic, political and cultural elite to cultivate and cement the latter’s
There are three starting points that reproductive health advocates take when arguing for the
passage of the Reproductive Health Bill. The first deals with the urgency of stemming the country’s
increasing population and providing for its needs, and the task of pushing the national development
agenda on the right track. The second introduces a conversation about the rights of individuals,
especially women, to a full range of services and information that will enable them to make decisions
about their bodies and sexualities, and family lives. The third highlights the high numbers of maternal
deaths, a neglected health emergency, and calls for action to save women’s lives. While all three points
get articulated by advocates, which argument gets emphasized depends on who is speaking and the
Population divides
A recognized “fault-line” among advocates is the negotiated equality between the population
and development perspective, on one hand, and the rights framework, on the other hand. With strong
adherents on both sides, these two arguments have earned a place in the discussions. Yet, a few
advocates are of the view that it is easier to explain to government officials and the public the issue of
population and development than to convince them about reproductive and sexual rights. Senator
Rodolfo Biazon, a proponent of the Senate version of the bill, insists that reproductive health should be
presented as a problem of population and poverty because explaining it within “a rights-framework” will
not be understood by ordinary people. This was echoed by an advocate, a former official in the Marcos
and Ramos administrations who now heads a policy NGO, who said, “Filipinos won’t appreciate the
rights-based approach.”
A Marine General who was credited for defending President Corazon Aquino’s government
from one of the most serious coup d’etats in the 1980s, Senator Biazon talks about the poor
circumstances under which his family lived during the Second World War, and how losing his father at
an early age meant taking on various jobs -- washing clothes for other people, selling cigarettes, and
collecting empty bottles to help his mother and support his three younger sisters. It also meant that only
he and another sister could continue their education, while their two other sisters had to stop after
grade school. From his story, it was a painful, but otherwise rational, decision that his mother made to
maximize the little resources that they had. The Senator saw the same kind of poverty among the
farmers that he interacted with as a soldier, many of whom had large families surviving on a small plot
of land. He asserted:
Speaking in a strong voice, and yet with just a trace of pain and pity, he mentioned during our
conversation that he continued to support his sisters who did not get the same opportunities as he did.
Aware of the elite backgrounds of Filipino Senators, many of whom were either born into well-off
families or established political clans, and the few who were born poor but have now become wealthy, I
was nevertheless struck by how first-hand Senator Biazon’s experience of poverty shaped his support of
the bill.
Underlying the Senator’s sentiments is the idea that ordinary Filipinos – like the farmers that he
encountered -- understand well enough the accepted wisdom that a larger population translates into
more poverty for people and the nation. For advocates like him, the poor are too preoccupied with gut
issues, such as hunger and deprivation, to comprehend the abstract notion of rights and link this to
reproductive health.
The national demographic survey released during the debates placed the Philippines’
population at 88.7 million, a number that, according to Rep. Edcel Lagman, the bill’s main proponent,
has “galloped” from the 60.7 million of seventeen years ago, and is expected to “balloon to an alarming
160 million in 2038”. Reproductive health advocates assert that for a country constrained by poor
resources and a huge foreign debt, the Philippines cannot simply support this large population and the
complex social services that it needs. With 45 out of 100 Filipinos living in poverty and subsistence
(NSCB, 2008), this picture of poverty can only be exacerbated by a population growth rate that is the
third highest in Southeast Asia (WHO, 2010). The argument goes on to say that the pace at which the
economy is growing cannot catch up with the much faster growth in population. This is one of the
reasons why the country, which ranked second to Japan in terms of economic development in the
1960s, now lags dismally behind newly industrializing Asian countries such as Taiwan and South Korea
(See Angeles 1992) and its neighbors Thailand and Indonesia. Citing a 2002 UNFPA Report which states
that “lower birth rates and slower population growth over the last three decades have contributed to
55
faster economic progress in a number of developing countries,” Rep. Lagman provides evidence for the
role of population in influencing the country’s future development (see Explanatory Note, House Bill 17).
Advocates of the bill take further note of the official government statistics. According to the
National Health and Demographic Survey (2003), the desired fertility of Filipino women is 2.5 children,
yet the prevailing fertility rate of 3.5 reveals that women are having one more child than they plan for
mainly due to lack of reproductive and sexuality information and services. It is the high number of
unintended pregnancies – more than half of all pregnancies (Guttmacher 2009) – which drives the
country’s high population growth rate. What makes this all the more worrying for advocates is that
57.3% of families with “many children” (sic) are poor compared to only 15.7% of those with only two
children” (Family Income and Expenditures Survey, from 1985-2000, cited in HB 17), which makes a
strong case for the link between large family size and poverty. Further, it is pointed out that large family
size is associated with poor school participation, as well as poor health and survival rates among
children (Orbeta, 2003), which gives a compelling reason for the persistence of poverty in families and
In a statement released by 26 economists that included former Chiefs of Economic Planning and
a Secretary of Budget, they underscore the fact that almost half (or 44 percent) of pregnancies among
the poorest 10 percent of women of reproductive age are unintended. While there is evidence that poor
women want to limit their number of children, they are unable to do so. Unintended pregnancy, they
add, has an unintended social cost (or negative externalities, as economists say). For while the well-off
who are having more children will probably bear on their own the cost of raising and educating their
children, the poor, on the other hand, are more likely to rely on government for health services and the
Advocates see the situation as thus: A resource-limited country whose government cannot
provide adequate and much needed social services such as education, employment, healthcare, and
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housing for its population, majority of whom do not have the capacity to access the services on their
own because of poverty, has to find ways to alleviate poverty and address the rapid population growth
that puts pressure on scarce resources. Providing reproductive health and family planning information
and services addresses the need of women and couples to limit family size as well as the goal of the
government to slow down population. Moreover, it will be a means by which government can mitigate
the impact of poverty on families. As the 26 economists from the University of the Philippines
concluded:
The economic and development arguments have attracted support from local government
officials who view reproductive health as a poverty reduction scheme that will lift not only families, but
also entire districts that they govern. Given that local elected officials must deal with the long lines of
people who go to their offices every day asking for financial assistance – to buy medicines, pay for
hospital bills, defray burial expenses, fix roofs destroyed by typhoons, pay for bus fare to return to the
province – it is not surprising that they see reproductive health, and specifically family planning, as a
pragmatic and economical answer to what is viewed as an interlinked problem of population and
poverty. Thus, several local governments have already adopted ordinances that promote and
institutionalize reproductive health programs (e.g. Aurora Province, Baguio City, Davao City) while other
devote substantial amounts for contraceptives in their local health budget, even in the absence of local
ordinances.
Where governance is defined primarily as the management and allocation of scarce resources,
framing reproductive health as a means to manage populations, achieve development and reduce
poverty makes it a governance issue and well within the mandate of public officials.
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Other advocates, particularly those from women’s and feminist groups, have expressed
uneasiness with the emphasis placed on the argument about population growth as “demographics…
blurs the importance of (reproductive and sexual) rights”3. Coming from the experience of population
control under the Marcos regime, and being rooted in Marxist class politics, the progressive women’s
movement criticized the development framework that identified overpopulation as the cause of poverty
and underdevelopment of the country. The movement asserted that the crisis of Philippine
development was brought about by unequal social structures which also have their sources in historical
relations. They also criticized this development framework as patriarchal in its designation of women’s
bodies and sexualities as both the source of and instrument for solving the population problem. While
women were given participation in development, it was only as mothers, potential child-bearers, in
short, only in their reproductive roles. In this regard, the women’s movement positions the respect for
reproductive and sexual rights as a key element to be included in an alternative development paradigm
(Estrada-Claudio 1992).
But while the women’s health movement pushed for reproductive and sexual rights and self-
determination, they were careful to point out that the exercise of these rights was only possible and
meaningful within conditions of social justice and equality. This means that enabling conditions such as
gender equality, economic empowerment, and social justice are crucial for women to exercise their
reproductive rights. Contextualizing reproductive rights within broader frame also meant that the
women’s movement believed in addressing issues such as the government neglect of basic social
3
Interview with Atty.ElizabethPangalangan, 2008.
58
services, the foreign debt and structural adjustment programs, migration and violence, militarization,
Their critique of the population framework, the growth-focused development paradigm, and
even of reproductive rights (and human rights, in general) positioned this women’s movement in
opposition to the project of modernity. Yet, as Petchesky (2003) reminds us, this opposition does not
necessarily place the women’s movement/s in an innocent, pure position, for while these movements
contested these different aspects of modernity, they nevertheless participated in the elaboration of
population and development policies as well as human rights instruments. Their participation in the
International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), along with other movements around
the world, for example, contributed to the emergence of a global consensus on reproductive health and
rights, which reflected in part their own notions of rights. This, however, has given rise to a critique of
In the domestic arena, women’s health activists in the Philippines have formed an alliance with
family planning groups and legislator-proponents of the reproductive health bill. Their support for the
bill was based on the need to institutionalize a reproductive health policy that will be impervious to the
reproductive health care co-existed with a provision encouraging couples to limit their children to two,
rendering the issue of growth rates and fertility reduction central to the debate around the bill (Padilla,
2004). This recalls the character of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on
Population and Development in which reproductive health and rights were given prominence without
the population control consciousness being dislodged from its central place.
Even with the modification of this provision on the “ideal family size” -- removing the incentives
of scholarships and other benefits -- this provision remained a source of debate within a network that
59
needed to be unified against the institutional capacity of the Catholic Church. For while some groups
were willing to accept this compromise, there were others who questioned the extent to which the
population perspective was framing the policy and would impact the provision of family planning
services. While Rep. Lagman stressed that the provision was merely “recommendatory,” several
women’s health groups feared that those who would implement the policy would interpret it as the
institution of a clear demographic target. The situation is problematic as support for a two-child policy
has gained support from the business sector and other groups, which see the urgency of extricating the
country from poverty through economic growth rates and fertility declines.
The pressure from the Catholic Church, on the other hand, has continued to push the women’s
health movement to tightly defend reproductive health. This has produced a few ironic twists to the
debate on the reproductive health bill. In response to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the
Philippines’ assertion that the population growth rate of the country had in fact slowed down to 1.9
percent, the coalition of legislators and women’s groups behind the bill insisted that the rate was higher
at 2.36 percent (PLCPD, 2005b). Depending on where one was sitting, the country could be heading
toward a demographic winter or a population-economic meltdown, but either way spelled crisis for
everybody. In one Senate committee hearing, this subject became so contentious that even data from
the government statistical board meant to enlighten the stakeholders could not have the force to rise
above the politics and convince protagonists of the demographic picture from the experts’ view. This
seemingly technical issue of population growth rates echoes the tension between the triumphant belief
in progress and the acute awareness of crisis and doom found in modern social life. Further, this shows
how women’s health activists and feminists become part of the dynamic of the debate and are
compelled to participate in the iteration and reinforcement of ideas that they themselves seek to
overturn. The counterpoint offered by the reproductive and sexual rights perspective does not exist
outside of, but gets inserted into, the discourse of population. “As long as coercion is not used (in the
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implementation of the policy),” was how a key feminist leader rationalized the unspoken compromise
If some of the leaders are reluctant to use the language of rights in the reproductive health
campaign, it is not only to emphasize the centrality of the population problem; rather, out of necessity,
it is to dodge the accusations from the Catholic Church and pro-life groups that the bill is an
underhanded way of legalizing abortion. While the series of UN conferences in the 1990s achieved a
global consensus on reproductive health as a critical area for women’s empowerment, it has generated
a backlash in the counter-discourse of the Vatican and other conservative religious groups that has
reduced reproductive rights and health to simply mean abortion. This counter-discourse has found a
foothold in the arguments revolving around morality and the limits of acceptable human action. With
abortion being illegal in the country, it has also anchored itself in the law.
During the first hearing for the original version of the bill, Rep. Angara-Castillo and reproductive
health advocates were perplexed at the charge of Catholic representatives that the proposed measure
was sneaking in provisions on abortion. An advocate recounted that they had reviewed the document
many times but could not find the provision being referred to. They would discover later that the
passage in question was not in the bill itself but in the explanatory note. The explanatory note discussed
the need to re-examine the illegal status of abortion in the Philippines, particularly in cases where the
woman’s life is at risk. Potentially controversial as the statement was, it had escaped the eyes of the
advocates and the bill’s principal author, and had put them on the defensive. Denouncing the advocates
as part of a “neo-ultrafeminist movement”, pro-life activists charged that the bill came in “sheep’s
clothing … wrapped in beautiful statements as human rights…” but its “explanatory notes (sic) and
reference documents present its true intentions” (Imbong, CBCP position paper, 2008). At this time, the
tension between ideological positioning and political strategy emerged as even feminists within the
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network saw the futility and the potential backlash of including abortion services on the agenda. The
feminist lawyer who drafted the bill, however, saw the imperative of meeting the “abortion scare” head-
on. The resulting fall-out from this debacle was the addition of passages in subsequent versions of the
bill underscoring the fact that “abortion is a crime under the Revised Penal Code” and that “the bill does
not promote abortion as a method of family planning”. Designed to counter the aggressive
misinformation by the bill’s opponents and to assure potential supporters that the bill never aimed to
legalize abortion, these statements presented a dilemma for women’s health advocates and feminists:
While advancing reproductive health in the policy arena, they foreclose the possibility of having a
thorough and democratic debate about abortion, health and reproductive rights in the public sphere.
It is worth noting that the authors of the bill as well as a significant number of RHAN members
have either rejected abortion based on personal sentiment or were unwilling to take a clear position on
it. Bringing abortion to the discussion table, however, could impact the carefully-built trust among
advocates. A feminist advocate explained that to turn the internal discussion into a contest over which
group could take the most radical position on the issue would be an unproductive exercise, and to push
legislator-proponents to take pro-abortion positions publicly would be asking their allies to commit
political suicide.
What the legislators and diverse advocates’ groups clearly agreed on was the need to address
the high rates of maternal mortality and save mothers’ lives by “providing hospital-based family
planning, establishing obstetric care facilities, ensuring that births are attended by skilled health
practitioners, encouraging proper birth spacing and preventing abortion.” Citing a UNFPA report, a
Likhaan position paper noted that that the Philippine maternal mortality rate of 162 per 10,000 live
births represents a lifetime risk that is 23 times more than what is found in developed countries. RHAN
also emphasizes Department of Health statistics showing that 75% of all maternal deaths happen among
15-19 year old women. The critical link between maternal deaths and newborn deaths is further noted
62
as “motherless newborns are between 3-10 times more likely to die than newborns whose mothers
survive” (Likhaan statement, 2008). As part of the advocacy, a touring photo documentary on child
mothers from urban slums was mounted by WomanHealth. The key message was “Ang nagbibigay ng
buhay di dapat mawalan ng buhay!” (Who gives life must not lose her life.)
Accusing individuals of immorality and being anti-Church has been the customary response of
the Catholic Church hierarchy to actions and pronouncements of public figures revealing a more liberal
view of sexuality and reproduction. That the Church has thousands of pulpits, owns radio and television
stations and runs a network of private schools across the country has provided priests, nuns and
religious groups with effective mechanisms through which they could air their vilifications. That the
Catholic Church is a major player in Philippine society has made it a sought-after voice by the
mainstream media as well. Thus, when the Catholic Church charges the proponents of the Reproductive
Health bill of being “anti-life,” “anti-family,” and “anti-poor” and “anti-Filipino” (PLCPD media
statement, 2005c), this has force that reverberates throughout the country. It is also the kind of
rhetorical distortion that only the Church could employ without facing legal sanctions.
The Catholic Church’s opposition to the reproductive health bill rests on what it claims its
responsibility to defend the sanctity of life and the “culture of life”. The former is based on the belief
that human life from the moment of conception is sacred, and therefore, must be protected and
allowed to thrive. The culture of life starts with the recognition of the value and dignity of human
beings, who are created in the image of God. It also refers to the notion of “openness to life and the
channels to life”. This openness to life is linked to human sexuality which has a two-fold purpose: the
unitive, or the love and embrace between married couples, and the procreative, or the reproduction of
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children. Marriage and the family constitute the foundation of and the location for the fulfillment of
human sexuality.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) acknowledges that the reproductive
health bill “makes a number of good points” but asserts that it contains “fatal flaws” that make it
unacceptable. It maintains that the proposed policy, with its provision making available the full range of
contraceptive methods, including “artificial” methods and devices, is contrary to the “culture of life”.
“Artificial” contraceptives, such as hormonal pills, injectables and implants, according to the Church and
its allied groups, are abortifacient and pose an impediment to conception that would have taken place
otherwise. Bishop Bacani, an ally of progressive groups on many political issues, demonstrates his
They not only prevent the fertilization of the ovum by the sperm but they
prevent the implantation of the fertilized ovum…The IUD…the pills make the
(lining of the uterus) inhospitable to the fertilized ovum.
A translation of this explanation was further provided by Atty. Jo Imbong, the legal adviser of the CBCP:
They destroy the feeding environment of the embryos. Before (the embryo) can
reach it, the womb has already been destroyed. It cannot anymore support the
embryo. The environment has already been destroyed…What do you call that,
when you deprive a person of basic nourishment? Isn’t it murder, killing?
At the core of this rejection of contraceptives is the question of when life begins. While the
Catholic Church teaches that human life begins at the “moment” of conception or fertilization, those
who promote “artificial” contraceptives have “transferred (this) to implantation,” according to an official
of Human Life International Philippines. The difference, she insists, is that “conception happens once the
sperm and the egg unite, and it happens in the outer third of the fallopian tube. Implantation happens
3-7 days later.” The process of fertilization acquires for the embryo the status of an “alive human being
that is journeying towards implantation,” its 36 chromosomes an evidence of its full humanity. Medical
doctors who support the Catholic Church position provide perspectives that align science with Christian
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moral theology. Dr. Edna Monzon, a bio-ethicist from the University of Sto. Tomas, the oldest and
All of us, without exception, started from an embryo…when the egg and the
sperm united. The egg coming from the mother, the sperm from the father,
they unite and they develop. If they come from human sources then they must
be human. And if they develop, multiply, divide, then there must be life. There
must be human life.
Another doctor who heads the ethics committee of an elite hospital and represents an allied group of
The genetic code is already there, and anything that moves and grows by itself,
and propels itself without being prodded, must have the principle of life.
Therefore, it must have a soul.
She notes that locating the beginning of pregnancy in the implantation stage occurred only after the
1974 decision on the Roe v Wade allowing abortion based on privacy rights. This, she says, was a move
made for political reasons rather than on the basis of scientific evidence.
For the Catholic Church, the RH bill’s endorsement of all methods of contraceptives points to its
failure to “define clearly when the protection of life begins” and poses a “serious threat to the life of
infants in the womb”. Moreover, the Church hierarchy asserts that this creates a “contraceptive
mentality towards a culture of death,” with the failure rates of artificial contraceptives acting as a
“precursor to the adoption of abortion”. When contraceptives fail, individuals are encouraged to take
the next option, which is abortion, thereby “trivializ(ing) the whole concept of having sex,” according to
Representative Zialcita, a leader of the pro-life block in the Lower House. For Church allies then, this
state of affairs debunks studies cited by reproductive health advocates that link the reduction of
Although the authors of the bill have consistently denied it, the Catholic Church insists that the
proposed measure endorses abortion and will eventually pave the way for its legalization. This, pro-life
advocates emphasize, is the real agenda of the RH bill. Their assertion stems from the claim that the
term “reproductive health” as used in the ICPD explicitly includes abortion and represents the double-
speak employed by the supporters of the bill. In addition, pro-life advocates only see deception in the
move by the authors to include in the bill statements that reiterate the illegal status of abortion in the
country. This suspicion is based on the argument that reproductive health has universal meaning and
application, and therefore, the Philippine policy cannot be an exception. As Ligaya Acosta, spokesperson
Abortion is part and parcel of reproductive health. It’s all there in the
documents… So they tell us, not in the Philippines. You would tell us that we
have a different meaning for it? No, we cannot (do that), because it is a
universal term.
Ironically, in making this argument, pro-life advocates deny the legitimacy of the reservations to
statements regarding abortion made and won by the Vatican and its allies at the ICPD. Furthermore,
they declare that reproductive health is a marketing term invented in the 1980s by “abortionists”, which
include “killer agencies” such as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and USAID.
For some pro-life advocates, maternal deaths are an overblown issue. Insisting that more people
die from cancer, hypertension and heart disease, they downplay the deaths from pregnancy-related
complications. In addition, they take issue with the safe motherhood program of the Department of
Health that aims to make people aware that every pregnancy is a risk for women. To them this is about
“eliminating pregnancy as it is a disease” and pushing women to take contraceptives. Abortion to save
the mother’s life is an “abuse” of the idea of protecting women’s lives. In this, stories of women who
took the risk and died giving birth to their children are cited as “heroic“, and even “saintly”4.
4
Interview with Dr. Angie Aguirre, 2008.
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Apart from having abortifacient effects that violate the right to life of the unborn from the
moment of conception, artificial or modern contraceptives also violate women’s right to health,
according to the Church position. Citing studies, including those by the WHO, pro-life groups raise the
risk of acquiring cancers and other diseases from the use of contraceptives. These adverse effects, they
lament, are not fully discussed by health providers, which compromises women’s informed decision. In
response to the argument that the risk of getting cancer is low and that the health benefits of
contraceptives outweigh their risks, pro-life doctors concede that all medicines have side effects. They
maintain, however, that artificial contraceptives are not like other medicines in that they are not used
for the treatment of disease. Pregnancy after all is a natural process, not a disease. For this reason, full
disclosure of every single adverse effect of contraceptives, including their so-called abortifacient effects,
should be observed to make women realize that their health rights are being violated. To support this
argument, the work of feminist and women’s health activist Barbara Seaman which exposed the risks of
oral contraceptives, is regularly invoked. What is not mentioned by pro-life advocates, however, is that
Seaman’s exposés were written in the 1960s at a time when high-dose pills were being manufactured
and were critical in forcing the pharmaceutical industry to develop the safer low-dose oral
While pro-life advocates stress that their position on contraceptives is based on scientific
evidence and that for them reproductive health is not a religious issue, their arguments, however,
inevitably lead to a discussion of Catholic moral teachings. Tubal ligation and vasectomy, for example,
are contraceptive procedures thought to be forms of self-mutilation that desecrate the integrity of the
human body and the value of human dignity. By treating pregnancy as a disease that has to be
controlled by harmful contraceptives, reproductive health undermines health. Here the medical ethical
67
principle of totality is used to anchor a religious belief. As Dr. Angie Aguirre, a medical doctor in one of
Under the principle of totality, we know that our body is the temple of the Holy
Spirit and we have the responsibility to take care of it. And so you cannot
euthanize your body, kill yourself or remove your body parts unless there is a
problem in it or there is a disease and you (have) to save yourself. But you see,
in tubal ligation and vasectomy, the tubes are healthy. In other words you are
mutilating a part of your body that is not diseased.
Women’s and men’s bodies are precious. You don’t destroy what God has
created…That destroys the integrity of the human body and you are no longer
complete as a human person, the way you are supposed to be made.
For pro-life advocates, the implications of contraceptive use on Catholic moral principles must
be discussed by health providers in order to enable individuals’ informed decision, which is expected to
ultimately result in the rejection of these contraceptives. When pressed on what she would do if a
woman patient still wanted to get contraceptives despite their side effects, Dr. Aguirre replied that the
patient is free to go to another doctor but without her referral. In this instance, the “freedom of
conscience” that pro-life groups seek to protect from the inadequate disclosure of medical information
The opposition to the RH bill is also made in defense of women’s rights and empowerment.
However, women’s rights are placed within the context of marriage and family. Because the use of
contraceptives de-links sexuality from procreation, it is considered to promote promiscuity in men and,
as a consequence, the abuse of women. This “modernistic approach to sexuality” devalues marriage and
human sexuality (CBCP, 2003). The rise in the number of single mothers attests that “the dignity of
womanhood” has been placed “at great risk”. Further, gender equality is undermined when women are
left to take the main burden for and the risks associated with the use of artificial contraception. By
adolescents, the RH bill, according to the Church, erodes family life and values and is therefore a “source
Lastly, the Church argues that the bill erroneously assumes that population growth is the cause
of poverty and, therefore, makes a position against the poor. It cites the unequal distribution of
resources and graft and corruption as reasons for the widespread poverty in the country. It asserts that
population is a resource, and people are a primary economic force and are agents of growth. Atty. Jo
Imbong, legal adviser of the CBCP, describes the role of the family in spurring a nation’s development:
Growth starts with the family, a typical four person family, with two or three
children and the mother and father working. The parents send their children to
school, the children are able to get jobs to support themselves, and they raise
their own families.
This domestic economy based on family expenditures fuels the economic life of the country. At its heart
is the ideal and moral nuclear family in whose womb the birth of every child must be welcomed. As
Ligaya Acosta, HLI spokesperson, explains, a child has two hands and two feet that will later be able to
work and help the family. This child will be productive and may even be the child that will be
instrumental in removing the family from poverty. In promoting contraceptives, she says:
We always undermine the poor. This is all about control, so they can control the
lives of these people. People have many children because they want many
children. It is not because they don’t have access to contraceptives. I was there,
I tell you, I was a frontline health worker, more than 40 years of the program.
During all those 40 years, all our rural health units were flooded with pills, with
IUDs, with contraceptives. But there were no takers. People were not taking the
pills because they knew there were many side effects. People got the pills, but
they used them as fertilizers for their orchids. The condoms, they used as toy
balloons. Then, the (workers) won’t remove the IUDs because they had to meet
targets, and people were complaining to us. I talked to USAID, they came to the
Philippines to investigate, because my speech appeared in the Inquirer, my first
speech appeared in full-page in the Inquirer.
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Thus, according to Dr. Acosta, it is wrong to assume that poor couples who have many children lacked
options to plan their families. The bill will “not uplift the poor” as “the increase or decrease of
Pro-life advocates see in the graying population of European countries the manifestations of
demographic winter, a consequence of falling birth rates which is the result of “population control” and
the prevalent use of contraceptive technology. This is the reason these countries are now in need of
migrant labor and caregivers. Pity is expressed toward the plight of the elderly in these settings who are
said to have resorted to “child-for-hire” services in order to have someone to talk to. Comparing the
Philippines to these countries, pro-life advocates point to the advantage of having a young population
that leave the country as overseas labor, send back remittances and keep the economy afloat. While
they criticize the “population control” agenda as one that aims to “eradicate poverty by eliminating the
poor,” they laud pro-natalist policies, such as that of Singapore, as an exemplar of “economic
leadership”. Atty. Imbong explains why these pro-natalist policies are not population control policies:
No, it is more now a remedial measure because they have seen that what they
were doing on population control was not good for the economy, so they have
to do something about it. That is not population control, it is economic
leadership, if you may call it that way. If the country is having an economic crisis
because of the wrong policy, then it is the duty of the government to put it back
on track. But of course since the population control mentality has already been
ingrained for so long in Singapore, there are no takers. Women still do not want
to get married. It’s not popular anymore. It’s hard to reverse the population
control mentality; it will takes generations to do that. So it’s very frightening
because here it’s been ingrained in the thoughts of our young population and
we don’t know if they are aware that it is difficult to reserve and we can make
the same mistake.
In the public debates about the impact of an increasing population growth rate on already
limited social services meant for poor families, the Catholic Church hierarchy concedes that the country
has a population problem which exacerbates the poverty situation. However, this position of the Church
is drowned by the rest of its allied groups which argue that there are enough resources for everyone and
that the population can be distributed in the different islands of the country. A priest I interviewed,
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critical of the overzealousness of some of these groups, criticizes the Church hierarchy for encouraging
this extremist position. He suggests that the Church is keeping quiet because it needs these groups to
lead the attack against the reproductive health bill. Bishop Bacani, however, defends the Church stance
by stating that the population issue is not part of the Catholic Church teachings, and therefore, it cannot
reproductive health advocates this means planning one’s family by spacing and/or limiting the number
of children using any safe contraceptive methods that work most effectively for the couple, for pro-life
groups responsible parenthood means openness to new life and understanding that part of the married
couple’s responsibility is to beget children. Spacing or limiting the number of children is accepted as an
element of family planning, but this must be accomplished “in accordance with the moral law of God”.
Natural family planning, according to the Catholic Church, is the only morally acceptable method that
will uphold responsible parenthood. As explained by Marita Wasan, Executive Director of Pro-life
Philippines: “Responsible parenting is loving your children and supporting your children, not by means of
contraceptives.”
While the aggressive and carefully orchestrated protests of the Catholic Church against the
reproductive health bill and ongoing family planning program of the government would logically indicate
its non-participation in population efforts, in reality the Church has had a history of involvement in the
government’s family planning programs as far back as the Marcos administration. The Church was
represented on the Board of the Commission on Population (PopCom) when it was first established. The
Marcos government, on the other hand, endorsed responsible parenthood and natural family planning
as part of the range of choices in the so-called “cafeteria approach” to the family planning program.
Additionally, and perhaps attesting to the clout of the Catholic Church, the government included the
responsible parenthood program of the Church in the budget allocation of the PopCom. For the Church
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then, as now, the only acceptable contraceptive was the natural family planning method and the
“cafeteria approach” was criticized. In 1975, to bridge the growing chasm between Church and state
relations, the Catholic Church and President Marcos agreed to draft a set of policies on family planning.
It was clear from this that the Church believed in the urgency of addressing population growth and the
The family planning program of the Arroyo government had also made similar accommodations
to the Church. Amidst protests from women’s groups and other health sectors, the Department of
Health awarded a 50 million Peso contract to the Couples for Christ (CFC), a massive base group of the
Catholic Church found at the local level, to promote natural family planning. It is worth noting that the
strategy of Catholic Church leaders of mounting an organized opposition to the reproductive health bill
through sustained lobbying, on one hand, and acquiring financial support from the government for its
own population program, on the other hand, represents the ability of the institution to work on all
What I want to illustrate here is the capacity of the Catholic Church to engage the modern state
and maximize state structures to negotiate and advance its own population agenda. Its moral discourse
on population, reproduction and sexuality, although viewed as backward-looking, does not pose limits
to its ability to engage in the public arena normally acceded to the state. One needs only to look back at
the historic People Power 1, which deposed the dictator Marcos in 1986, and People Power 2, which
toppled a corrupt Estrada in 2001, and the role that the Catholic Church played in these national events
to recognize the immense authority that it holds in the public sphere. As for its explanation of its
strategy of tapping government resources, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP)
said that its position was a movement from previous critical non-collaboration to principled
collaboration.
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The Church’s support for responsible parenthood and natural family planning implies that it
believes in addressing the modern problem of population. However, by sticking to this position, it argues
that there is a way to be modern and moral at the same time. Thus, the CBCP states in their pastoral
letter:
Further, in the Church’s affirmation of the need to respond to the population problem, hence, a
need for family planning, we can find a notion of progress. This progress is based on a Catholic/Christian
improvement of society and one which God has ordained. Far from throwing the Philippines back into
medieval times, the Catholic Church by participating in and shaping the public sphere, is making claims
on modernity. This claim for a place in modern society is evident in the CBCP’s (2002) pastoral letter on
What we see here is a glimpse of the process of co-construction of modernity and religion, where
religion shapes the discourse of population and development while at the same time appropriating the
discourse of the free market (as a value marked by modernity) to legitimize its moral-and-modern
position on population.
The Church, even as it collaborates with different state institutions, competes with the state,
that modern social form, in defining and cultivating the national culture, emphasizing the moral
dimensions of national life. In talking about the reproductive health bill as an anti-poor measure and,
therefore, contrary to the principle of sustainable human development, the Church appropriates the
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nationalist discourse of the modernist project. The anti-Filipino argument, on the other hand, is an
opposition to what the Church groups saw as a liberalization of values that would turn the country into a
westernized, hedonistic, sexually permissive society (House Committee on Health, April 2003). Beyond
this sweeping statement, however, the anti-Filipino argument rests on the understanding of the
Constitution by the Catholic Church, which protects the life of the mother and the life of the unborn
from the moment of conception. A proposed law construed to promote abortion is therefore, according
to the CBCP, a “defiant call for public officers and citizens to violate our Constitution.” Indeed, such a
By raising the issue of the right to life, the right of parents to regulate their children’s sexuality,
and women’s rights to health and gender equality, the Church uses the language of rights recognized by
the international community for whom rights are universal and inherent. For an institution accused of
traditionalism, the Catholic Church has mastered negotiating the international and domestic political
arena, demonstrating the modern ways in which it wields institutional prowess much in the same way as
a nation-state would.
During the early years, whatever discussion that passed for a debate about reproductive health
was limited between the Catholic Church and a small core of reproductive health advocates, with the
former on the offensive and getting most of the media attention, and the latter unable to parry the
blows from a mighty opponent. However, in recent years, more voices and independent actors -- from
the media, academic community, and business sector -- have come out to defend the bill and argue for
the necessity of providing women and families with reproductive health services. Owing to the
persistence of the authors and advocates in re-filing the bill in the past Congresses, despite bleak
prospects, it became possible to sustain, albeit in an uneven fashion, the discussion about the issue,
until public awareness steadily grew. The cyclical death and resurrection of the bill, with its attendant
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controversy, ironically set the conditions for a national public debate to take place. As the Catholic
bishops stepped up their attacks, threatening to deny communion to and excommunicate politicians
who support reproductive health, even ordinary Catholics who would have kept silent, bristled at this
vindictive stance. By 2008, with more and louder voices from a broader movement challenging the
Catholic Church’s authority to define what constitutes sexual and reproductive morality for individual
Filipinos, it became the Church and allied groups’ turn to feel embattled. Even as the plenary
deliberations on the bill did not prosper, blocked by a queue of 22 pro-life legislators, each of whom had
readied to ask questions until the congressional term ended, the issue refused to die and remained on
the national agenda. In the months leading to the May 2010 presidential elections, the debate had
intensified as candidates were being pressed to declare their position on reproductive health, both by
the Catholic Church-led pro-life movement and by family planning and women’s health groups. That
reproductive health had become a critical issue that defined the approach to and ethics of governance
Indeed, underlying the contentious positions coming from different fronts are fundamental
questions about the direction of the nation, its goals and aspirations, the roles of institutions, and their
relationship to the people. Linked to this are questions that reflect a nation’s grappling with its history,
national identity and religious identity. As well, implicated is the transformation of gender, sexual, and
reproductive practices of Filipinos. Thus, I try to answer the following questions in the next chapters:
What is the role of religion in our society and in people’s lives? Who should define what is moral and
what constitutes morality? How should we govern our sexual and reproductive lives? In what ways do
sexual and reproductive practices shape moral lives? What are the values that shape Filipinos?
Many of these questions have been the subject of contestation for decades and are not new.
Many of the political actors that figured in the past are still the same actors that are engaged actively in
the current debates. Many would argue that not much has changed in the situation of the Philippines: It
75
remains underdeveloped and the social conditions under which people live have not improved;
therefore, the context within which earlier contestations have taken place is unchanged. But, in the
intervening years between the first national population policy in the 1970s and current attempts to
institute a reproductive health care policy, the country experienced political upheavals in the transition
between governments. This reconfigured the relationship between traditional political actors, as well as
the character of the engagement between the state, the Catholic Church, and civil society. It is these
political dynamics that are at play in the conflict over the reproductive health policy.
I have also tried to show in this chapter how reproductive health and population as a modernist
project have been contested by different political actors – the State, the Catholic Church and the
women’s health movement in the Philippines. Each of these actors makes claims on modernity by
advancing their own vision of what makes a modern nation, what constitutes modern values, and what
the modern future should look. But while they attempt to shape the discourse on reproductive health
and population, specifically, and modernity or development, generally, they are in turn subjected to the
molding, influencing, constructing force of modernity. The state, the Catholic Church and the women’s
health movement as actors engaging each other all do so within the discursive field of modernity, where
power enables each one to formulate and reformulate its own position while still holding these
contending positions within its defining constraint. An effect of this engagement is the containment of
reproductive health that strips it of the elements that would broaden women’s rights. The move of the
Catholic Church and its supporters to ground women’s health as family health invokes women’s rights
while confining the same within the private domestic sphere. At the same time, the move by
reproductive health advocates to repeatedly state the illegal status of abortion forecloses the possibility
CHAPTER THREE
“I’m sure that there (will be) some pressure from the Catholic population. Those
who are very devout Catholics, who know the teachings of the Church, will try
to persuade their own representatives in Congress… to look at the issue from
the point of view of religious or moral principles. That is the responsibility of the
citizenry. I imagine that is also the duty of our legislators to listen to their own
people. If not, surely we will remember you in the next elections. That is
natural.”
Why, in heaven’s name, Mr. Speaker, are the principal authors and sponsors
insisting on legislating the promotion of artificial methods of contraception
against the vehement objection of the majority of our people? We,
Catholics…comprise no less than 80% of our population… artificial method of
contraception is a direct assault and violation of our religious belief and in
contravention with the provisions of the Constitution…(T)he bill therefore, in
sum, in substance, is an advocacy of an extremely divisive policy.
The bill (goes) against the fundamental Catholic doctrines, the strong beliefs of
the majority of Filipinos born and raised in a Catholic environment, a majority
that must be reckoned with, whether we like it or not (sic). This is where the
problem lies. It will not simply be a case of an ordinary disagreement… We
cannot quibble or trifle with matters of faith. We may be looking at a possible
conflagration… There is not cause for worry though in so far as the Church and
its followers are concerned because violence and destabilization is (sic) not part
of our teaching or advocacy.
But there are others, many others who may take advantage of the situation so
that the gathering of signatures, the street rallies in different places, the
spontaneous unplanned mobilizations in schools and colleges, the endless vigils
and prayer rallies of millions of Catholics, which may be taken as a sign of
massive unrest, may result in a divisiveness that may undermine the national
peace and unity we are seeking to achieve.
In 2002, Archbishop Orlando Quevedo warned politicians about the doom waiting for them at
the polls should they support the reproductive health bill filed in the House of Representatives. Six years
later, Deputy Speaker Raul del Mar warns of a conflagration that can tear the country apart should
fellow lawmakers approve the bill, which has been the subject of a contentious national debate for
almost a decade. Both cast the issue of reproductive health within religious terms, framing the
impending passage of the bill as an enormous conflict about faith, an affront to the Catholic majority,
and finally a veiled declaration of war. Their language shifts from a sense of injury to a seeming
readiness to use threats, from affirming peace and order to prophesying massive unrest. The leader of
the Catholic Church and the legislator both claimed to speak for the Catholic majority, linked religious
beliefs with citizenship, and demanded a prominent space in the policy arena for religious morality.
Embedded in these statements is a hegemonic narrative of a Catholic moral order providing cohesion for
a God-fearing nation.
The role played by the Catholic Church in the legislative and public debates on reproductive
health illustrates its peculiar position in Philippine politics and society. At once lauded and criticized for
intervening in political events and issues, the Catholic Church nonetheless remains an institution to be
reckoned with by groups, movements and parties wanting legitimacy. This is attested to by national
surveys that identify the Catholic Church as the most trusted institution by Filipinos. This credibility is
due largely to recent history and the part it played in struggling against a dictatorship and a repressive
state, while siding with peasants, workers and the poor in the fight for social justice and democracy. At a
time when all other political organizations suffered repression, it was the only institution left standing to
support the broad movement for change. Those who support reproductive health confront an
institution with a durable power that was able to face down a brutal state.
While the Catholic Church insists that its power only comes from the word of God, doctrinal
persuasion has not been as effective as institutional might in convincing policymakers to withdraw their
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support for the bill, or in pressuring current and former presidents to drop the bill from their priority
legislative agendas. Its ability to pressure politicians speaks of the Church’s real power in the world of
policymaking and politics. Its success in blocking the passage of the reproductive health bill for the last
ten years is also proof. Yet, this success has also raised questions about the place of religion in the
political life of the nation and the extent to which the Catholic Church should intervene in politics. As a
result, calls for the strict observation of the separation of church and state have emerged from different
The social conflicts surfaced by the contentious debates on reproductive health reveal the myth
of a unified moral nation under the Catholic Church. The battle at the policy level has also opened the
field for the contestation over Catholic identity and its meaning. Moreover, threads counter to the
Catholic narrative of the nation begin to provide an alternative vision and practice of politics and
citizenship.
In this section, I attempt to map out the domains where the Catholic Church wields influence,
focusing on the entanglements between Catholicism and the nation, and how this has produced a
discourse of religio-nationalism that impacts national consciousness as well as politics, policymaking and
governing in the Philippines. The chapter has two parts. The first traces the historical roots of the power
of the Catholic Church and how it exercises this power politically and culturally. I also discuss the
challenges to the Church’s influence in the arena of reproductive health policymaking and the strategies
the Church employs to marshall secular nationalist arguments to re-establish a religious moral ground.
The second part focuses on the status of Catholicism as a ‘natural’ part of Filipino culture and identity. I
also discuss the efforts by reproductive health advocates to argue from within their faith, open
questions about what makes a good Catholic, and assert a new flexible Catholic identity. Reproductive
revisionism counters the Church’s strategic secularism (attempts to move away from religiously-based
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arguments about reproductive health). These moves from the two opposing sides, I argue, reshape both
Religion, according to Rhys H. Williams (1996), is a political resource that operates as “culture”
and as “ideology”. In many studies of religion and political struggles, however, the categories of culture
and ideology are either conflated or taken as mutually exclusive. In these studies, religion, as culture,
influences political relationships in that it provides mechanisms for the creation of symbolic worlds. It
works as an implicit worldview that is absorbed and taken for granted, shaping meanings and forming
identities. As Williams states, “Religion is less about [doctrinal] beliefs, per se, than about meaning in
the world” (p. 370). Religion functions as a force that naturalizes the social order. However, religion as
ideology has been taken as an idea system that disguises and mystifies power relations. As such, it
functions in much the same way as culture in that religion legitimizes the existing political order and
naturalizes domination. Williams uses Gramsci to analytically link and distinguish each other.
Gramsci introduces the concept of hegemony as a function which the dominant group exercises
throughout society while direct domination is the function of the state (Hoare and Smith, eds.,
Selections from the Prison Notebooks (SPN), 2003). According to Gramsci, hegemony is dispersed in
multiple sites of power which are not only located in the political domain but also in the private domain.
For Gramsci, the private domain refers to sites such as the educational system, the family, religion or the
Church, etc., which also correspond to civil society, or the other face of the state. However, Gramsci
also suggests that hegemony is both force and consent acting together as elements of power relations,
with the coercive elements of the State, in many ways, giving way to the regulation of civil society. As
Williams (1996) succinctly puts it, “(P)olitical control requires both coercion and consent” (p. 373).
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Consent plays a large part in Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. The hegemonic process involves
the formation of unity of groups and the elicitation of consent from both allied groups (which the
dominant group leads) and from opposing groups (which it dominates). Hegemony in civil society is
crucial because this is how even opposing groups can be brought under the influence of the dominant
class. Cultural production and religious instruction, as well as influence in schools and in the family, are
the ways the dominant group carry out their hegemonic activities. In this way, consent is already
developed and established even before consent to political alliances happens. Here, the actions of the
Catholic Church in the Philippines serve as an example of how consent is harnessed, organized and
What is important, however, in thinking about hegemony is that it marks ever-shifting dynamic
power relations which assume different forms within different contexts (Crehan, 2002). Thus, the
balance of power becomes crucial in any given historical juncture. The Catholic Church in the
Philippines, as a site of power, illustrates this constant shifting of power configurations. In different
historical moments, the Church, as an institution that shapes and influences people’s sentiments about
morality, the family and the government, has shown itself also being strengthened or weakened by the
state, or challenged by its own constituency, and especially by the poor. The elements within the
Church, both the progressive clergy and the traditional hierarchy, are also in constant engagement with
each other, legitimizing or challenging the Church’s stance toward particular moral issues and groups of
people, embodying the shifts of power inside and outside this institution.
PART ONE
The specific historical convergence of religion, colonization, and creation of a national identity
gave Catholicism its profound impact on the life of the country. Prior to Spanish colonization, the
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islands that came to be known as the Philippines did not have a collective identity. Spain, and more
concretely the Catholic Church infrastructure, that brought these islands under the control of the
monarchy (and God). The Christianization of the Philippines, as the main strategy in the colonizing
The Catholic Church occupied prominent roles in colonialization and anti-colonial resistance. The
Church’s presence in Philippine politics began in the 16th century during the Spanish colonization5. The
missionizing friars took on the colonial task and it was in this way that Christianization became integral
to Spanish colonization (Deats, 1967). Through the establishment of the patronato real, the system
which gave the Spanish crown the power to appoint the clergy in exchange for supporting the expenses
of the Catholic Church, the history of the state and the Church became intertwined (Pertierra, 1988).
Friars took charge of maintaining the colonial government in the islands by performing baptismal rites
that converted the population to Catholicism, implementing the encomienda system, collecting taxes for
the monarchy and a range of other functions that made the friars both religious leaders and government
administrators (Youngblood, 1990) for several centuries. The 1896 Revolution against Spain was
instigated by a deep-seated anti-clericalism, spawned by the abuses and oppression by Spanish priests,
and gave birth to Filipino nationalism. Religion has been enmeshed in the assertion of a Filipino national
identity, at once serving the interests of colonial powers and providing an impetus for the natives’ fight
against colonialism.
The American Commonwealth period brought the experience of the American Revolution and
its theories of political governance and democracy to the Philippines. The “wall of separation” of Church
and state was instituted in the 1935 Constitution and the Catholic Church was officially “disestablished”
5
The Philippines was under Spanish control for more than 300 years, under the American Commonwealth from 1898 to 1946,
and briefly under the flag of Japan in the early 1940s during World War II.
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(Bernas, 2003). Stripped of its direct access to secular power, the Catholic Church focused on its task of
evangelization, and prepared to regain its public role through social action programs.
Scholars and theologians have described Filipinos as nominal Catholics who are given to public
displays of religiosity but privately disregard the teachings of the Church (Bulatao, 1966). This “split-level
Christianity”, according to Father Jaime Bulatao (1966), allows for the private commission of religious
transgressions while enabling the maintenance of moral status in the community. The centuries-long
monopoly of the Catholic Church over the religious market, alongside with its political involvement and
the consequent neglect by the clergy of its evangelical role, is one of the reasons cited for this state of
affairs. Another explanation is the way religious indoctrination was implemented in an authoritarian
style during the colonial period. As Spanish was the language of the colonial elite and the friars refused
to teach this to the natives, the translation and interpretation of the Scripture was strictly controlled by
the clergy. This ensured the monopoly of priests on doctrinal knowledge. The natives learned to be
Catholic by obeying and respecting the authority of the friars as the sole interpreter of God’s word. Up
until the nineteenth century, the Bible was never translated into a vernacular language and owning one
was punishable by law. Rote learning and reverence for religious leaders characterized religious
indoctrination. This rigid hierarchical relationship between priests and their communities persists until
today. This also partly supports the argument for the view that Catholicism did not fully take root in the
archipelago, as it never succeeded in dislodging pre-Christian beliefs and practices (Kessler and Ruland,
2008).
In the 1950s, the Catholic Church had seen its public influence wane when it was viewed
primarily as the Church of the elite, with whom the performance of religious public rituals were/are
mostly associated (Pertierra, 1988), and which prompted the creation of Basic Christian Communities
(BCCs) as a strategy to regain its relationship with the masses (Fabros, 1988). It was this more
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progressive stream within the Church that spoke against oppression, worked on social justice issues and
became the moral voice against the dictatorship from the 1970s until the mid-1980s.
Inspired by the opening offered by Vatican II and in response to the question of how to define
Church involvement in socio-political matters, the Catholic Church in the Philippines set up economic
and self-help programs in 1965 as part of its social action strategy (Youngblood, 1990; Hechanova,
2002). By 1966, Church-state relations were defined by the collaboration between the Church and the
Marcos government on social action initiatives, with the regime emphasizing the inevitable overlap of
the material and the spiritual spheres and the necessity of cooperation between the two (Hechanova,
2002). But the social action paradigm’s weaknesses became evident in the face of human rights
violations and social injustice during the Martial Law years and its inability to confront the unequal
power relations in Philippine society, especially in the rural and agrarian sectors (Youngblood, 1990). It
was through social action programs, however, that priests, nuns and laypersons began their integration
with the poor communities and their exposure to broader social issues, which would serve as a catalyst
for their deeper involvement in the anti-dictatorship and social transformation movements (San Juan,
1986).
By the early 1970s, the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP) took
up cudgels for the oppressed and raised a strong voice against the dictatorship. The liberation theology
in Latin America served as an influence on the AMRSP, which represented 2,500 priests and 7,000 nuns
from different orders. In 1972, the Christians for National Liberation (CNL), was formed. Composed of
priests, nuns and lay workers, the CNL would later join the underground Communist Party of the
Philippines/National Democratic Front and wage an armed struggle. The Church hierarchy would spend
much of its energy protecting priests and nuns from raids, arrests, and detentions by the military. The
Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) would eventually, although belatedly, openly
criticize the Marcos regime, ending the critical collaboration with government that it had cultivated in
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the earlier years (San Juan, 1986; Youngblood, 1990; Hechanova, 2002). A “theology of struggle” (dela
Torre, 1986) was espoused by radical priests, who argued that the Church is a Church of this world and
therefore, could not be insulated from the injustices it sees. Oppositional ideologies of Marxism, liberal
reformism and anti-communism all had strongholds in the Catholic establishment and debates about
the proper role of the Church in politics persisted within the institution. What bound these perspectives
Although this period of political ferment introduced radicalism into the Church, progressive
voices were found mostly among the ranks of priests and nuns who worked directly with communities.
While the Church hierarchy protected its rank and file from state retaliation, and became a champion of
civil and political rights, it nevertheless remained conservative in its views on gender, reproduction,
sexuality and the family. Moreover, where the Catholic Church’s own authority is concerned, the rigid
hierarchical relationship between the Church and lay persons remained, notwithstanding its work with
grassroots communities and discourse on democracy. This rigid hierarchy also held the Church and its
affiliated groups together, as dissenting voices from within were contained. In the course of the debates
on reproductive health, individual priests and nuns who supported the bill maintained that they could
not speak publicly about their own views as it would go against the official position of the Church. Thus,
while there are diverse voices and perspectives within the Church, these existed in the margins and
were subsumed (and suppressed) within the institution’s authoritarian hierarchical tradition. In this,
Church leaders succeeded in presenting to the public a united Church, with one voice.
MIRACULOUS UPRISING
With the crackdown on the press, the muzzling of the judiciary and the tight control on the
legislature during the Martial Law period, the Catholic Church, as the oldest institution of the nation,
was the only pillar left standing to oppose Marcos. Its network of parishes, schools and grassroots
organizations provided the support for the democratization movement. By the time of the People Power
85
revolution in 1986, its radio station, Radio Veritas, which until then broadcast only religious programs
had become a virtual dissident underground station giving people instructions where to go, what to
bring, what to prepare for, and praying for moral triumph during the five days that it took to topple
Marcos (Hechanova, 2002). The Church served as the tolling carillon agitating people to defend
democracy. The pouring out of millions of Filipinos into the streets in response to the call of the
Archbishop Jaime Sin for people to go and fill EDSA Avenue to protect rebel soldiers from being attacked
by the Marcos military was testimony to the power of the Church to unite Filipinos.
During those five days that overthrew Marcos and installed Cory Aquino as President, the
symbolic power of the Church was brought out in full force. Rosaries, crucifixes, flowers, candles,
prayers, kneeling nuns, priests in white, and above all, statues of the Virgin Mary, were the artillery
unleashed by People Power (Tadiar, 2004), sidelining the slogans of the Left and progressive
movements,. The Church would later claim that it was this devotion to God that thawed the hearts of
the military forces, stopped the tanks on the Marcos side, and prevented what could have been certain
bloodshed. Before long, Cardinal Sin would be beside Supreme Court Justice Teehankee during Cory
Aquino’s oath-taking, giving his blessings to the first woman President of the Republic.
To memorialize the miraculous uprising and “evoke the reality of Our Lady's presence at EDSA
during the People Power Revolution,” a shrine was built by the Catholic Church on the major
intersection of EDSA and Ortigas Avenue, with the towering bronze sculpture of Our Lady of Queen of
Peace forming the “apex of the structure” as she looked over the city’s chaotic life6. The EDSA Shrine
was inaugurated on December 8, 1989, a day after Cory Aquino’s government survived the most
dangerous of the many coup attempts against it, and has since been the site for the yearly People Power
6
According to the EDSA Shrine website, the prime corner lot on which the Shrine was built was donated by two families of the
economic elite, the Ortigas and Gokongwei families, the former known for its real estate business and the latter for its chain of
malls. Prominent artists, including the National Artist, Architect Leandro Locsin, were involved in developing the design for the
Shrine.
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shrine.html). It also serves as a reminder of the crucial role that the Church played in that historic
moment.
Through different Philippine historical periods, the nation and state seem to occupy different
and separate spaces in the imagination of the Filipino people. In the colonial era, the state was
established even before there was a nation in the sense of a collective Filipino identity. The
contemporary state is a product of colonialism imposed on the different and disparate groups on the
islands. Moreover, the colonial state merged with the Catholic Church and the Christianizing mission.
The emergence of a Filipino national consciousness and national identity was a counterpoint to
colonialism. Thus, in this context, the state and the nation were ideas and forces working in opposition.
The nation, as embodied in the desire of Filipinos for independence and freedom from Spain and
subsequently from the United States and Japan, had to fight the state to fulfill its “nationhood.” The
identification of the Church with the state created obstacles to the fulfillment of this nationhood. And
“the people”, with their collective experience of colonial oppression, became the antithesis of the
The dichotomy of the state/Church, on one hand, and nation/the people, on the other, was
reconfigured in the latter years of martial law as the Catholic Church shifted from its traditional
allegiance to the state and crossed the power line to be with “the people” in their collective fight against
the US-propped dictatorship. For many Filipinos, the Catholic Church in that historical moment became
There are two things worth keeping in mind about this reconfiguration of forces. The Church’s
institutional might and influence, while used to support people’s desire for democracy, was also
employed to appropriate the discourse of democracy and freedom. Its ability to define this historical
moment as an act and will of God (Tadiar, 2004) diverted the 1986 People Power movement from its
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radical promise to reinstitute social order and harmony. With the visibility of the Church hierarchy, in
the person of Archbishop Cardinal Sin and the other bishops, and the marginalization of radical voices,
the call of People Power was transformed from social justice and equality to political reconciliation and
magnanimous victory.
It is imperative that we interrogate the meaning of “the people in the shifting politics of People
Power, and what it refers or has come to refer to. In the beginning, the People Power event was a
container for different movements and political factions with the common cause of defeating the
Marcos regime. The people from diverse sectors who participated in it were homogenized into a nation
for democracy and took Cory Aquino as their unifying center. With the victory and presidency of Cory
Aquino, with whom the people identified, a state/nation/people configuration became possible. But the
people Cory Aquino7 represented in this struggle for national liberation were the elite, the same
extractive exploitative hacenderos and capitalists disenfranchised by Marcos and against whom priests
and nuns in the theology of struggle together with peasants and workers had collided. People Power
became a platform on which this elite faction launched their brand of nationalist aspirations, purporting
to espouse social change, national progress and honest government, but refusing to accommodate
The Church hierarchy’s proximity to Aquino, whose personal piety and obedience to Catholic
doctrines complied with religious morality, and her elite circle, was seen as a sign of the Church’s
approval of an elite-defined nationalist agenda. For the elite who ran the affairs of the state, their show
of public piety became a marker for their supposed nationalism, and the Catholic Church once again
enjoyed the company of the (new) state, which by virtue of People Power now purportedly represented
7
Cory Aquino comes from the Cojuangco clan, which owns the sugar plantation, Hacienda Luisita. Her family also owned the
monopolistic telephone company, PLDT.
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Following the 1986 People Power revolution that brought Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, the
widow of slain Senator Benigno Aquino, to the presidency, a Constitutional Commission was created to
draft the fundamental law of the land to replace the Marcos-instituted 1973 Constitution. The ConCom,
as it was called, included in its ranks a priest, a bishop, a nun, and at least thirty nine “Catholic
Commissioners” (Bolasco, 1994). In the context of a revolutionary government8, the ConCom proceeded
to formulate one of the most progressive bills of rights in the region, reflecting the ideals of the post-
dictatorship period and strengthening democratic space in the country. However, the very same
Constitution that expands political rights restricts rights for women. The intertwining of the discourses
of family, reproduction and sexuality with that of democracy signaled a new female maternal citizenship
(Canning, 1996). The strong presence of Church representatives in this political process signaled yet
again the merging of Catholicism with the rebirth of the nation. As Corazon Aquino’s address to the
Manila clergy on May 1986 revealed, she entrusted to priests two tasks: the renewal of morals and
morale of the people as “their most important contribution to nation building” and the constructive
critical collaboration of the Church officialdom with the new government (Bolasco, 1994).
It was at this juncture that the Catholic representatives in the ConCom successfully enshrined a
provision in the Constitution protecting the life of the unborn. Section 12 of the Declaration of Principles
and State Policies states: “The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and
strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. The State shall equally protect the life of
the mother and the life of the unborn from conception” (Constitutional Commission, 1986) During the
debates on the floor, Commissioner Bernardo Villegas, the sponsor of the provision and a prominent ally
of the Catholic Church, explained that the intention of the Section was to prevent abortion from ever
8
When Corazon Aquino ascended to power, abrogating the 1971 Martial Law Constitution was one of her first acts. Without a
Constitutional framework within which to exist, her government was declared a revolutionary government in its first year,
during which a Constitutional Commission was formed to formulate a new Constitution.
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being legalized in the country. Noting that Philippine law follows closely US jurisprudence, he wanted to
put in place constitutional guarantees that would prevent the legislature from enacting a law based on
the “infamous” Roe v Wade decision. While several commissioners intervened and argued that the
provision “preempts the possibility of a thorough, scholastic and academic discussion on the debates on
human life,” a matter still being debated by science, medicine, and other disciplines, the sentiment that
it would be better to err on the side of caution and protect life (cells) from the moment of fertilization
prevailed (Constitutional Commission, 1986: (4) 705). The triumph of Catholic universalist principles over
the particular realities of women’s lives, such as rape and poverty, is captured by Commissioner Villegas’
argument: “I can just repeat the transcendental reasons that a wrong cannot be righted by another
wrong; a very good end never, never justifies an immoral means” (Constitutional Commission, 1986:
(4)709). It was the constitutionalization of “the absolutist claims on morality in the name of human life,”
as Commissioner Felicitas Aquino pointed out (Constitutional Commission, 1986: (4) 705). (See also
Whatever semblance of separation of Church and state there was gave way to the moral
authority of the Catholic Church in the political life of the nation. At the same time, only a few
(Constantino, 1991) dared to criticize the Church hierarchy for its penchant for taking front stage in
political issues. Politicians, even before the People Power era, had already been accustomed to asking
approval from the Church and now feared losing their status as God-fearing individuals, a status which
The moral course of the nation as defined by the Catholic Church hierarchy would, however, be
derailed by the emergence and victory of Joseph Estrada in the presidential elections of 1998. Estrada, a
popular and former actor, has had a long political career, serving as Mayor of San Juan City for several
terms before being elected as a Senator in the 1980s and later as Vice-President in 1992. By 2000, the
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exposé about Estrada’s use of local government structures to facilitate, protect and, ultimately, profit
from illegal gambling operations propelled the daily massive indignation rallies calling for his
resignation. The EDSA Shrine became the natural site for these protests. While political and civic
groups, NGOs, the business community, various sectors and unaffiliated individuals participated in these
protests, the crisis gave the Catholic Church yet another opportunity to flex its moral-political muscle.
Even before the investigation and impeachment proceedings started, Cardinal Sin together had already
issued a pastoral letter urging Estrada to step down out of “delicadeza9,” asserting that given the
scandals the president had lost the moral ascendancy to govern. While some priests and bishops balked
at what looked then as a presumptive call, they would later hail Cardinal Sin’s act as part of the
“prophetic” task of the Church. As Msgr. Villegas explained (Sioson San Juan 2001),
And the “truth” was the holy ground on which the archbishop and his priests stood when they declared
to the faithful that Estrada must step down. For the Church the issue was “morality in public office” and
the “morality of the highest political leader of the nation” (Sioson San Juan, 2001), which also pointed to
the scandal around Estrada’s extravagant lifestyle and the titillating stories about his many mistresses
and children.
If People Power 1 was about freedom and democracy, People Power 2 revolved around
competent and clean governance, which is achieved only through the gift of morality from God. When
eleven senators from Estrada’s camp outvoted the rest of the senator-judges to prevent the opening of
the infamous envelope bearing the President’s alleged criminal misdeed, Cardinal Sin intoned, “Morality
9
This roughly translates to both “decency” and “shame” combined.
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is not a matter of numbers. Morality is from God. God does not sleep. God will judge. God will punish all
those who prevent the truth from being known” (Sioson San Juan, 2001, p. 200). And for Msgr. Villegas,
Cardinal Sin was “the prophet of hope, the prophet of wrath against immorality” (p. 200). It became
apparent at this point that People Power 2 lacked the trepidation of its predecessor to be merely called
a miraculous revolt. In People Power 2 was the ripening of a triumphalist nationalist moralism, bursting
The call of Cardinal Sin and the Church during People Power 1 was vastly different from the
Church’s pronouncement justifying the overthrow of the leader of the nation. In 1986, in the wake of
massive cheating by Marcos in the snap elections, the Church declared that he had lost the “moral
basis” for governing. The Church bishops then did not say that because of his corruption and lack of
morals Marcos had lost his moral ascendancy and moral right to rule (Zulueta, 2001).
The Church notes with confidence the rolethat it played in installing through People Power the
governments of Corazon Aquino and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It was with the same power -- to make
and unmake presidents and political careers -- that the Catholic Church would threaten politicians who
It is no surprise then that politicians, who distrust each other, regularly trekked to Cardinal Sin’s
villa (which the Archbishop jokingly referred to as “the House of Sin”) to seek his “guidance” and
“blessing.” The events leading to People Power 2, and, in particular, the exposé by Ilocos Governor
Chavit Singson on jueteng10, had the stamp of approval from Sin. This authority to designate right from
wrong, moral from immoral, would come into full force when, at the height of negotiations between
People Power 2 groups and the Estrada camp, then Vice-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo went to the
Cardinal to ask for his recommendations to the Cabinet and to report that she had acceded to the
10
The illegal numbers game popular in local communities and from which Estrada and his cronies of politicians profited.
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request of the generals who had crossed over to their side to give Estrada four days to leave the Palace.
The Archbishop of Manila, the astute politician and soldier of God, was known to have thundered,
Gloria, you are now the president…If you begin your presidency by
doing what the generals want, you will do that for the rest of your
term…Let the generals obey you and follow you. Please, take your oath.
The people are waiting for you. (Villegas, 2001, p. 201).
On January 20, 2001, the day of Estrada’s fall from grace, the military leadership abandoned
their Commander-in-Chief and switched loyalty to the People Power 2 faction. In front of the EDSA
Shrine, about a million people witnessed the triumvirate of Cardinal Sin, General Angelo Reyes and
soon-to-be President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo join hands and forces, to officiate the anticipated
“renewal” of the nation and the conclusion of a morality play. The scene was reminiscent of the lay-out
of the Spanish colonial town center: the Church cathedral in the middle, flanked by the municipal hall,
on one side, and by the guardia civil barracks, on the other hand, while the plaza where the
townspeople congregate lay before them, for better monitoring and surveillance by the three pillars of
power. Then, as now, there was acknowledgment that one’s social status derived from the distance
between one’s house and the Church: the closer you live to the cathedral, the closer you are to power,
RELIGIO-NATIONALISM
The merging and conflation of Catholic identity and morality, on one hand, with nationalism, on
the other hand, speaks to powerful sentiments and myths - about religion and nation - that feed into,
form and work in tension with each other. I refer to this process of co-construction between Catholic
identity and national identity as religio-nationalism. This fusion of religion with the nation and the
survival of the nation forms the critical lens which can help us for understanding and locating the
Undoubtedly, the People Power events have left an indelible mark on the political imagination
of Filipinos. They constituted proud moments in history during which various sectors of the population
identified with each other’s struggles, renewing people’s faith in social change and collective political
action. These events also reclaimed a historical legacy: that of a people whose ancestors mounted the
first successful anti-colonial revolution in Asia, and who now had the power to once again change and
determine the future direction of the nation. Each People Power victory heralded a promise of a new
beginning that would finally spell growth and progress long aspired for by Filipinos. In these historic
moments, there was a sense that the unification of the nation was being undertaken not only in the
name of democracy and modernity, but even more so in the name of God and the Church. The nation
struggled to break the yoke of oppression; in so doing, it fulfilled the will of God. The nation was
cleansed and purified, but, ultimately, it was God and religion that emerged as victors.
Catholicism has insinuated into, and (re)taken the center stage in, the political imagination of
the post-colonial nation. Whereas the abuses of, and hatred for, the Catholic friars ignited the revolution
against the Spanish colonial state more than a century ago, in the post-colonial era, the political power
of the Catholic Church has been re-embraced by Filipinos as a weapon against the authoritarian and
patrimonial state. The weight of historical legacy and the exigencies of continuing political crises have
combined to fashion the Catholic Church as a defender of freedom and democracy, of the exploited and
down trodden, of the helpless and the weak, against the abuses of the system. Thus, nationalist and
democratic ideals became intertwined with Catholic ethics and identity. At the same time, politics and
nationalism have become imbued with religious language and discourse, framing political affairs into
contests of “good versus evil” and giving rise to calls for a “national moral recovery”.
People Power movement aspired to build a democratic society, one based on the principle of
uniting diverse groups of people while recognizing their differences, and guaranteeing equal rights to all.
Yet, these democratic ideals collide with the politics of the nation, which rest on the principle of defining
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uniqueness and drawing boundaries (Rhadakrishnan, 1992). Here, the re-born nation, which already
claims uniqueness based on its being the only Christian country in Asia, defines its fundamental identity
and aspirations in terms of Catholic moral and political values. The pluralism that a democratic society
aside other religious identities, ethical perspectives and political alternatives. Moreover, pluralism
becomes defined as pluralism and unity only of the majority religion. As bishops and their allies never
fail to remind their adversaries, Catholics make up more than 80 percent of Filipinos and, if their
religious moral sentiments are not respected or accommodated, they can rise up against the state as a
single mass. In this regard, the parameters of national belonging are circumscribed by Catholic identity
and loyalty to the Church. Challenging this relation between the nation and the Catholic Church
PART TWO
HIDDEN INJURIES
Up until now, the narrative of a Catholic Church of and for all, one with the nation’s aspirations,
dominates the discourse of the nation and the people’s struggle for democracy. As in any balance of
power, this narrative privileges the actions and voices of certain groups while excluding others.
The national unity displayed at EDSA by People Power 2 was shattered by the spontaneous
outpouring of grief and rage that Estrada’s urban poor constituency unleashed three months later. In
late April 2001, masses of slum dwellers, who were responsible for his overwhelming electoral victory,
decided to stage their own revolt to re-install the populist Estrada. Moved by the appearance on
national television of a defeated humiliated Estrada, now treated like a common criminal, the “great
unwashed” took the former president’s injury as their own, because it was “sobra na, kawawa naman si
Erap” (This is too much already. Erap [Estrada]is already beaten.) It was the first time in decades that
hundreds of thousands of slum-dwelling Filipinos spontaneously poured into the streets without any
They trooped to EDSA Avenue, Metro Manila’s main highway, and like the crowd during the
second People Power kept vigil for days at the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace. But the crowd in the so-
called Poor People Power event, which did not have any organization or structure, was nothing like the
“perfumed crowd”11 of People Power 2. Their brand of political pornography – sexual jokes, rude songs,
lewd slogans mixed with political dissent – confirmed for the educated middle class the slum dwellers’
“uncouth,” “uncivilized” underclass culture. When they refused to evacuate the grounds of the EDSA
Shrine, the Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Sin, threatened that they had no permit to use the site,
11
The visible elite and upper class crowd, members of whom always wore white and some of whom brought their maids to the demonstrations
and rallies, was tagged by the Philippine press as the “perfumed crowd.” The tag was also in reference to observations that this crowd seemed
to never sweat or smell under the scorching sun.
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In the early morning of May 1st, Labor Day, about 50,00012 slum dwellers at EDSA, , moved to
attack Malacañan in Mendiola13, their indignation further increased by the speeches of politician-
agitators from the Estrada camp who saw a political opportunity in the spontaneous mobilization of
urban poor. What Filipinos witnessed on television that day was a bloody, violent riot that lasted for
more than twelve hours. With rage as their only weapon, the slum dwellers, the so-called “masa,” took
on the police, the media, and anybody who stood in their way. The rampage resulted in the death of
several individuals and in the injury of countless others, as well as in the destruction of property worth
millions of pesos. It shattered Filipinos’ view of themselves as a “peaceful” people and revealed the
“dark side” of People Power. Later, rebellion charges would be filed against the leaders of the uprising.
But while the violent Mendiola scene continuously flashed onscreen, another scene at the EDSA
Shrine unfolded that morning. After the masa had moved to Mendiola, prominent figures and middle
class people who supported People Power 2 reappeared at EDSA, and armed with brooms, rags, soap
and water, vigorously cleaned up the marble walls and stone steps of the Shrine. The Catholic hierarchy
deplored the “immorality” of the People Power 3 “mob” for trashing the place and mouthing obscenities
before the imposing presence of the Virgin Mary. Cardinal Sin, together with People Power 2
personalities, accused the “mob” of desecrating “holy ground” (Tenorio, 2001). This prompted members
The violent riot spoke of the pain and resentment that the poor had long endured against an
unjust system and could no longer bear, thus their fury at being once again ignored. To them, Erap was
not just their defender; he was one of their own. His ascension to power was because the poor put him
there; his victory was therefore also theirs. They wanted Estrada back, arguing that the aborted
impeachment trial failed to prove Estrada’s guilt and that he deserved a fair trial. When asked, however,
12
At its peak, People Power 3 was estimated varyingly from 300,000 to a million.
13
The main street leading to the gates of Malacanang.
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to explain why they liked Erap, they fell back on firm but incoherent beliefs, “Basta, basta” (Because,
At this point, it is easy to dismiss the assertion of these thousands of squatters as fanaticism.
However, at their rallies, mixed in with the lewd jokes, the millenarian atmosphere and the emotional
slogans to bring back Estrada, were calls to respect the Philippine Constitution. It was a curious call
coming from the uneducated classes which many suspected were planted by Estrada’s allies. As some
people cynically and insultingly asked, “When did the masa become Constitutional experts?” Yet, as dela
Torre (2001) explained, the masses may have no place in society but when it came to politics and
elections, their vote mattered a lot to them. Politicians may buy their vote, but it still remains their own,
something that they control. For the poor then, the vote is the only power available to them and it is
through that power that they can express their sentiments. When Estrada was removed from his
position before he could finish his term, the poor saw it as changing the rules -- rules, which society told
them to follow, and yet, when they did so to their advantage, were once again changed to benefit
others.
It is clear that the issue of respecting the Constitution was not an abstract idea for Estrada’s
supporters. The slum dwellers’ insistence on following constitutional procedures rested on the norms of
liberal democracy, i.e., individual rights and electoral processes, which they claimed as their own as
members of the national citizenry. These norms meant that they had achieved their own electoral
victory through Estrada’s election into office. The numerical dominance that the poor marshaled during
the elections was supposedly the realization of a representative and inclusive political process. Yet, their
majority soon was forced to give way to People Power 2, which disqualified their electoral victory. Here,
Crehan’s (2002) elaboration of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony becomes instructive. Crehan explains
that an aspect of hegemony in practice is “the power to determine the structuring rules within which
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struggles are to be fought out” (p. 204). Given a shifting power dynamic, the slum dwellers sought to use
yet again the rules of the elite and middle classes by staging their own uprising.
But not having harnessed their own political tools, they sought to mimic People Power 2,
borrowing its form, symbols and rhetoric that political observers judged pathetic and farcical (David,
2001; Severino, 2001). Unseating Gloria was the answer to the ouster of Erap, in what could have been a
movie plot about the comeback of a beaten hero. For the masses, who chanted “Nandyan na kami!
Maghanda na kayo!” (We are coming! Get ready!) (Rafael, 2001, p. 423), the time for revenge had come
and they, along with Erap, were the heroes who would rise from the dust and defeat the real enemy.
This “apocalyptic agency” (Rafael, 2001) also echoed of the resurrection of Christ with whose sufferings
SUBALTERN CONSCIOUSNESS
I want to return to the inability of the urban poor to articulate their reasons for supporting
Estrada and for staging People Power 3. Gramsci characterizes subaltern consciousness as fragmentary
and contradictory, precisely because it is subaltern and does not have enough of coherence to view and
comprehend the world. It contains contradictory elements because it has imbibed the hegemonic
worldview of the dominant group clashes with the particular subaltern reality that it deals with. Herein
lies also the potential instability of the hegemonic formation or structure. And this is what hegemonic
classes want to hold off and prevent from developing into a crisis. But Gramsci concedes to the
(necessary) limit of the subaltern consciousness to form spontaneously into transformative movements
subaltern people “to produce coherent accounts of the world they live in that have the potential to
challenge the existing hegemonic accounts (which by definition see the world from the perspective of
the dominant) in any effective way” (p. 104). In People Power 3, the urban poor who came out in droves
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understood injustice, inequality and the unfairness of changing the rules in the middle of the game, so
to speak. They also understood that they had always been marginalized by the system. In their slogan,
“Poor is Power,” they tried to pose an idea counter to the kind of legal power wielded by the upper and
middle classes. But “Poor is Power” worked only at the level of making a virtue out of being poor,
remaining an unsystematic consciousness and ideology about class politics. As both dela Torre (2001)
and Fortaleza (2001) observed when they attempted to join the People Power vigil at EDSA, the slogans
and ideas circulating in the crowd were “hilaw” (raw, or not well-thought out, or lacking in analytical
force). As veteran members of the socialist movement/s in the country, both dela Torre and Fortaleza,
however, admitted that at EDSA, they were the spectators whose ideas had to take second priority to
the spontaneous expression of sentiments by the urban poor. The contradictory elements of this
subaltern consciousness reveal themselves in the simultaneous rejection of the norms and symbols of
the wealthy educated class and the passionate support for Estrada, who remains upper class after all.
The nation watched in horror the crude behavior of the tsinelas (rubber flip flops) crowd (Rafael,
2001), who was depicted as “hakot,” trucked in and paid by Estrada’s supporters, supplied with shabu
(known as “poor man’s cocaine”), always high and intoxicated, and some of whom literally brought their
laundry to wash outside; the poor forced the elite and middle classes, the Church and the country’s
leaders to see the nation’s social wound. The political rage of People Power 3 was, however, easily
domesticated -- explained by the middle class media and by the government as a product of the
political manipulation by the Estrada camp of an ignorant, hungry, deprived, victimized section of the
population (Fortaleza, 2001; Tenorio, 2001; Rafael, 2001; Doronila, 2001b). Cardinal Sin, in the
aftermath of the violent riot on May 1, emphasized that “the poor will have to be the priority” (Sison,
2001).
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Chatterjee (2004), in his discussion of the emergence of mass democracies in the West, points
to the distinction between citizens and populations. He argues that unlike the concept of citizen which
connotes “participation in the sovereignty of the state,” the concept of population enables government
to reach large sections of inhabitants as “the targets of their ‘policies’” (p. 34). In the aftermath of
People Power 3, prioritizing the poor by way of poverty alleviation and education schemes was the
proposal to solve mass discontent. For the government and the middle and upper classes, the lack of
education of the poor and their vulnerability to manipulation became the main culprit in the shameful
May 1st uprising. Given this framing of the events, it was easier to think of the poor as beneficiaries of
socio-economic programs than to confer on them the full rationality of citizenship. Moreover, the moral
assumptions about being a citizen in Philippine society, exposed during People Power 2 and 3, made the
urban poor ineligible for citizenship. Their lack of respect for private property, their seemingly
incoherent and rude language, their inability to distinguish between public and private space, and the
violent manner by which they conducted themselves all demonstrate that the squatters were too
“uncivilized” to fully take part in civil society. To take Mamdani’s (1996) argument in his discussion of
the African colonial state, civil society post-People Power 1 and 2 “was presumed to be civilized society,
Activists who decided to support People Power 3 (and separate from the majority of progressive
and Left groups which supported People Power 2) defended the urban poor, asserting that although
other politicians rode on the potential gain from the poor’s uprising, it could not be denied that many of
those who participated came out into the streets of their own choice. Ed dela Torre (2001), a former
priest who was in the underground movement during the Marcos years and served in the anti-poverty
commission under Estrada, adds a nuanced perspective by explaining that poverty alone was not the
reason for the violent riot. To him, had it been poverty alone, the country would have had many Poor
People Power events a long time ago. Rather, it was the combined “exclusion and contempt” for the
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“maliliit” (the small) that the poor felt from the elite, from the government, and from the Church that
caused the social eruption. The provocation then was not just structural but cultural and deeply
personal. As a participant in People Power 3 bewailed, “They insult us by saying we were paid to go to
EDSA. They see us as scum and scavengers because we are poor. This is a matter of life and death”
(Sison, 2001).
The discourse of social justice, according to Nancy Fraser (1996), “once centered on
distribution, is now increasingly divided between claims of redistribution, on the one hand, and claims
for recognition, on the other” (pp. 3-4). Redistribution claims speak to the need for a more just
distribution of resources and goods while recognition claims speak to a politics of respect that rests on
difference rather than assimilation to the dominant norms. While there is a tendency among social
movements to treat redistribution and recognition as antithetical claims, Fraser argues that neither of
the two alone is sufficient thus, the need for both to be integrated in a single social justice framework.
The tension between the two claims, however, emerges in the politics of People Power 3. Whereas
government and civil society groups stressed the urgency to address the economic needs of the urban
poor, urban poor communities, on the other hand, had demands that went beyond access to
government services and goods for their members. What they emphasized was the desire to be treated
with respect and dignity. This brings us back to their assertion of “Poor is Power.” Here, poverty is not
rejected but is instead turned into a potentiality. What is implied in the slogan is the possibility of
redemption in being poor; it is, however, the contempt for the poor that is being repudiated.
Believing in the infallibility of its morality, the Church, the government and the People Power 2
groups claimed to speak for the whole nation and the Filipinos. Thinking that what it valued – good
governance, moral leadership, honest government institutions, religious obedience – was universal, it
failed to recognize that for the poor, whose desperate lives have seen no improvement from one
President to another, these things made no difference. From the perspective of the poor masses, the
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system has never worked for them and having a Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo benefited only the elite and
the educated. Abandoned even by the Catholic Church, they felt all the more their social exclusion.
Estrada, on the other hand, an imperfect leader though he may be, never looked down on them and
In the context of People Power 3, the outpouring of the poor masses into the streets with their
own ideas of governance, leadership, justice and God, cannot but be interpreted as an assertion of an
authentic morality, in defiance of what has been defined by the elite and the Catholic Church.
As contrasting events, People Power 2 and 3 surfaced social divisions masked by the idea of a
unified moral nation triumphing over corruption, injustice and exploitation. As an exercise in
participatory democracy, People Power 2 and 3 revealed a politics of citizenship and the kinds of
legitimate political claims that can be accommodated by the state. Moreover, these events brought to
the fore the class politics mediating the principles and practice of citizenship, which allow for certain
forms of exclusion and domination that conflict with universalist notions of democracy, equality and
morality – ideals assumed to be at the heart of People Power as guided by the Catholic Church. Here,
who are “the people” referred to in People Power, who can make claims on the state and religion, what
makes a claim moral, and by whose authoritative imprimatur can a claim be judged legitimate and
moral. Moreover, underlying this morality is an identification with a Church and a God who suffer with
them, look kindly on them, and will open the doors of heaven for them.
PART THREE
Two years prior to the 2010 national elections, as politicians started to intensify their
campaigns, Ozamiz Archbishop Jesus Dosado issued a pastoral letter stating that lawmakers who
supported “pro-abortion bills” would be denied the Holy Communion because they were “in a situation
of sin”. But the Archbishop clarified that refusing to give the Eucharist to pro-reproductive health
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legislators was not a sanction or penalty, rather, it was “a reaction to a person’s public unworthiness to
receive the Holy Communion” (Cebu Daily News 2008). Although the Catholic Bishops Conference of the
Philippines (CBCP) did not adopt this as its official position, several bishops followed Archbishop
How the denial of the sacrament could not be interpreted as a form of punishment, especially in
the context of stern disapproval of the legislators’ continued support for the bill, was a subtlety lost on
the public. If the public were to take the denial of Holy Communion as an act of non-punishment, as the
bishops would have them believe, then the threat by the bishops can only be seen as unnecessary and
irrelevant. It was clear, however, that Church leaders made the clarification so as not to be accused of
intimidating legislators and their constituents and to avert public criticism. During our interview, the
spokesperson for the CBCP, Atty. Jo Imbong, defended the bishops’ position, “The Church does not
intimidate. It is a good mother to her children.” While the Catholic hierarchy realized the importance of
managing the public response to its action, its main target remained the legislators who would be voting
on the measure. In this, it achieved results as a number of legislators, after getting calls and visits from
the bishops, announced they were withdrawing support for the reproductive health bill.
National surveys consistently show that majority of Filipinos want the government to provide
family planning and reproductive health services. That they express a need for these services indicates
that Filipinos do not see their Catholicism as a barrier to practicing contraception. The same surveys also
reveal that Filipinos would vote for politicians who support reproductive health. Voting patterns also
debunk the notion of a Catholic vote. While Filipinos consider themselves religious, this religiosity does
not translate into votes meant solely to affirm the Catholic Church’s official position on a specific issue.
Voting patterns, in fact, reveal that Filipinos do not vote based on a single issue.
However, even with this evidence, politicians admit to feeling intimidated by the Catholic
Church’s brand of pressure politics. In 2008, during the 13th Congress, a number of legislators who
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support the bill decided not to sign as co-authors, opting instead to wait for the plenary vote to make
their views public . Revealing their hand too early in the game, they explain, only invites regular visits
and calls from the bishops. The method of keeping their position seemingly neutral or undecided
protects them from becoming the subject of the latter’s sermons and enables them to dodge political
arrows from the pulpit. Representative Janette Garin, one of the authors of the bill and a medical
doctor, felt the power of the Church during the 2007 elections, when the priests and bishops in her
district regularly targeted her in their homilies and made her into a “pro-abortion” politician. The
legislator declared that the bishops, like politicians, can also play “dirty politics” (ABS-CBN News, 2008).
Politicians know too well that elections are a politics of addition and they cannot afford to lose a
single vote. With the high stakes involved, it is too risky for politicians to fall into disfavor with the
Church. Although the Church’s doctrinal teachings may have lost some of their direct hold on the
masses, its institutional influence remains strong. Given its wide social reach and its capacity to distort
information, the Church is capable of mounting a formidable, sustained and long drawn-out opposition
campaign. Bishop Teodoro Bacani, writing in 1992, illustrates this in his book, “Church in Politics”:
The Church has at its disposal its many institutions, foremost of which is the
parish. Through the parishes, the Church hierarchy can speedily and with effect
transmit its pastoral letters and statements to the people. Then there are the
Catholic schools as well as the social action centers and Catholic organizations
whose members number millions. Finally, there is the growing number of basic
ecclesial communities which are composed mostly of people in the
grassroots…The mass media are also available to the Church. It has an
unmatched network of radio stations, and has access and influence on TV as
well. There are also diocesan newspapers in circulation. And Church people
write credibly in several national newspapers. Though the Church has not been
using media militantly for its political involvement, it could easily do so. (p. 37)
With Church leaders clearly aware of their clout and how to employ the vast resources of the Church
politically, the potential electoral repercussions are real for politicians who dare to diverge from
Further, with the personalistic nature of Philippine elections -- where candidates are selected
based on their individual qualifications and character, rather than their party representation and
platform -- politicians must protect their moral standing in the community at all cost. For those who
have a shaky hold on their political base, having the Catholic Church actively campaigning against their
candidacy can mean the end of their political careers. In this sense, the Catholic Church is an astute
political actor that understands how to manipulate the rules of personality-based politics to its
advantage. By using pressure and fear tactics to impose its position on voters and politicians, religious
leaders employ strategies “as bad as buying (their) votes” and which reinforce traditional politics
(Bernas, 2009). Not surprisingly, abstract surveys about public opinion do not give politicians enough
The ascendancy of the Church in the political arena, an outcome of its crucial role in the
democratization movement, gave it the power to bestow, or deny, legitimacy to political leaders, their
governments and policies. As the Catholic hierarchy invokes its part in the People Power revolution 25
years ago, it asserts, “(I)n 1986 we Catholic Bishops made a prophetic moral judgment on political
leadership. With this prophetic declaration we believe that we somehow significantly helped open the
Sitting presidents are likewise not immune to pressures from the Catholic Church. There is a
public acknowledgement that the Catholic Church can make and unmake presidents. Since the filing of
the original reproductive health bill in 2001, the country has had three national leaders. The first, Joseph
Estrada, a former actor and a populist leader who implemented family planning and population
programs, was deposed by the business elite and middle class forces, with support from the Catholic
Church, due to charges of massive corruption in what has been called People Power 2. From the
beginning, the Church had been uneasy with Estrada, who was elected by the poor majority and,
therefore, did not rely on the Church for legitimacy. He was willing to risk the bishops’ disapproval,
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strongly pushing a comprehensive family planning program, even appearing in television advertisements
to personally promote it. His sexual indiscretions and other excesses, however, made him an easy target
for his elite opponents, the politicized middle class and his Catholic critics. As in People Power 1, the
Catholic Church provided the moral voice and leadership for the ouster of Estrada and the mobilization
of People Power 2, showcasing yet again its massive influence in shaping the outcome of political
upheavals. Installed in Estrada’s place was Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who later usurped power by
extending her term, and was considered the most corrupt and unpopular president since Marcos. But
her readiness to veto the reproductive health bill and her government’s implementation of a natural
family planning-only program bought the silence of the Church hierarchy, effectively preventing the
majority of the bishops from joining the growing and sustained public clamor for Macapagal-Arroyo to
step down. For the activists and feminists who struggled side by side with the Church for democracy
and accountable governance, and who were now simultaneously campaigning for a reproductive health
policy and questioning Macapagal-Arroyo’s legitimacy, the Church’s political stance showed how the
preservation of its interests came first before the national interest. In order to sustain the legitimacy of
its moral authority in the public sphere, the Catholic Church is prepared to coerce as much as it is willing
Nine years later, Benigno Aquino III, the son of Cory Aquino, replaced Macapagal-Arroyo, having
been elected into office on a surge of nostalgic sentiment that followed his mother’s death less than a
year before the 2010 presidential elections. Although he espoused his mother’s political principles and
considered himself a devout Catholic, he veered away from Cory’s pious obedience to declare his
support for the reproductive health bill as early as the electoral campaign period. As expected, the
bishops invoked the memory of the saintly Cory Aquino and People Power 1 to get Noynoy, as Benigno
III is popularly known, to tow the Church line. However, the historical, political and sentimental ties
between the Catholic Church and the current president’s family have resulted in a never-ending
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dialogue between the bishops and the executive office in an effort to placate the religious leaders.
Although nothing has changed in either side’s positions, and Aquino III has been firm, this circular
conversation sends the message that the Catholic Church comes to the table not as a mere participant;
rather, it is there as an authority, who authorizes a decision before it can move forward. As such, it has
to be pleased and satisfied in order for things to proceed, or it would discontinue the dialogue and rally
its constituents, if the conversation does not follow its expected direction. Indeed, if there is anything
that the Church has achieved in the last 10 years, it is not the outright defeat of the reproductive health
bill based on its perceived flaws, but the effective stalling and blocking of the proceedings as an effect of
its refusal to authorize this political act. And this authority comes out as a triumphalist power, as
Manila archbishop Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales announced the eventual victory of the Church in the
battle over the reproductive health bill, “Ang simbahan walang talo yan. Maniwala kayo, maski ano
gawin nila. (The Church never loses. Believe me, whatever they do).The (Church) of Christ always wins”
With the decline of doctrinal authority among the Catholic population, clerical persuasion has
taken an overt political form, and its targets are political decision-makers. Because moral authority is not
enough to compel opinion and behavior, the Catholic Church must appropriate state power and strongly
pressure state actors to enforce religious conformity beyond the Church’s adherents. Engagement with
the state and its policymaking apparatus then is the Church’s attempt to ensure the longevity of its
moral position and secure wider political and secular legitimacy for its religious authority.
As the Catholic Church basks in its political power, it also denies this power at the same time. As
“We don’t interfere (with) the legislative function. What we can only do is make
our voice heard… (The Church) doesn’t have enough people to talk about all
these things. It doesn’t have guns. It doesn’t have funds to do all these…Why
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are they saying powerful? Its only power comes from the spiritual.”
In attempting to disavow its own power, the Church is actually establishing an oppositional identity to
two forces, namely, the so-called international population control movement, and capitalist or market
agendas. For the Church, both represent powerful forces that sacrifice women’s health and human
dignity to imperialist and profit interests. These interests include pharmaceutical companies that sell
supposedly harmful contraceptives to unsuspecting women, western nations that sell their political
agendas to a weaker nation, and corrupt politicians who sell out their country to both. By positioning
itself against imperialism and capitalism, the Church is able to align itself with the anti-poverty, anti-
colonial and anti-globalization sentiments of Filipinos. It is also able to tap into Filipinos’ deep distrust
and lack of confidence in government, declaring that “there is a greater form of corruption, namely,
moral corruption which is really the root of all corruption” (CBCP pastoral letter, 2011). In so doing, the
Church offers an oppositional identity that resonates with people’s desire for social justice and their
rejection of exploitative relationships. This is the same oppositional identity around which the Church
was able to galvanize Filipinos into action during the 1986 People Power and during the second one two
decades later.
Moreover, in a political culture where competing political parties are mere vehicles for
traditional political ambition, the Catholic Church has supplanted the role of parties in providing a
credible set of alternative ideals and principles to the people (Doronila, 2001). The political vacuum
created by the failure of political institutions to deliver the most basic of services and to protect people’s
rights is a void that the Catholic Church, as an oppositional force, has been able to fill. Viewed as an
institution that acts based on spiritual principles, it is trusted to care for the whole flock without
prejudice to anyone. Progressive groups and social movements, including those in the Left and the
women’s movement, actively seek the Church’s support and alliance for issues such as agrarian reform,
illegitimate foreign debt, indigenous people’s rights and domestic violence. Ordinary people seek its
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many charity organizations for services that government cannot fulfill, especially, health care; most
citizens would rather donate to the Church than to government welfare agencies because they believe
that funds will not be mishandled. According to its directory, in 2001 alone, the Church ran 147 hospitals
and clinics, 236 orphanages, and 69 homes for the elderly (Kessler and Ruland, 2008). The Church also
inspires the spirit of volunteerism, activism and citizenship, when it organizes thousands of Filipinos,
especially the youth, into nationwide parish-based cells that guard the ballot and monitor the counting
during elections. Given the political violence and massive fraud that characterize Philippine elections, an
independent election watchdog that commands the respect of the state and civil society provides the
citizenry with an instrument to ensure clean, honest and peaceful elections, a step toward reforming the
What makes the role of the Church all the more significant is that it meshes the material, the
political, and the symbolic, thereby endowing the Church with an even grander persona: the defender
of all humanity (the tortured and the free, the dead and the living, and the elderly and the fetus). In
turn, its enormous political capital finds extension in the power to determine who or what is worthy of
being defended and must be protected. Many Filipinos therefore see no contradiction in the Church’s
insistence that the “helpless fetus” must take precedence over women’s lives, as it appears to be
consistent with the moral scheme that values humanity, especially, those who are considered weak and
defenseless. For many, even those in the progressive movements, the Church’s opposition to
reproductive health and family planning must be weighed against the many other advocacies that the
Church has waged together with the people and its invaluable efforts to make the country a better place
for Filipinos. Hence, the question that inevitably arises is, “How could the Church be wrong?” More
importantly, “Is it worth it to break with a powerful group that is normally an ally on most issues?”
The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines’ (CBCP) rhetorical distancing from its political
power also sets up an opposition between the spiritual power of the Church and oppressive worldly
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forces, much like the epic biblical battle between David and Goliath. It speaks to Filipinos’ disposition to
support the underdog. The CBCP states in its pastoral letter of January 30, 2011:
(The RH Bill) is the product of the spirit of this world, a secularist, materialistic
spirit that considers morality as a set of teachings from which one can choose,
according to the spirit of the age. Some it accepts, others it does not accept.
Unfortunately, we see the subtle spread of this post-modern spirit in our own
Filipino society.
This post-modern spirit includes the “misguided” notion that “women have power over their own bodies
without the dictation of any religion”. Against this “new truth”, the Church presents its doctrinal
position as a higher – and absolute – truth that embodies the “authentic human values” and “Filipino
Several points are worth highlighting in the pastoral letter. First, the bishops hone in on the
spirit of the age, or worldly values, and imply a sinister motive to its “subtle spread”. Filipino society,
which until now has remained true to the Church’s teachings (ergo, to itself), is no longer safe from this
threat. As it succumbs to this worldly spirit, Filipino society faces the erosion of its authentic cultural
values upon which it was founded. Here, the Church employs the unquestioned status of cultural values
as a determinant of a society’s character (Joseph, 1998) to elevate religiousness and Catholicness as the
essence of the Filipino nation. The conception of cultural values, and by extension, of Catholic values, as
an integrative aspect of society enables the Church to rally the people against the reproductive health
bill which threatens to fragment the nation and its national character.
Second, the bishops attack what in the past it has called moral relativism. For the Church,
actions may have a context, but morality has no gray areas. This means there is only one accepted way
of living one’s life, and Church doctrine represents the only set of rules on which actions can be judged
moral. Last, and related to the second point, in aiming at the “secularist” spirit of the times, the bishops
assert the authority of religion and, specifically, of Catholicism, as the only sources of morality and moral
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praxis. More importantly, they attempt to preempt the space for non-religious, non-Catholic and
opposed voices as to prevent these voices from carving out legitimate discourses in the public sphere.
The Catholic Church’s oppositional identity operates on two axes: as an alternative force to
traditional politics and as a traditional defense against moral and cultural degradation. The first acts as a
force for change, the other as a fortress against it. While there may be a tension between the two, the
Catholic Church maneuvers around these two axes firmly, but fluidly. This allows the Church to pivot
and slide between the two ends of the political-cultural pole, capturing a wide range of sentiments
regarding the family, marriage, children, gender relations, personhood and the social good. Because of
this fluidity, this identity is able to attract, and attach itself to, other symbols and forces, while
mobilizing diverse groups of people, who may contradict one another’s interests but find unity with the
Church’s oppositional cause. Given the symbolic connections, cultural resources and organizational
capacity that it is able to deploy, the Catholic Church is able to move through, and between, different
discursive spaces. This means that the legitimate public role of the Catholic Church remains relevant for
many Filipinos.
Strategic secularism is the term used by the Argentine sociologist Juan Vaggione to describe the
ways in which the Catholic Church deploys utterances, acts and instruments associated with secular
agendas and institutions to legitimize its moral doctrine and public role. While political crises have
shown that the state, in the post-colonial Philippine context, needed the Catholic Church to legitimize its
existence, the reproductive health controversy has also revealed that the Church must now rely on the
state to secure its own legitimacy. By providing the secular anchor to the Church’s agenda, the state
maintains Catholicism’s relevance in people’s everyday life. Moreover, the Church is not merely
appropriating secular tools and assumptions to advance its religious objectives. Rather, in strategically
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employing secular logics and instrumentalities, the Church is actively redefining what it means to be
secular and what is circumscribed by the space called the secular in Philippine society today.
Sensing the decline of its power of doctrinal persuasion and the backlash against theological
damnation, the Catholic Church has gradually moved away from religion-based arguments and relied on
recognizable secular markers to bolster its opposition to the bill. In recent months, the Catholic Church
has disavowed religion as the sole ground on which it appeals to Filipinos to reject the reproductive
health bill. In the same pastoral letter above, the bishops claim to speak “on the basis of the
fundamental ideals and aspirations of the Filipino people and not on the basis of specifically Catholic
religious teachings”. Following this cue, a public statement against the reproductive health bill soon
circulated online a month later. Posted by a group of faculty and students from the University of the
Philippines (a place viewed as a breeding ground of radicals, Marxists and atheists), the statement
echoed the position of the Church, but curiously emphasized in its introduction the “secular
background” of the university and the use of “reason” for its argumentation. After some investigation, it
was later found that the statement was initiated by Opus Dei leaders and their supporters in the
university. Understandably, the Catholic Church uses all possible and available methods, strategies, and
connections to enforce its hegemonic authority, whether by invoking spiritual tools of dogma, using
political intimidation, marshalling its constituency, or appealing to the power of the religious emotion.
This shift away from religion is accompanied by a move towards the Philippine Constitution as
the source of moral authority. Having ensured that its dogma has been incorporated into the law of the
land more than twenty years ago, when it successfully inserted a provision on the protection of the
unborn from conception and maintained those on marriage and family, the embrace by the Church and
its allies of a more “secular” approach to the reproductive health debate is not surprising. Viewed as a
political document that embodies the national values, the Constitution legitimizes the Church’s moral
code as a core value held by all Filipinos, regardless of religion. By wrapping the secular status of the
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Constitution around its doctrinal thinking, the Church can claim allegiance to the law as the premise of
its position. In this shift, to go against the principles of the Constitution (and the Church doctrine
At the same time, invoking the secular and the power of reason seems to be a strategy to
penetrate a public that is tired of dogmatic invocations and clerical arrogance. The use of science, and
specifically, the selective interpretation of scientific studies to align with the Church’s arguments against
reproductive health, is meant to target those who do not consider religion pertinent to the reproductive
health debate or in their decision regarding contraception. That even health advocates are left confused
by the scientific evidence produced by Church allies speaks to both the power of science to mediate
secular society and the failure of the scientific community to engage publicly with religious authorities.
Writing about the history of secularism in the West, Smith (2008) describes how the secular is
commonly understood. First, being secular is often conceived in terms of the decline in the institutional
and political power of the Church and the attendant erosion of the public authority of Church leaders.
Second, being secular means the treatment of religion as a matter of private belief, not public truth, and
the acceptance of secular assumptions as the basis of interaction in the public sphere. Last, being
secular is often associated with a critique of the West that is bundled with criticisms of liberalism,
individualism, materialism and moral degeneration. Notwithstanding the various critiques of these
theories of secularism (Asad et al 2009; Asad 2003), it is clear that the Catholic Church in the Philippines
is battling secularism on all three counts. However, in order for it to be intelligible to the non-religious
and non-Catholic, the Church has had to use the very language of the secular and present its case on a
secular platform.
But what is the secular and what is secular space? Commonly designated as that formation or
space not occupied or governed by religion, the secular nevertheless cannot be imagined without
religion (Asad, 2003). I understand the secular as a set of historically produced processes and
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interactions that shape the relationship between religion, the state and the public. Bound up with the
idea of the secular and secularism are the notions of modernity and liberal democracy (Cannell, 2010).
A subset of the secular is the relationship that defines the freedoms and limits that rule the separation
of Church and state, with each entity protected from being taken over, and prevented from taking over,
the affairs of the other. In the reproductive health controversy, the Catholic Church and the government
give differential stress to the two principles of this separation: the Church leaders assert the freedom to
practice religion while political leaders invoke the limits to Church involvement in policymaking. Both,
however, seek to uphold the Church-state separation as a marker of a modern democratic nation.
In the Philippines, the discourse of Church-state separation has its own hold on the nation’s
historical imagination. While the revolution against Spain ousted the friars from power in 1896, the
formal disestablishment of the Catholic Church came years later when this principle was enshrined in
the so-called Jones Law, a precondition set by the imperial United States as part of the process of
preparing Filipinos for self-government (Gowing, 1967; Ortiz, 1971). Disestablishment also involved the
crucial purchase of the vast friar lands by the US, and their sale and redistribution to Filipino lay citizens,
which paved the way for the transfer of these land resources to the cacique class that mediated
between the Spanish colonial government and the natives, and now had the means to purchase the
lands, in the process creating the oligarchic elite that exercised a monopoly over the country’s
agricultural resources until the present (Schumacher, 1981; Connolly 1992). A new regime of power
displaced colonial religion as the axis of government. The nation’s law and jurisprudence and political
system followed closely those of the United States. Anti-clericalism characterized nationalism (Kessler
and Ruland, 2008). In as much as Catholicism became embedded in the formation of the nation-state, so
did liberal ideals of government and society. It is no accident that history books taught Filipinos that
religion was Spain’s heritage to the country, while democracy was the legacy of the United States. The
ascendancy of the United States beginning in the nineteenth century as a world power cemented its
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lasting political, economic and cultural influence on the Philippines, serving as the Philippines’ model of
a dynamic progressive nation and the country’s link to the modern West. Hewing to the liberal ideals of
governance and democracy, not to mention the values of the market, the Philippines took pride in
Yet, while the Catholic Church has been formally disestablished, politics have shown the imprint
of Catholicism in the practice of policymaking and the conduct of elections. Civic space, where
individuals are supposed to interact as equal participants, has also disclosed the sway of religion over
other voices, muffling oppositions and conflicts. In the Philippine case, the idealistic legal discourse of
Church-state separation is maintained even as the secular is being oriented towards religion, with the
substance of the (reproductive) law being aligned with religious doctrine. When the Church declares
that its position is rooted in the fundamental ideals of the nation and not in religion, it aims to narrow
the distance between the religious and the secular, with the Church giving the impression that it is
willing to be subsumed within the nation-state. Filipinos’ historical memory of a Church colonizing the
islands recedes and gives way to the idea of a secular nation simply returning to its religious roots,
without the violence that had accompanied the colonial religious conversion. In a sense, the secular
that emerges is a space and a set of dynamic social processes that is officially stripped of religious
markers but is deemed really religious underneath (not governed by religion but whose essence is
deemed religious). Thus, when the bishops declare that they speak not on the basis of religious
teachings, this utterance is possible only because the nation had already been defined in terms of
religion. But the logics and mechanisms of the secular dictate that this truth can only be confirmed and
conferred by the state, not by religious authorities, a kind of role reversal that demonstrates how the
Catholic Church also needs the state to legitimize its authority. Yet, with the entangled dynamic of this
relationship, this harmonization between religion and the secular is also experienced by the nation as an
The engagement between the Church, the state and social movements indicates that Filipinos
recognize that there is a role for the Catholic Church in the public sphere. In fact, Filipinos value its voice
and intervention in political issues that confront the abuses and failings of the state and of the market,
invoking the social justice and democratic streams within the Church. At the same time, however, it is in
challenging a coercive state power that the authoritarian tradition of the Church comes in as an
family, and morality that many Filipinos reject the dictates of the Catholic leaders. Ironically, personal
morality is the area over which the Church claims to preside and have jurisdiction, and from which,
PART FOUR
Catholicism’s near-unquestioned status as a natural part of their way of life influences how
Filipinos understand and conduct themselves as social and ethical beings. A lasting legacy of 300 years of
Spanish colonization, Catholicism is viewed as an essential element of Filipino national identity and
moral subjectivity. With an overwhelming majority of its population identifying as Catholics, the
Philippines prides itself in being one of only two Christian countries in Asia. But this premise of a purely
Catholic nation no longer holds true as religious pluralism has expanded. With the growth of Islam, the
various Protestant denominations, and evangelical groups, as well as independent Filipino Christian
churches, the Catholic Church faces challenges to its dominance. Yet, as an authoritative discourse
(Asad, 1979), Catholicism regards other systems of meaning according to its imposed concepts. In this
case, Catholic doctrine remains the frame of reference against which other religions must define and
Despite the arguably diminished influence of Catholic teachings on the sexual and reproductive
morality of Filipinos, Catholicism continues to permeate Philippine society. This is evident in the rituals
and practices that people perform in daily life. With Church dogma relegated to a minimal role,
however, it is the symbolic and social aspects of Catholic practice that Filipinos have embraced and have
become embedded in everyday life. Images of the Virgin Mary, the Santo Niño, Christ and the saints are
found everywhere -- in homes, parks, schools, government offices, even inside jeepneys and on random
street corners. Mass attendance and devotion to the Virgin Mary and the saints are consistently high, as
people flock to the churches, especially in times of economic crises. Domesticating these religious
symbols – dressing up the child Jesus statue in a LA Lakers jersey, turning Pasyon chanting into a rap
music session, transferring Sunday mass services to the malls – has become part of the religious scene.
Important family and community events are almost always related to religious occasions, such as
baptisms, weddings, funerals, house blessings and town fiestas. But instead of being marked solely as
religious events, they become occasions when clans reconnect, friends become family, men and women
court, and people enjoy feasts and weave collective stories. Apart from being religious duties, these
events are practiced as social obligations meant to strengthen family ties and community solidarity.
Owing to their regularity and frequency, Filipinos have relied on these socio-religious activities to serve
as organizing vehicles for establishing, sustaining and structuring their social relationships. More than
formal religious instruction, these social habits are equated with being Catholic.
Lent illustrates how Catholicism is observed and expressed in a social – and very public -- way by
Filipinos. Every year, during the Holy Week, the country stops for a whole week to remember the death
and resurrection of Christ. When I was a child, my parents would bring me and my siblings to seven
churches, the required number to complete our visita iglesia which we observed as part of our Lenten
tradition. Crowds of families trekked to the churches, making the same pilgrimage. Some people would
walk barefoot as they made their way to the churches, unmindful of the hot pavement, keen only on
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making good their panata (devotion). On a couple of occasions, we chanced upon flagellants, men who
covered their faces with their shirts and beat their bare backs with a clump of small bamboo squares
individually attached to a thick rope. The skin cracked and the blood dried on the men’s backs. While the
sight could be traumatic for a child, it also seemed a natural part of the religious scene, which lessened
the fear that I felt. The reenactment of the Stations of the Cross through the neighborhood streets, with
a cast of costumed biblical characters led by a Christ carrying a wooden cross, was a feature of the
Lenten occasion. For the entire week, we would also watch old Cecil B De Mille ‘religious’ movies, such
as The Ten Commandments and Samson and Delilah, as television stations showed only ‘religious’
When time and energy permitted, my parents would host a pabasa, a non-stop reading-
chanting of the Pasyon, a book that chronicles the life and death of Christ in more than 200 pages of
verse. My father would create an altar, with the crucifix, the bust of Mater Dolorosa, and other religious
images, while my mother would bring out our stacks of Pasyon. Tita Puring, a relative who was trained in
this chanting tradition, led the pabasa which usually lasted for almost two days. It was an open house,
with friends and neighbors coming and going, taking turns in chanting (and sleeping), while my family
(and extended clan) made sure there was enough food to keep everyone going. The same scene would
be happening in other houses on our street, and most everyone participates in these community
gatherings. At three o’clock on Black Friday, the exact time of Christ’s death, we made sure we were
quiet to observe the moment. By evening, my family and the rest of the community either watched or
participated in the street procession of the Dead Christ, the Sorrowful Blessed Mother, and all the
magnificent rebultos in the Church’s vast collection. With the priest and sacristans in their regalia and
the lay leaders saying the repetitive rhythm of the Holy Rosary, the procession inspired a combination of
awe and solemnity, and pomp and pageantry, among spectators and participants alike. By Easter
Sunday, we would wake up early to take part in the dawn procession; the female members of the family
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joining the carroza (float) of the Sorrowful Blessed Mother and the males joining with the float of the
Risen Christ. On two separate years, my younger sisters were the angels who lifted the black veil from
the grieving figure of Mother Mary to declare the resurrection of her Son. I, on the other hand, never
saw myself as an angel and was only too happy to be singing Regina Coeli in the children’s choir.
These rituals made powerful impressions on the minds of both children and adults. Catholicism
provided the community with drama and spectacle, pathos and excitement. It energized, moved and
gathered large numbers of people. Performance of, and participation in, these very public rituals
signified to people that they belonged to the Church. Looking back, I realize that my immersion in the
religion involved Church tradition and teachings, folk beliefs and practices, and even local and
Hollywood pop culture. While all these rituals told me that I came from a family of observant Catholics,
it was my private Catholic education that somehow gave me a sense that I was being consciously
Catholicism as lived practice shapes subjectivities. Catholic formation starts during childhood.
From the moment a child is born, she is already being prepared for and socialized into the Catholic
tradition. She can see and join the outside world only after being baptized. As early as possible, her
family introduces and inculcates in her the rituals of the religion. As forms of discipline, regular mass
attendance, the confessional, the Holy Communion and saying prayers provide the child with a structure
that will guide her spiritual and moral development. A Catholic education, which systematically
introduces the doctrine, ensures the rigorous compliance with tradition and ritual, not to mention the
reverence for religious authority. Although rote learning and routinary observance as methods of
cultivating piety has been criticized by the religious and non-religious alike, these instill in individuals a
sense of being Catholic and afford them the right to claim this identity. As religious techniques that get
repeated over and over and transferred from one generation to another, they become cultural habits
associated with, and create, the moral person. More critically, Catholics believe that this whole
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disciplinary regime has application outside of its religious context and can determine a child’s future
success as a productive citizen. This is grudgingly conceded even by staunch reproductive health
advocates who face a dilemma regarding their children’s education. For those who can afford it, Catholic
schools are still preferred by parents who want their children to receive quality education, acquire
“values formation” and grow up with a “structure”. Testimony to this immense credibility is the number
of Catholic schools operating in the country. As of 2001, the Catholic Church was running 965 high
schools and 275 colleges, as well as hundreds of primary and kindergarten schools, molding and
educating the minds of about two million young students (Kessler and Ruland, 2008) and producing the
middle class educated elite and leaders of the future. In a social environment that consistently
reinforces and reproduces its dominance in the culture, Catholicism becomes the default worldview
through which many Filipinos comprehend social facts. As someone who was immersed in this
environment for all her young life, I can say that children grow up thinking that the whole world is
Catholic and other religious groups are an aberrant, if at times incomprehensible, populations.
Class and gender also structure the patterns of Catholic religiosity and subjectivities. While the
middle and upper classes, through Catholic education, receive formal religious instruction, the lower
classes rely on their families and popular culture as the main forms of religious transmission. As Catholic
schools come to be more associated with the elite and fewer lower class families can afford access to
these institutions, Catholic education has become a guaranteed marker of social status and
respectability. It is among the upper classes that religious patronage circulates as they serve as
benefactors to Church programs and projects, as well as recipients of Church, even Vatican, recognition
and privileges. A few of those campaigning against the reproductive health bill, for example, were
prominent lay individuals who held significant government offices and coveted Vatican-designated
positions in the Church. As their social status and power are interwoven with the operations of the
Catholic hierarchy, and having imbibed its dogma and rules more systematically, the elite are more
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invested in maintaining the moral and public authority of the Church. Moreover, moral virtues and
political principles, as publicly espoused and observed by the elite, and linked to religiosity,
respectability, charitable works, economic freedom and liberal democracy, become the dominant
National surveys on religiosity show that Filipino women, more than men, are the more religious
gender in terms of Church attendance. Church attendance and participation in religious organizations
and activities are higher among women. While men, led by the bishops and priests, make up the Church
hierarchy, it is the women who maintain and run the activities of the parish, schools and foundations on
a daily basis. More critically, it is traditionally the mothers who introduce and socialize their children into
the religion, and are responsible for the family’s moral and religious upbringing. It is safe to say that
women comprise the majority of Catholic communities. The Church relies both on their religious loyalty
and caring labor to maintain the institution and reproduce the next generation of Catholics. At the same
time, the Church exercises doctrinal influence on Filipino women, their social and moral views, and their
reproductive practices and decisions. Not surprisingly, it is the nuns and the women’s groups, such as
the Catholic Women’s League, that are easily mobilized by the Church for its campaign against the
reproductive health bill. More telling is the participation of Catholic schools in congressional hearings:
while students from exclusive girls’ schools run by the religious sisters are visible in these Church
actions, there is not the same participation from the counterpart boys’ schools run by the priests.
BAD CATHOLICS
Protagonists in the reproductive health debate contest the questions: What makes a good
Catholic? How should a Filipino express her Catholic religiosity and identity? And who can claim Catholic
identity? This contest is as much about the substance of Catholicness as it is about the process of
Obeying religious teachings constitutes moral goodness for many Catholics. For those who
oppose the reproductive health bill, however, this general principle, usually left for individuals to deal
with privately, now requires a public show of allegiance to the Church. More specifically, complying with
the papal edict, Humanae Vitae, and declaring war against the bill are a must to qualify as a good
Catholic and to prove one’s Catholic identity. For the bishops, Catholics who support the proposed bill
fail in this test and therefore lose the right to call themselves as such. Considering the many Filipinos
who do not follow religious doctrines, it was pointed out that this rigid requirement could mean for the
Catholic Church losing a significant number of its members. But to this possibility, a prominent pro-life
As the Holy Father says, when you prune the Church, that is the time it will grow.
That is in fact his message to the Catholic schools: better quality than quantity.
That is how the Catholic Church started. They used to burn the Catholics, the
Christians. But they stuck to their faith, and they met their fate (in) the catacombs.
We’re not here to hide ourselves just because we are afraid to be unpopular.
They laugh at us, they ridicule us, they call us medieval thinkers. But I’m sorry,
if you use these (sex education) modules, we not only go back to the dark ages,
we will go back to pagan times.
The autonomous person exists only in relation to the possibilities sanctioned by the Church. This
is echoed in the statement of the bishops questioning “(women’s) power over their bodies without the
dictation of any religion”. As for Catholics who are firm believers and yet who are for reproductive
health, according to a bishop I interviewed, “many of them don’t know how these contraceptives
operate; but if you explain (it) to them, I think they are more convinced.” Although the Catholic
hierarchy makes a point of stating its respect for the individual’s conscience, there is for the Church “an
informed and right conscience”, which is “enlightened and guided” by the “teachings of one’s faith”
(CBCP pastoral letter, 2011). This conscience must conform to God’s will, as interpreted by the priests.
Yet, theologians also recognize a “hidden” tradition within the Church – not publicly spoken
about by the bishops – which allows more freedom to the individual’s conscience and its contextual
digression from Church doctrine as part of the person’s spiritual development. This acknowledges the
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competence of lay Catholics to reflect on, interpret and apply the moral laws of the Church in their lives.
Moreover, this implies that clergy may have limited competence in certain moral matters, “given the
limits of natural law itself”, and may have to rely on laity “as providers of secular knowledge” to Church
authorities (Bernas, 1991). As legal expert and constitutionalist, Father Joaquin Bernas (1991), asserts,
“(T)here is theological foundation to the possibility that a very much married Secretary of Health might
know more about conjugal morality, and immorality, than some celibate monsignori (p. 14).”
religious authorities, destabilizes Catholic identity. That is, at least from the point of view of the Church
hierarchy. And, this is exactly what has happened with the emergence of an organized movement of
Catholics that supports reproductive health. Using their faith as the platform for their position, members
of the Catholics for RH Movement (C4RH) assert their right to exercise their free will according to
“(Church) teachings of equity, social justice, love, and compassion”. As a counterpoint to the Catholic
Church’s move away from religious argument and its embrace of secular language, this reverse move by
advocates pushes the contestation over religious identity to the forefront of the debate. What results is
a shift in the political struggle: whereas the Church has designated reproductive health as the
battleground, advocates have now taken religion and Catholic identity as the terrain for contestation.
Content in the past to rely on the strength of human rights arguments, advocates now not only feel the
need to uphold reproductive health; but more so, they see the imperative to reclaim their faith as they
understand it.
FRIAR MEMORIES
The gentleman, dressed as Jose Rizal, the Filipino national hero, found himself near the altar and
couldn’t resist the temptation. It was a special Mass, but he wasn’t aware of it. All he knew was that he
had a message for the bishops, and so he walked to the front and lifted his placard on which was
emblazoned the name, “Damaso!” While at it, he shouted at their eminences to get out of politics. The
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congregation heard, and so did Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, archbishop of Manila, and Alfredo Lim,
mayor of Manila. Soon after, the gentleman was escorted out of the Manila Cathedral and arrested by
the Manila police, based on a suit filed by the Catholic Church. The official charge: offending religious
feelings. It was a criminal statute that went a long way back in history, way, way back, in fact, that no
one had heard of it until that February afternoon. The news touched a nerve among the public and
exploded on Facebook and Twitter universe, with outraged citizens casting their support for the
The gentleman was Carlos Celdran, an artist and a much-sought out tour guide, who was
popular for making art performances of his historical tours of old Manila. Of the old Spanish elite, his
exposure to the city’s slums convinced him that people needed help in planning their families. He was
already distributing condoms in Manila’s poor areas long before reproductive health advocates
approached him to be part of their campaign. Ironically, his work as a guide depended on the
cooperation of the Catholic Church, as the latter controlled the major sites in Intramuros, the old walled
city that served as the spiritual and political center during the Spanish period, and which was Celdran’s
platform for his performances. San Agustin, the country’s oldest church and a premier stop in Celdran’s
introduction to Philippine history, is one such site. The cobbled streets of Intramuros also lead to the
Manila Cathedral, the seat of the Manila archdiocese, and to the offices of the Catholic Bishops
Conference of the Philippines, as well as some of the oldest Catholic universities. And, of course, there
was Fort Santiago, the military fortress the Spaniards built in the 16th century, and where the national
In writing the subversive novels, Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not) and El Filibusterismo (The
Filibuster), Rizal, who believed in freedom, self-governance and reforms through peaceful means,
inspired both the reformist dissent and armed revolution against Spain. Depicting the ills of Philippine
society and the centuries of oppression of Filipinos under the colonial regime, his novels captured the
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corruption and abuses of the friars, and the seething rage the natives felt toward the prayles (friars). The
petty and hateful Dominican, Padre Damaso, was the villain of the piece. Embodying the vindictiveness
and moral corruption of the prayles (friars), Damaso had the hero, Ibarra, excommunicated for daring to
stand up to him. He was later revealed as the real father of the tragic heroine, Maria Clara, whose
betrothal to Ibarra never came to be because of his machinations. Banned by the Spanish government
because of their incendiary content, the novels continued to haunt the Catholic Church into post-
independence Philippines as the clergy in 1956 sought to ban its teaching in public and private schools,
With the arrest of Celdran, in his Rizal persona, the deep historical memories of friar abuse
erupted to the surface and drew a parallel link with the Church’s political intimidation in relation to the
reproductive health bill. The call for compassion resonated with many as online discussion threads
showed comments from ordinary Filipinos questioning the bishops’ lack of sympathy for those whose
poverty simply cannot sustain their large families and for whom Church teachings offer no solution to
their everyday problems. Opening the question of what it means to be Catholic, these ordinary Filipinos
challenge the Church hierarchy’s own sense of ethics, charging bishops of being un-Catholic, being
unfeeling, and being hypocritical. Expectedly, the sexual conduct of priests, many of whom have gotten
women pregnant and are hiding their own children, has not escaped criticism. Celdran eventually posted
bail, with the help of family and friends, and was made to apologize to the Catholic Church. But his act of
had already had its desired impact. “Damaso”, that one word, gave a name to the intransigent and
abusive power of the bishops who sought to get their way and block the bill, no matter what.
Defending Catholicism has taken on two approaches, one negative and the other productive.
While the first involves exposing the hypocrisy and attacking the morality of the Catholic Church, as
demonstrated by the surge of protests during the Celdran incident, the second involves the affirmation
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and deepening of commitment to Catholicism. The Catholics for RH Movement aims to make fellow
Catholics realize that “there is no dissonance with their being Catholic and simultaneously believing in
the advocacy and goals of reproductive health and rights” (Catholics for RH, n.d.). But in order to
reclaim their faith, advocates recognize they must learn more about their religion and study the
teachings of the Church more thoroughly. This has inspired members to go back and read the Scripture,
and hold forums that engage with progressive clergy and moral theologians. Advocates think this
process will enable them to deepen their faith and argue for reproductive health within religion while
holding steadfast to their Catholic beliefs. A reading of their manifestos reveals a movement that is still
figuring out how to position itself within the framework of Catholic doctrine. While it insists on “Catholic
manifestations” of social justice and compassion, the movement nevertheless only repeats the rhetoric
that couples, and, especially, women, should have the right to determine the circumstances within
which to raise their families, and to have the freedom to make decisions based on their conscience and
their capacities and limitations. Defining reconciliation as the apostolic mission of Catholics, the
movement calls for compassion for those “in need and in distress”, stressing that the goals of saving
women’s lives and raising healthy families should serve to unite Catholics. Even as it pronounces that
living a “healthy, happy, and dignified life” is a “Christian right” (Catholics for RH letter, 2011), the
movement has yet to reframe the reproductive health issue within a specifically doctrinal Catholic
position.
What the movement has accomplished, however, is to claim legitimate public space for the
Catholic voices not sanctioned by the Church. Here, going public and being visible are the critical
strategies of the movement. Going against the tendency of many adherents to keep their opposing
sentiments to themselves, Catholic supporters of reproductive health send the message that it is time to
speak out and show that the Church hierarchy does not speak for them. Disagreements with the Church,
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however, should not mean turning away from one’s faith. Explains Edelina dela Paz, national
coordinator of Catholics for Reproductive Health (Jimenez-David, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Oct 6, 2010):
You don’t stop being a Filipino just because you are disappointed or angry
at our leaders. The same goes for our love and faithfulness to the Catholic Church.
We remain very strong and faithful to the Catholic Church, but we strongly disagree
with the bishops’ stance on family planning and reproductive health.
Although the possibility of being disowned by the Church is real, these advocates are prepared to fight
for their right to belong in the Catholic Church. As a defiant Rina Jimenez-David (Philippine Daily
Inquirer, Oct 6, 2010), a prominent journalist and reproductive health advocate, writes in her column:
But if Church authorities wanted me out of the Catholic Church, I said, then
they would have to drag me out kicking and screaming. I wasn’t giving up my
membership in the Church on just anyone’s say-so.
By mounting an organized challenge to the Church and its notion of a conforming believer, the
movement begins to fashion a new Catholic identity that allows a person’s conscience to be
independent from official teaching, and in a way that may reformulate Catholic laity’s relationship with
religious authority. In evolving this flexible Catholic subject, the movement asserts the validity of using
life experiences as the basis for reflecting and reinterpreting religious teachings, instead of forcing life
CHAPTER FOUR
The contentious debates around reproductive health, population, and development have placed
poor women – their image, status, and condition -- in the center of the national policy battle contested
by women and health groups, the state, and the Catholic Church. Citing studies showing that a majority
of families that have many children are poor, Rep. Edcel lagman, the main proponent of the
reproductive health bill asserts that the aim of the policy is “to improve the quality of life of the
people…” (Explanatory Note, House Bill 17, 2008). Reproductive health advocates support this
statement and have come out with ads with dramatic images of sad mothers juxtaposed with statistics
on poverty and maternal mortality. The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, on the other
hand, has called on the “faithful” to defeat the measure because it “…militate(s) against the aspirations
of the poor, the integral development of our people, the integrity of creation, moral values in the family,
the welfare of women, children and the young…” (CBCP Pastoral Statement, 2000, cited in CBCP
Monitor, 2008). Thus, to the Church’s list of charges against the RH bill could be added, “anti-women,”
While the welfare of the poor has been part of the language and rhetoric of social movements,
policymakers, and the Catholic Church for a long time, this “hailing” of the poor to identify, and be
identified, with the agenda of the different political actors at this political juncture comes from a
recognition of the volcanic consequences of the deepening alienation of the masa from Philippine
society. This disaffection with society was evident during the violent uprising by the masses of urban
poor and slum dwellers in 2001 to protest the ouster of populist President Joseph Estrada by the elite
and middle classes, the Catholic hierarchy and the military. If prior to this mainstream society had been
able to ignore existing class cleavages, this event finally convinced the public, and with such impact, that
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there existed a layer of society that lived on the margins and whose needs were being denied. What it
further exposed was the potential power of the marginalized, given their sheer numbers, to disrupt and
overturn the political system. With this came the recognition that, in order to prevent another uprising,
government has to respond to the conditions that were at the root of the alienation of the poor.
Cardinal Sin, in the aftermath of the violent riot on May 1, emphasized that “the poor will have to be the
priority” (Sison, 2001). (See also Editorial, Philippines: Mirror Images, Asia Times Online, 3 May 2001;
Maritess Sison, Filipinos jolted as 'people power' bites back, Asia Times Online, 4 May 2001; Walden
Bello, The May 1st Riot: Birth of Peronism Philippine-style? Focus on the Philippines, 7 May 2001.) In
terms of traditional politics, aligning with, and showing the same sensibilities as the poor reinforced it as
In professing to speak for the poor, the main protagonists in the debate recognize the potential
impact of a reproductive health policy on poor women. Yet, as Mary Racelis, a prominent sociologist,
pointed out in an opinion piece, the voices of those most affected – the women -- were “eerily missing”
in the debate. She further asked: “Even if they courageously break the culture of silence and speak out
from their own vantage point, who among the powerful will listen?” (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 2008).
Indeed, as then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo explained her support of the Catholic Church’s
position, there was “not enough pressure to make (her) change (her) policy”. This implies that women,
most of whom struggle everyday to support their families, must match the institutional resources of the
Catholic Church in order to be given a hearing by those in power. Policymaking, in this regard, penalizes
the poor for being poor and the powerless for being powerless.
In this chapter, I present the voices of women who come from a slum community in Metro
Manila. In looking at the lives of these urban poor women, I explore how they interpret, follow and
resist Catholic Church doctrines and practices as these relate to sexuality, reproduction and citizenship.
Further, I examine how social class, gender and religion work in tension with one another in women’s
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everyday decisions, and how the constraints and opportunities that poor women encounter in their
everyday lives are enabled by the state and its institutions. Moreover, I examine how social exclusion
shapes the moral economy by which women negotiate reproduction and sexuality. In doing so, I attempt
to look at the footprints of power in women’s relationship with authority, whether that of the state or
I have passed Sangandaan14 a countless times in the past. As a college student, I took the daily
commute from Sta. Mesa to Quezon City, and on the way back, my jeepney would go around the
rotunda where it would make several stops in front of government buildings to let off and pick up
passengers. I had heard that behind these buildings and their perimeter walls were hundreds of families
living in shanties and makeshift dwellings. When friends working on urban poor issues confirmed this to
me some years ago, I found it incredible that these squatter communities, as they are commonly called,
had existed there, not completely hidden yet almost invisible to the rest of the passing world. But the
women, men and children who lived in these communities were not trying to hide themselves, and their
invisibility was not of their own making. The wall was there for a reason, but I, for one, had never
bothered to look.
A colleague, a community organizer who is herself from the ranks of the urban poor, showed me
the visible side of Sangandaan and taught me how to get there easily. To access Sangandaan, one has to
get off the highway, right after it curves away from the rotunda, and there one sees a line of low
dwellings, made up of scrap materials – wood, tin, tarpaulin, plastic, hollow blocks, rocks, rubber tires -
cobbled together, hugging one side of the highway. A few small sari-sari (variety) stores and cramped
eateries are interspersed between the houses. Water, coming from the laundry washing, the canal, and
14
Name of community has been changed.
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other household sewage, flows on the sidewalk. The color of this scene is mostly gray and ash, of
something old, put together. It has a settled-in look, despite its makeshift appearance.
The dirt road that leads to the interior is wide enough for a jeepney to pass through, but is too
narrow to accommodate two vehicles side by side. This does not matter, anyway, since this road does
not go beyond 50 meters, after which point, it funnels into a tiny street, which splits into narrow
confusing arteries that twist and turn, and somehow divide and organize the community into four
sections: A, B, C and D. Once one has reached section D, one has to retrace her steps in order to leave
the place. The street that once served as the backdoor for the residents had been closed by the
government agency located on the other end of the community. A few of my respondents had
suggested that this made it easier for the police to flush out criminals, who may or may not be from
Sangandaan, and who would retreat and use the community as a haven. Of course, in desperate
Sangandaan is a dense community on a small block of government land, teeming with people,
ever-growing, but with very limited space for expansion. The fragile houses, box-like and usually no
more than 8 square foot wide and 6 feet high, sit on top of, and lean and groan against each other. They
are often dark, lacking proper ventilation, and sometimes had only the dusty ground for floors. Their
walls and roofs may protect inhabitants from the direct sun, but are too flimsy and haphazardly
assembled to fend off the rain and strong winds that the typhoon season brings. When it rains,
dampness hangs in the air and the cold settles on the ground inside, making one feel dry and drenched
both at the same time. Often carrying two or more families, these houses get further subdivided or
extended upwards when a son or daughter decides to bring their partners and children to live with their
original families. To go to the second level of a house, one has to climb very steep stairs or a vertical
wooden ladder leading to a trap door that has been cut out from the ceiling. Pushing up the trap door
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will lead one to a small room which either serves as the bedroom into which everybody must squeeze or
On a typical day, playing children crowd the tiny streets and adults are found in front of their
houses relaxing and chatting with neighbors. Because their homes offer little room for movement,
residents spill out into the streets to beat the heat, stretch, gamble, cook, wash the dishes, do the
laundry, take a bath, have a drinking session, hold parties, and sing karaoke. The merging of private and
public space is further highlighted by the way secrets and intimacies inadvertently, and at times
unavoidably, get spread in the community. With only thin plywood usually separating the houses, family
conversations and quarrels, as well as couples’ intimate moments, carry through walls. Cora15 recounted
the night she refused her husband’s sexual attentions: When she felt her husband beside her, she
hollered, “Ba’t mo ba hinuhubad and panty ko?!” (Why are you removing my “panty”?!), and not
unexpectedly, they received a lot of teasing comments and knowing smiles from neighbors the morning
after. It was a case of dense and porous space acting as an effective transmitter of sensations and
emotions, transforming personal information into public knowledge. (This state of affairs has
influenced the way the women respondents viewed their private lives. In one of my early getting-to-
know-you group conversations with them, they dismissed my suggestion that they could choose not to
answer any question that they might not be comfortable with. The notion of privacy was something they
seemed to dismiss, reassuring me that their lives were open and there was not much to hide from each
other.)
As an established squatters’ community, Sangandaan gets legal water and electricity. One of the
country’s two major water monopolies supplies water to Sangandaan, setting up a main source at the
entrance of the major road. But many households remain without their own source of water as families
are made to bear the cost of the pipeline that will connect to the main source. The women I interviewed
15
Names of all community respondents have been changed.
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had to buy water by the bucket from neighbors who had their own pipelines. At 2.50 pesos per bucket,
one family of four buys six buckets every day to be used for bathing, cooking, washing dishes, and
flushing the toilet; if there was laundry to be washed, six buckets were added. This family ends up
spending more than 400 pesos (about $ 9.50) a month on water, an exorbitant amount to pay for what
can only be described as trickles of water and which represents a significant share of the family’s
meager income . (For comparison, I checked this amount against my own family’s monthly water bill. For
an unlimited water supply that supports the needs of a busy household, we pay about 700 pesos.) How
precious water is to these families was highlighted for me one afternoon as I was chatting with Mila, one
of the mothers I interviewed. Having noticed that many children sit on the ground and run around
regularly with their bottoms naked, I asked, “Why are they not wearing any underpants?” After
expressing annoyance with the “neglectful” mothers of these children, Mila added that the children
must have gone through all their underpants already, but their mothers were probably still collecting
enough laundry before using a bucket or two of water for the washing. To solve this problem,
sometimes the mothers would just hang the soiled underpants to dry the urine without washing them.
Given the problem of sanitation and garbage disposal – garbage trucks cannot pass through the narrow
streets to collect garbage - the implications for disease and illness cannot be overlooked. Skin disease,
A similar arrangement exists for the electricity needs of the community. Residents are required
to organize into clusters of five households, which are linked to a single electricity meter and a main
power source. The monthly bill is divided among the families, one of whom is assigned to collect the
payments. This, however, has caused fights between neighbors as the assigned collectors sometimes
use the money for their own household and emergency needs. As in their water situation, the electricity
use of these families is limited. Most households remain in darkness for most of the day and do not turn
their lights on until early evening; many also turn in early in the evening as they do not have any
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television to keep them awake. With the country plagued by a power crisis, the rising cost of electricity
has affected all segments of society. But poor families, compared to their middle class counterparts, end
up spending relatively more on public utilities while having very limited access to the same. Moreover,
although these families have legal access to public utilities, the illegal status and improvised nature of
their communities condition the manner by which services are delivered – in stop gap fashion.
Reflecting the “underground” character of the community, most of its residents make a living at
the bottom rung of the labor market or as part of the “informal” sector -- as sidewalk vendors, street
sweepers, janitors, jeepney drivers, domestic help, laundry women, dishwashers, ditch diggers, garbage
collectors, construction workers, tee girls, caddies, beggars – earning a petty wage, and most of the
time, irregularly. All of these activities are conducted in the fringes of the formal economy, keeping alive
a whole community that’s at the edge of survival. As proof that low wages have left homeless and
marginalized even the regularly employed, public school teachers, government clerks and members of
the police force count themselves as among the denizens of this squatters’ area.
Against its fringe identity, however, the significance of communities like Sangandaan, with its large
population of potential voters, has not been lost on politicians. Promising to build basketball courts or
community halls, and distributing rice and other goods to residents, politicians, on one hand, secure the
loyalty of residents for the duration of the election campaign. Taking advantage of the windfall that
elections bring, residents, on the other hand, approach candidates to ask for favors. At the time of my
fieldwork, local elections had been called and the large numbers of unemployed in the community
provided politicians with a pool of aides and the seemingly indispensable crowd to boost candidates’
entourage while on the campaign trail. In return, the residents were fed for the day, possibly given a
small compensation and the privilege of orbiting around political power. Family occasions were not
spared from the necessity of creating mutual support in this context --not a few residents had their
birthday celebrations, complete with drinking sessions, sponsored by politicians, while grieving families
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benefited from the generous charity of political candidates who visited during funeral wakes. Juliet, one
of the younger women I interviewed who had worked for a politician in a previous election, shared that
one of her tasks then was to identify for the duration of the campaign all the individuals who were
celebrating their birthdays, having a child baptized, getting married, or had a death in the family and to
provide this information to political leaders. This information-gathering is crucial in facilitating the flow
of dole-outs and secure the electoral benefits of patronage politics. Vote-rich slum communities like
Sangandaan become key sites during elections and can significantly influence electoral outcomes (See,
for example, Phillip Tubeza, NGOs fight vote buying, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11 May 2009; Urban poor
Lourdes, who is 53 years old, remembers Sangandaan as a vast cogon field decades ago. As a
first generation settler, she had helped clear the field to make way for her family’s makeshift house, and
eventually a small community. She shares that the Sangandaan of today is already a third generation
settlement, after previous settlements had been burned to the ground by the government and residents
relocated to sites outside of Metro Manila. However, the efforts to demolish these communities proved
successful only in the short-term as some of the old residents had gone back to rebuild and new settlers
had also staked their claim on the land. Still, the threat of demolition is a hovering presence in the
community, taking on an identity of its own as residents must be constantly alert to developments on
local housing and land policy. Talks of an impending demolition were alive during the early part of my
fieldwork as plans to sell government land to private corporations and convert the land into commercial
centers floated. Later on, the talks calmed down as the election period drew near, protecting the
community from the threat as incumbent politicians sought the support of voters. The tension
underlying the relations between the community and local government also surfaces in how residents
perceive and interpret government projects as a double-edged development. This was evident when the
concreting of the community’s main road was started sometime in 2008. While this was welcomed as a
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project designed to improve the community (and earn votes for the politicians), a few of my
interviewees commented that the new road was meant to prepare the land for conversion into
commercial property and facilitate the eventual take-over by businesses. Apart from considering their
moves in relation to government actions, residents also learn to define their identities and realities in
terms of their engagement with the state. They view themselves as illegal occupants of the land and are
resigned to the idea that they will eventually be relocated outside of the city. They seem to be always
entreating politicians and signing petition papers to stop demolition threats while at the same time
registering their names on government lists to secure a slot in their relocation site. In this context, the
reciprocity of patronage relations exists hand in hand with the antagonistic engagement between
communities and the state as the two entities struggle over housing and land rights while trying to
maintain the existing political order. This complicated relationship between the urban poor and the
state manifest in women’s statements that alternate between gratitude for politicians’ help, cynicism
about government’s programs for the poor, acceptance of their illegality, and demands for government
COMMUNITY WOMEN
For the women I interviewed, the critical events that shaped the trajectory of their sexual and
reproductive lives were heavily framed by their family and socioeconomic background, and the
conditions of poverty and deprivation, particularly. The many exclusions experienced by these women
served to define the social, cultural and moral spaces made available to them for exercising their life
options. The generational impact of these deprivations and exclusions was sadly evident in the
reproduction of experiences in the lives of their children. Moreover, for a sector of women that has
been viewed as having rampant sexuality and uncontrolled fertility, their decisions and actions regarding
sexual relations, marriage, pregnancy and raising children were in many ways characterized by the
pursuit of sexual conventions and gender expectations. Their aspirations of being good women and
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mothers are, however, thwarted by the exclusionary constraints of economics, while their underclass
position already marks these women as “dangerous”, “polluting”, and incapable of moral authority
(Skeggs, 1997). This negotiation between class position, gender norms and sexual values, with its
contradictions, dilemmas and limited possibilities, informs the subjectivities and moral worlds of these
women.
Ranging from ages 18 to 53 years old, most of the twenty women I interviewed had experienced
hardships early in life and learned to survive by working at an age when playing was still supposed to be
their main preoccupation. Working as domestic help for middle-class families, in particular, was the
option open to many of these women. The lack of education is evident in the group as 16 of them did
not finish high school, and of this number, almost half did not even complete grade school. Most of the
women are married, although many did so only after getting pregnant or having borne several children
with their partners. For the few who remained unmarried, the quest for a man who would marry and
support them has resulted in serial relationships which have produced children whose fathers have
abandoned or refused to recognize them, assuring the women’s “bad” reputation in the community.
Interestingly, when I asked the women how they ended up with their partners, a significant number of
them replied that they themselves did not know how things came to be and that they had not imagined
it. The perplexity with which they admitted to this seeming belated realization was intriguing. I would
learn that for a number of the mothers, their experience of reproduction began with a disgrasya, or
accident. Disgrasya, as a result of sexual explorations with their partners, or of male maneuverings or
coercion that leave the women with little choice but to accept sexual relations with these men,
precludes the idea of planning one’s pregnancy and stresses the unpreparedness of the women for
motherhood at the time. In many cases, this unpreparedness on the part of the women was countered
and soothed by the readiness of the men to take responsibility (pananagutan) for the pregnancy and
offer marriage (or some domestic arrangement) that would manage the women’s public shame. Yet,
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while marriage or living together has managed the women’s sexual reputation, it also spelled for the
Half of the women I interviewed had their first pregnancy in their teenage years, between the
ages 16 and 19; about a third, when they were between 20 and 23 years old; and about a fifth, when
they were 24 years old and above. These women have between one and 12 children, with the average
number of children at about 4. The women in their 40s and 50s have an average of five children; those
in their 20s and 30s, almost four children; and those in their teens, almost two children. If we take the
older women’s fertility rates as the general pattern for the community women, it would not be
unreasonable to assume that the younger women in the group have just begun their long reproductive
careers and can expect more children into their late 30s or early 40s. It is worth noting that the average
number of children that these women have is higher than the national average of 3.3 children per
woman. More significantly, it is much higher than the average of 2.8 children for urban women (National
Demographic and Health Survey, 2008.) But what these figures do not reflect is the actual number of
pregnancies that these women have had or the miscarriages and abortions they have experienced.
Neither do these numbers speak of the early deaths of their young children, in some cases. A significant
number of the mothers have also had to give up their children to the care of other relatives or their
former partners. One gave up her newborn child to a “wealthy person” she did not know but who could
EARLY PATHS
Lourdes grew up in a poor rural community in the Visayas. Her parents separated when she was
very young and her mother ended up with another man as a result of gapang, or the act of crawling,
which in this case connotes a stealth sexual act and is a euphemism that the older generation uses to
reduce the stigma of rape or sexual assault. Her stepfather, a farm hand, did not earn enough to
provide for the family. To help feed her siblings, Lourdes learned to dig for sweet potatoes, cassava and
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other root crops. As a young girl, she would cross two mountains to reach her school, often, with an
empty stomach. For as long as she could, she insisted on going to school even when there was pressure
for her to help feed the family. Her mother once demanded, “Are you going to put your desire to study
first before your family’s need to eat?” Before she could even finish third grade, however, she left
I washed clothes, cleaned the house, took care of their children. Often,
my (wards) would get sick, and I was the one who looked after them in
the hospital…Very early (in life), my body learned about hardship…I was
taking care of four kids. I was the only one. My God, that couple was too
much… I was nine years old. The oldest child hit me with a broom. I had
a glass thrown at me…I was there for a year, but never saw my earnings.
After leaving this family, Lourdes worked as a domestic help for other families, and with her
small income, supported her mother and sent her younger siblings to grade school. It was her way of
living her dream of getting an education. Later, she would meet her future husband, a security guard,
who took her on a date one day and didn’t let her go home that night. Speaking in subtle terms, Lourdes
described what happened, “He wouldn’t allow it that nothing would have happened (between us).”
When I pressed if she was forced, she replied, “It was like you couldn’t get out of it.” She admitted that
while she did not want the sexual attention at first, she also got carried along with it. And because
staying with a man for a night was considered either an elopement or compromising a woman’s virtue,
or both, whether or not it was with the woman’s consent, Lourdes explained, “During those years, when
something like that happens to you, you really have to get married.” She went back to her employer’s
house the following day with Ric, who asked for the latter’s blessings to marry Lourdes. Lourdes, who
had a boyfriend at the time, ended up marrying Ric. The two would have eight children, all of whom are
now grown up, and whom they supported on Ric’s earnings as a jeepney driver.
Raissa, 19, had a similar, if a bit more traumatic, childhood. She was born and raised in a
province in Mindanao, where she worked in a corn field as early as age 7. Her parents had a troubled
marriage which drove her mother and her older sister to escape to Manila. Her father eventually
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convinced her mother to take him back and send for him and their other children, leaving Raissa behind.
When asked who took care of her, her answer was made in a dead-serious tone.
“Throw-away” was how Raissa described herself. After almost two years, when she was 9 years
old, her father finally asked her to join the rest of the family in Manila. In Sangandaan, she tried to
resume her studies but eventually quit, never finishing her third grade. Raissa explained to me that she
“married” young because she was looking for someone who would love her. Yet, the circumstances of
her “marriage” were far from what she had envisioned or planned. She and her boyfriend were part of a
group of teenagers who regularly met for drinking sessions and soon the two started a sexual
relationship. Suspecting her to be pregnant, her boyfriend told her father that she was carrying his child,
and, upon learning this, the latter proceeded to beat her up in front of their neighbors. The suspected
pregnancy, however, turned out to be a false alarm. But having been shamed publicly, Raissa felt that
the only way to salvage her honor was to become a wife to her now common law-husband, a young man
whose past arrests for theft had further reduced his chances of gaining legal employment and
Marriage and raising a family came to most of these women unplanned, and even unwelcome
(at least, in the beginning), in some cases. Yet the very unplanned-ness of this disguises the sad reality
that, with little education, even fewer prospects of steady employment or opportunities to realize their
aspirations, marriage and family are the only route left for many of these women. As Lourdes shared,
she envied a friend, who had remained single and worked as a domestic worker in Hong Kong. Had an
opportunity opened to her when she was younger, she said she would have gone to Singapore, Malaysia
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or Japan, and stayed unmarried herself. This reference to other countries speaks to the diasporic
dreams of millions of Filipinos who desire to leave the country in search of a better life and
acknowledges the impact of labor migration in transforming the ambitions and imagination of many
Filipinos (See, for example, Cruz, 1989; Constable, 1997; Parreñas, 2001; Parreñas, 2005; Faier, 2009.) As
the top Asian destinations for Filipino migrant workers, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia hire Filipino
women as domestic workers, while Japan accepts Filipinas mainly as entertainers in its sex industry (See
POEA statistics, OFW Deployment by Occupation, Country, and Sex, Full Year 2010.) As it becomes more
competitive and knowledge-based, labor migration will remain a tantalizing fantasy for those living in
the margins. For Raissa, who expressed a desire to work but had no skills, knowledge or any sort of
productive connection, there is nothing that would bridge between her immediate world of the slums
and the world of gainful employment outside, whether within or outside the country. Lacking real
options, what is left for these women to do? This marginalization, which signifies a gaping disconnect
between women’s ambitions of self-development and economic prosperity, on one hand, and what they
can realistically achieve given the painfully limited resources that are available to them, on the other
hand, serves as a funnel that tracks women into the single direction of marriage and raising a family. In
this instance, the women need only to rely on their “natural” nurturing abilities and reproductive
capacity as their main resources to qualify for this path of marriage and family. But beyond this, for
Lourdes, Raissa and the other mothers, their marriages and families also mark their existence and
significance, offering a progressive movement from a prior social location to a new status, even as they
remain within the same field of power, indicating that they have achieved something in life.
Motherhood, especially, affirmed their place and brought them gender status in the social world.
For me, being a mother gives me joy… Even though our life is like this,
we are able to show our child at a young age that this is the kind of life
we have. When the time comes, when he can already understand, he
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will think, ‘This is the kind of life that my mother had, but my life
shouldn’t have to be like this. I should help my parents’.
In this passage, Juliet echoes the sentiments of the women about motherhood. Motherhood is a source
of happiness for all these women, and seeing their children happy is how they best describe that
happiness. But inextricably meshed with this experience is the everyday challenge of providing for their
children and family. The women talk about not only the challenge to make ends meet; rather, they
emphasize the constant struggle to search for the very means to survive on a daily basis. Juliet, 27, who,
together with her husband and 4-year old son, lives in a household of more than 20 members, counting
her parents, 11 siblings, their partners, as well as her nieces and nephews, knows how it is to scramble
for and fight over the little resources of the family. Because her husband works irregularly as an
unskilled laborer, she is forced to depend on her mother, Hilda, who is also one of my respondents, for
their daily subsistence. She is ashamed of this dependence but she couldn’t do anything about it. To
help out, she wakes up at dawn to go with her mother when the latter searches the garbage cans in
neighboring areas to collect recyclable cans and bottles. Hilda, 50, on the other hand, more than her
husband, provides the steady center for this family. She supports her family by working as a street
sweeper and doing odd jobs for the village council. She told me that her neighbors had expressed
amazement at how she was able to support such a large brood. She explained,
With their husbands or partners often without work or earning barely enough, the responsibility
for stretching resources or filling all the gaps fall heavily on the mothers. The search for food, or finding
ways to feed their family, in particular, takes much of the women’s energy on a daily basis, exhausting
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their resourcefulness with varied results. Maita, a mother of three, starts the day feeding her three
young children sweet porridge, which she buys for 5 pesos a bowl from a neighbor’s food stand. With
the rest of her 100 pesos budget, she buys ¾ kilo of rice, a pack of instant noodles and a can of sardines.
“As long as it has broth or sauce,” which she can mix with the rice, Maita can make the food last until
the evening. To ensure that the food is equally shared, she sits her children around her at meal times
and, in turns, spoon feeds each one of them. A staple for Filipinos, rice is the reliable food choice of
many families and is usually paired with a viand or two. For many mothers in Sangandaan, however, rice
has become a stand-alone meal, mixing it with soy sauce, salt or used cooking oil to give it a bit of flavor,
and counting on its heavy carbohydrates to provide fullness that lasts for hours. For this reason, Maita
proudly declares, her children are not skinny. On other days, there is no budget to speak of and the
mothers must literally roam the streets looking for small jobs, asking neighbors if they need help with
the laundry, fetching water, or other tasks. At times, the first meal of the day has to wait until the
evening, after the women have had an opportunity to diskarte (creative or resourceful hustling) and
earned some money for the day. This was what Lorena was doing when I saw her wandering the main
street one afternoon. When she saw me, her face immediately cleared as she knew I would have canned
goods and a modest compensation for her after our interview session. This made me feel a bit uneasy,
and I wondered how the prospect of receiving money, even a small amount, influenced the dynamic of
our interview sessions. I had to recognize, however, that given the deprived conditions under which
these women live, the smallest of amounts represented a much-needed resource that could decide
whether their families would have food on the table or go hungry for another day. In this regard, the
relationship between myself, as the researcher, and my respondents was inherently unequal. In order to
establish a more equal relationship, I focused on the quality of our conversations, emphasizing that I
was a grateful recipient of their good will. (When one of the women, who I suspected was not in the
mood to be interviewed at that time, hid from me one afternoon, I took it as a sign that I succeeded in
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two things: setting a compensation that was not too lucrative and establishing a dynamic that allowed
Since the women, more than the men, are relied on to diskarte for the family, many of them
have taken to borrowing money from relatives or neighbors, offering laundry and other odd services,
selling street food, joining TV contests, betting on illegal numbers games, or even organizing these
gambling sessions themselves. Hilda used her diskarte skills when she filched gravel and cement from
the road construction site outside and, working fast with her bare hands, built a floor for her house one
night. Sometimes, the diskarte is a losing proposition from the start. This is what happened when Lorena
bought on installment a set of underpants for 500 pesos from an Indian salesman, who roves around the
community selling items for a huge interest, and re-sold it to a neighbor for only 300 pesos. In the end,
she got her cash for the day, but still had incurred a debt of 500 pesos, while subsidizing the cost of her
neighbor’s underwear!
Disappointment with their husbands or domestic partners also surfaced in the course of talking
about the burden of searching for means to support their families. Raissa felt abandoned by her
husband during these times:
Sometimes, when we don’t have anything to eat, he just lies there,
(even if) the kids are hungry. He expects me to be the one to find
(food). One time, we couldn’t borrow from anyone…it was raining, I was
looking for food while he was just lying on his back. But I just let him be.
Maybe, he’ll still change.
It is no surprise that the women describe their life as “isang kahig, isang tuka” (one scratch, one
peck), referring to the way a chicken scratches the ground first before pecking at a grain. Hunger is all
too common, with families rarely getting three meals a day, and none at all once or twice a week.
Drinking water to fend off the hunger is a coping strategy that Cora takes, while keeping her children
inside the house is how Raissa prevents them from getting enticed by the treats at the store. Both
retreat into their homes, willing their minds away from the pangs of empty stomachs. Asked what they
do during these times, they replied: “Tahimik lang” (We’re just quiet.) While the answer was matter of
fact, there was a sadness in their eyes that betrayed their suffering. In those two words, “tahimik lang,”
the women speak of a silence that isolates them from society and is a condition of their existence. It
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goes beyond the physical boundaries that separate them from those who have more in life, for it is a
deeply felt marginalization that gets experienced, confirmed and reinforced with each lack, constraint
and deprivation that is encountered every day. It is a suffering whose depths is expressed, and retreats,
in silence. Poverty and deprivation, as material consequences of structural violence (Farmer, 1996),
At times, however, the resistance to this structural violence erupts in the body and gets
embodied as an affliction (Kleinman, 1997). This is evident in the headaches that left Fe seemingly
detached from our conversations. I asked her one day why it always took her so long to answer my
questions. She explained that she had a constant head pain, and I didn’t doubt her. I had seen how she
struggled to feed her eight children by collecting her neighbors’ trash, her thin arms pushing hard her
wooden cart in the mud and across the highway, earning a measly peso from each household. With a
husband who physically abuses her and refuses to support the family, Fe looks much older than her age
of 39. Poverty exacts its toll in other ways, claiming not only the body but also the mind. It began, a few
years ago, with Juliet’s hospitalization, which was both a medical and a financial crisis for her family.
With financial worries and a newborn son to take care of, she started drifting into her own thoughts,
foremost of which was where to get the money to pay off the bills. Soon, her family could not reach her.
Surviving then becomes the experience that defines motherhood for many of these women. But
surviving brings to mind not only the challenges that they face; rather, it invokes the qualities of
strength, resourcefulness, resilience, perseverance, responsibility, duty and love. All these qualities are
deployed to perform a sacrifice for their children. Indeed, part of being a good mother is the ability to
constantly struggle, take on adversities and do everything for the survival of the family. At the same
time, motherhood itself is a resource (Kawash, 2011) that the women can command to bolster their
actions and decisions while shielding or justifying their willingness to endure the everyday humiliation of
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deprivations. In this regard, the main achievement for motherhood is its affirmation as a virtue. As
gender identity, motherhood, in its virtuous mold, confers social, if feminine, status on women.
Class position, however, has a way of undermining this status. Although sacrifice may make a
virtue out of motherhood, it is a quality that must be enacted and fulfilled with regularity, as demanded
by the particularly impoverished socio-economic context within which the women raise their children.
Providing for the needs of the family is still a requirement, a minimum that, even with their sacrifices,
they are often unable to meet. As a result, the attainment of the model of motherhood aspired for is
compromised and bound to fail. For these women, there is nothing more painful than the helplessness
of not being able to provide for their children. When this happens, they fall short of being the good
CONCEIVING POVERTY
For all the women who participated in the research, every child is a blessing from God, a belief
that concurs with Catholic teachings. Many also believe that the number of children that one has is
determined and has been planned by God. Yet, when asked how they felt when they learned they were
pregnant with the second, third, or fourth child, many of the women admitted to feeling concerned
about how they would manage an addition to the family. The joy, which once accompanied a pregnancy,
is slowly eroded by the prospect of having yet another mouth to feed. Some confessed to thoughts of
aborting the fetus while a few others admitted to actual attempts at terminating their pregnancies. This
is far from the picture of an idealized motherhood that the Church paints regarding reproduction.
Lorena expresses these contradictory feelings about pregnancy and the conflict it creates in the family:
I still feel the same (about each pregnancy). I was happy to get pregnant
but, of course, I worry that I would now have more children. If there are
only a few (of them), I could help my husband. But how would I be able
to help him? I am always getting pregnant. My mother-in-law scolds me
because I’m always getting pregnant, instead of helping my husband. I
tell her, ‘Then talk to your son’. But she says, why her, when I should be
the one to tell my husband to control himself. I did control myself, but
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In talking about their pregnancies, the women would inevitably recall their experiences of giving
birth, their stories painting a picture that go against the sentiments of feminine fulfillment. Instead, they
revealed experiences that represented low points in their lives. Remy talked about how she and her
newborn child had to stay in the hospital for weeks because they did not have enough money to pay for
We thought of escaping (from the hospital). When we got the bill, it was
more than 21,000 pesos…Where are we going to get the money to pay
for this? We only had 3,000. My husband went to the secretary
downstairs and tried to negotiate. He told the doctor, ‘If you want, I can
take my wife home, then we can leave our child here. We’ll go back for
him once we have the money.’ But the doctor would not agree as there
had been many who left their babies and the mothers never returned.
My husband said to them, ‘But you won’t let me work for you. When my
wife recovers, she can also work here, even if it’s washing dishes at the
canteen. Still, you won’t agree.’ Then, my husband got our dilapidated
electric fan, (offered it) as collateral, but they won’t take it. He talked to
the head and begged, ‘Have pity… Please, we can sign a promissory
note…’
The birth of a child, while welcomed as a blessing, is also a period of crisis that destabilizes the
family. Further, there is an uncertain element to the blessing when keeping the child becomes a
question mark, as when Remy, contemplating leaving her son in the hospital, thought she might not see
him again and that, perhaps, he wasn’t meant for them. For many of the women, giving birth to a child is
accompanied by the real possibility of giving up that child as a way of resolving the crisis. It is worth
noting that adoption, as an alternative to contraception or abortion, is a similar solution offered by the
Catholic bishops. What is left out in the discussion, however, is that preventing a pregnancy does not
carry the same moral dilemma for the women as giving up a child, whether in the form of legal adoption
or abandonment.
Without a single exception, the women expressed a desire to limit the number of children they
wanted to have. Their attempts at using contraception, however, have been inconsistent and foiled by
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financial constraints and health considerations. At the time of our second interview, Teresa’s injectable
had lapsed and she was worrying how she would pay for the next one. Before she could get inserted
with an injectable, she would have to buy a pregnancy test kit to determine that she was not pregnant;
if the result of the test was negative, this would allow her to get an injectable, but only after shelling out
a hundred pesos for it. Fear, urgency and resignation undoubtedly showed in Teresa’s words. My
response to her at the time, unfortunately, reflected a logic that assumed that health services were in
T: Yes. (Money’s) too tight for us. You have to pay for it. That’s why I’m
scared that I might get pregnant again. I have to go back to the (health)
center but I have no money. It costs a hundred, Ate.
T: If they (the center) don’t have any in their stock, we have to buy it.
T: No, they really wanted us to pay. I already went, and they were
making me pay a hundred. But, (things) are really tight. What can I do? I
don’t have the money for it. I really want to get an injectable. I really
want to. I’m thinking, as soon as I get the money, I’d get injected. I don’t
want to (get pregnant again), but you can’t tell the man that you don’t
want to have sex with him.”
Here, Teresa pointed to three factors that prevented her from actualizing her reproductive
decision-making: lack of financial resources, inadequate health services and male sexual privilege.
Because women’s contraceptive needs clearly competed with the other urgent needs of the family, their
contraceptive intentions were easily set aside, and the practice discontinued. In addition, the rationality
upon which family planning, as a technological fix, rests does not work in this context. Even the use of
relatively long-acting methods such as injectables suffers from the inconsistencies of the women’s
unsteady lives. However, it is common for health providers to attribute this lack of rationality neither to
the precarious balancing act that the women must perform nor to the inadequacies of the health care
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delivery system. Rather, it is blamed on the perceived inability of the women to prioritize family
planning and to know what would be good for them. But, even when women prioritize, and, yes, beg,
for contraceptives, the health care system, saddled by financial problems and political constraints,
cannot respond to their reproductive health needs. Contrary to the judgment of outsiders, the necessity
of family planning is not lost even on young mothers. In another part of Sangandaan, Emily, who became
a mother at 17, had been breastfeeding her son for almost a year and was determined not to get
pregnant again:
I see other people and their life. I see my life in them. When you have
many children, you can’t do anything else. Even with just one child, it’s
difficult to move around. You can’t even wash the dishes, especially if
there’s no one to help you.
But like Teresa, without any means to access contraceptives, Emily lived with her fears.
In arguing against the Catholic teaching that ‘artificial’ contraceptives are abortifacients that “kill
life”, and are, therefore, sinful and immoral, the women said that using contraceptives eases the burden
of poverty and allows them to better care for their families. They also questioned the idea of “killing
life”, and asked, “How can that be a sin? Nothing has been formed yet.” For them, it would be more
sinful to have more children than they could support and jeopardize further the survival of their other
children. Responsible parenthood, then, is more than just choosing which family planning method to use
or deciding which one is more moral. It is interpreted by the women as taking into account not only the
life of a potential child but the impact it will have on the future of their other living children. It is on this
issue that a clear articulation of a right was made by the women: the right to decide and determine
what’s good for their families. This right is linked to the assertion that they must follow their “own
conscience”, and that the Catholic Church, when it came to matters about raising a family, should not
impose its thinking on women. In declaring that not everything that the priests say must be followed,
Church proscriptions then seem to play no role in women’s decision not to use ‘artificial’
contraceptives or undergo sterilization. Apart from the lack of financial resources, one of the main
reasons that prevented women from using contraceptives was the fear of side effects, such as getting
cancers, especially, losing their menstruation, and thus, the ability to flush out the ‘dirty’ blood from
their bodies. More critically, they feared losing their ability to work and perform physical tasks, which
was needed in caring for their kids and home. Women were consistent in explaining that they decided
against ligation because they believed once the procedure had been performed, it would mean they
could no longer carry heavy loads, fetch water or wash heavy clothes. In this regard, women’s decision
to use contraceptives or not is always weighed in relation to the performance of, and adherence to,
their maternal duties. Clearly, the matter of ‘artificial’ contraceptives and family planning has been
defined by the women as primarily about family survival and the mother’s health; it has ceased to be a
In our conversations, the urban poor women said they considered abortion a sin because it was
“killing” a tao, a human being. But unlike the Catholic Church which believes life begins from the
moment of conception or fertilization, women give between 2-4 weeks before declaring that there is a
human being growing inside them. During the first few weeks, the women believe that what is in their
wombs is only “dugo” or blood, which could be made to flow again by taking bitter herbs, a spoonful of
raw coffee, or even gin. This can also be accomplished by hitting their hips, pelvis, or back against a wall,
pressing the edge of a plate on the stomach or, on purpose, falling down the stairs.
However, there remains an ambiguity about this period of pregnancy. While women assert that
it is “only blood”, they will nevertheless talk to their “child” when they attempt to abort it – to ask for
forgiveness, or to say, “My child, if you really want to live, then cling hard”. If the first or second attempt
fails, and the fetus continues to grow, the woman stops trying and accepts that her “baby” wants to live.
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This negotiation between the woman and her “baby” is mediated by God’s wishes; whether the “blood
flow” is restored or not, the women see the result as one of fate: the child is either meant to live or not,
If it gets aborted, then it gets aborted. But if it’s really meant for you, if
God really gave it to you, then I know… it’s not going to get aborted.
At the same time, in referring to the potential life inside their wombs as tao, a human being or
person, and not buhay, or life, the women hinted that they were relating to something concrete and
recognizable. As they elaborated, it already has an ulo (head) or kamay (hands), which is more than just
a shape or form that they can relate to. When they did use the word buhay, they employed its verb
form, instead of the noun form, stressing the second syllable instead of the first. A distinction was thus
made between the two states, “alive” and “life”. This seems to suggest that women were taking
recognizability of form (head, hands, feet), temporality and viability as the relevant signs or markers of
being human and being alive. Without access to ultrasound technology, however, women make this
assessment based on a combination of folk knowledge, the emotional connection to their bodies,
spirituality and pragmatism. Ultimately, because it is more concrete and sensible, the act of recognizing
the tao that is alive has more significance for the women than the act of deciding when life has begun.
In these examples on contraception and abortion, women, far from taking religion as irrelevant
in their reproductive decision-making, re-interpret religious teachings and seek to reconcile these with
what is attainable morally within the constraints of their situation. While the idea of “sin” persists in the
stories of the women, it is given a vernacular meaning when women defend their decision to use pills or
injectables. On the other hand, in the case of abortion, “sin” loses its rigid definition (i.e. as Church
officials would say, “abortion at any time is killing”) and is subject to many conditions: the number of
weeks the woman has been pregnant, the real fate of the fetus over which only God has control, and the
willingness of the woman to accept this fate. The act of appropriating religious teachings then to fit
one’s circumstances is akin to the tugging and pulling at a stretchable cloth until there is enough
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material to cover a given object. Women constantly adjust and re-adjust until they reach a certain moral
equilibrium, or a reasonable social order, that they believe incorporates simultaneously commonly held
religious beliefs and their own reality. Religion, therefore, does not lose its relevance in women’s lives;
rather, it is made pliable in the process of women’s re-interpreting of religious teachings. It is important
to note, however, that, although they identified as Catholics, the women did not count themselves as
religious, which for them meant strictly observing Catholic practices and teachings. The women rarely go
to mass, cannot recite in full the Church-mandated prayers, and are unfamiliar with specific religious
doctrines of the Church on reproduction and sexuality. Yet, not being religious did not mean for the
women not being close to God. When I would ask the questions, “Do you feel close to God?” or “How
important is God to you?”, this would trigger a welling of tears in the women, and a strong quiet
emotion would overcome them for a few moments. This would be followed by a narrative that describes
Brenda: First of all, when I have a big problem and then I pray, it
lightens (what I feel in) my head…then my chest (also). When I pray and
ask the Lord, I feel lighter…as if the Lord is not far from me. The Lord is
kind to me (short pause, voice cracking). (The Lord) does not forsake me
(long pause, voice crying). That’s what I’m thankful for the Lord, even if I
don’t have my relatives with me, when I pray to the Lord… it’s as if my
parents are beside me…
Juliet: (When I pray), I ask for help from God, I beg [nagmamakaawa]
God to forgive me…I cry out my problems to (Him)…I just cry… (and
after, I feel) happy.
Two things then can be gleaned from these narratives. First, the concept of religiosity (or
spirituality) for women is predicated on an experiential relationship with God based on suffering and not
on religious obedience which the hegemonic Church requires of its constituents. Second, social class is
constitutive of this religiosity, that is, poor women’s experience of God is inextricably linked to their
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experience of poverty and lack, and they construct religious morality through this worldview. In these
narratives, God is a source of hope for the women in times of hardship and need, and provides the
comfort and understanding that lighten their burden. Part of the language that the women use is awa,
which in Filipino means “to beg”, “to take pity” or “to have mercy”, and thus, their oft-repeated
utterance, “May awa ang Diyos” (God will take pity on me). Underlying this is a sense of suffering which
comes out in their stories of poverty, deprivation and survival from childhood up to the present. It is also
a suffering that only God, who had suffered for the redemption of humanity, could feel with them.
Feeling abandoned by society, they articulate their issues in religious terms, the idiom of religion giving
them a sense of worthiness because there is a God who suffers with them (Ileto, 1979).
abortion, some of the women feel that they are still being punished for their “sin”. Their punishment?
They can’t get a steady source of income and they experience a lot of hardship in life. For the women
who gave a child up for adoption, there is also a sense of guilt and shame that remain, belying the facile
position of the Church that, if the woman does not want to bear a child, there is always adoption to
consider.
The tension between institutional religion and ‘lived’ religion is highlighted in the way Filipinos
conscientiously follow religious public rituals but listen to their ‘conscience’ when it comes to private
matters. Yet following one’s conscience does not necessarily mean a guiltless, shameless or sinless life.
As one of my informants during my preliminary research said, the role of the Church in moral matters is
“to protect you and redeem you. Guilt is the mechanism by which that protection and redemption
work.” Sometimes we think of moral subjects as acting subjects; we focus on their concrete actions but
forget what happens inside the person. For the women in this research, the capacity to feel suffering,
guilt and shame seems to be a necessary ingredient in the constitution of moral subjectivity. But the
contradictory nature of this moral subjectivity is revealed in the way that women are able to re-imagine
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religious morality and make room for their own reproductive decision-making, on one hand, and yet still
inhabit the very same religious moral values that they resist. It is important to remember, however, that
even as women define their relationship with God as primary, it is their relationship with their children
and families that demand their urgent attention, energy and care. The guilt or shame arising from their
reproductive decisions and actions then becomes a cross that they willingly bear if it means their
But what makes women’s experience of family planning (‘artificial’ contraception) different from
that of abortion? Is it enough to say that women’s moral subjectivities allow for both the subversion of
reproduction and sexuality, I also attempt to examine the relationship of poor women to power and
authority. What I have found is that, in defending their right to practice family planning and
contraception, women are able to pose a direct challenge to the teachings of the Church, questioning
the institution’s assumptions as well as articulating an alternative perspective based on their realities
and a certain grasp of their rights. This is different from their equivocations when it comes to the issue
of abortion, wherein instead of a direct assertion, women alternate between justification of their
actions, guilt, rationalization, and, finally, submission to doctrinal damnation. Their initial resistance to
religious authority can only find anchor in appeals to the benevolence of the same authority as the
women search for a language that will express the truth about their experience.
In as much as it has legitimized family planning and contraception, the existence of a counter-
public discourse, such as the population, development and poverty alleviation framework, has provided
a space within which women can articulate and ground their reproductive decisions, actions, and so-
called transgressions. Family planning, which has been part of the country’s population and
development strategy since the 1960s, has already gained legitimacy and support from various sectors
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of society. Although it suffered setbacks in the 1980s during Corazon Aquino’s term, its promotion as a
government program has been well-established. The proliferation of advertisements and public service
announcements on the benefits of family planning has also cultivated the public’s support, and with this,
a national consciousness that aligned the family’s aspirations with that of the country’s goal of attaining
development. It is thus not surprising that, when asked why they supported family planning efforts, the
women readily pointed to the “ballooning population”, which, if not addressed, would likely plunge the
country into deeper poverty. With the country’s future at stake, women’s decision to use contraception
While state discourse props up the position of the women on contraception and family planning,
the same cannot be said in the case of abortion. With the provision in the Constitution mandating the
state to “protect the life of the mother and the unborn” strengthening the Catholic Church prohibition
against abortion, government discourse has largely been about the illegality of the act. Attempts by the
Department of Health to introduce the discussion of post-abortion complications as a public health issue
have been thwarted by moral and legal restrictions. Women, in this case, have found no legitimizing
discourse within which to articulate their experience of abortion and enable them to speak back to
power. With its capacity to wield the law and summon the full force of its penal power, the legal secular
discourse of the state, moreover, is proving to be more restrictive. Ironically, it is the religious discourse
that provides women with a little space within which to find moral salvation from their actions. The
merging of the Church and state position against abortion, however, has ensured that women do not
have instruments to support their moral claims, and their voices remain marginalized and illegitimate.
As a result, the alliance between the Church and state has foreclosed the open discussion of the issue
and stifled the emergence of other possible perspectives upon which women could anchor their
experience.
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Women’s ideas and practices of contraception point to their achievement of autonomy from
religious doctrine. Their decision to undergo abortion, and the patterns of their abortion experiences,
defy the Catholic Church’s grave prohibition. This speaks of a resistance to Church authority that rests
on notions of mortal sin, infallibility and religious morality. Yet, without the protective mechanisms of
class status and the structural support of the state, women are unable to sustain their resistance and
For some of the women, there is shame in getting pregnant too often and having many children.
They admitted to cringing, and one or two said they did not leave their house for a while, when
neighbors and relatives commented, “You’re pregnant again?!” These comments were almost always
followed by the question, “Don’t you feel pity for yourself?” and the admonition that wives were
responsible for controlling their husbands’ sexuality. While women would angrily respond with, “Why,
are you the ones who feed my children?” they also expressed helplessness and a wish to change their
situation.
This helplessness and inability to have control over their life situation was further impressed on
me by the end of my fieldwork. After a few weeks of absence from Sangandaan, I returned to the
community for one of my last visits to say goodbye to the mothers. At this time, I learned that Teresa,
Lorena, Emily, Fe, and Celina were pregnant, while Remy had given birth to her third child. All of them
had been insistent about not wanting to get pregnant again and expressed a desire to use
contraception.
Being poor and pregnant makes women more vulnerable to the stigma of having untamed
sexuality and rampant fertility, not to mention the tag of being irresponsible parents and citizens.
Giving economics as the main reason, the women in the study agreed with the common thinking that
the poor do not have the right to have many kids. When asked why the poor have many kids, their most
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common answer was that people “had nothing else to do” and needed something to “occupy their time”
because most of them do not have jobs to be busy with. This reflects the automatic equation of sex with
reproduction and the role of economics in mediating, moderating sexuality, and again the reinforcement
of the perception that the poor have “undisciplined” sexuality. The Catholic Church’s position on
‘artificial’ contraceptives and on sexuality for procreation, by encouraging women to bear children while
at the same time limiting women’s reproductive options, makes poor women more vulnerable to
stigmatization.
But this stigmatization should also be viewed in relation to state policies and actions. In
particular, the proposed responsible parenthood and population management law, while aiming to
institutionalize much needed reproductive health programs and service, also professes to produce
“healthy, educated and productive citizens”. As citizens, women become individuals who are not merely
“acceptors” of contraceptives; rather, as citizens, they are individuals invested with rights and
responsibilities, particularly, the responsibility to appreciate and plan a smaller family. Indeed, the
proposed bill has a section specifying two children as the ideal family size. Moreover, embedded in the
idea of a healthy, educated and productive citizen is the notion of a woman whose subjectivity lies in
self-control and discipline in the arena of fertility and reproduction. At the same time, however,
recognizing the Church’s strong opposition to reproductive health and ‘artificial contraception’, the
government is now implementing a “responsible parenthood” program that provides natural family
planning only services, which urban poor women find hard to sustain given their circumstances.
In this context where being a ‘good Catholic’ means not using artificial contraceptives and
accepting each pregnancy regardless of its impact on families, and being a responsible citizen means
planning your children and appreciating a smaller family even as government fails to provide services to
comply with such ideals, it is hard for poor women to achieve both without being stigmatized and
discriminated against either way. ‘Responsible parenthood,’ moreover, becomes yet another moral
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principle that the women fail to embrace. Indeed, poor women cannot win in this situation. While the
welfare of the poor has been part of their language and rhetoric, the actions of the Church and the state
in relation to reproduction and sexuality have deepened the exclusion and alienation of poor women
from society.
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CHAPTER FIVE
Shore and Wright (1997) argue that “policies can be read as cultural texts, as classificatory
devices […], as narratives that serve to justify or condemn the present, or as rhetorical devices that
function to empower some people and silence others” (p. 7). They further write that the structures,
discourses and agencies through which policy operates can offer us insights into the workings of power.
In this chapter, I present three case studies that show how policies offer implicit and explicit models of
social order. These policy case studies attempt to affect social norms by enforcing existing norms and
This chapter also illustrates how reproductive health policy has traveled through the various
structures and levels of government, despite organized attempts to obstruct its movement. Although
the stalled discussions in Congress have blocked the reproductive health bill, this has only provoked
local governments and national agencies to come up with various policy responses in order to define
their own approaches to the issue. The failure of the legislature to resolve the policy debate has pushed
key actors to summon the powers of other governmental bodies, such as the appellate courts and
international human rights committees. Whether supporting or impeding reproductive health, these
responses from the different levels of government demonstrate how policymaking gets displaced,
rerouted and accommodated in other governmental mechanisms. In this case, policy statements,
national and local health programs, judicial petitions, as well as leaders’ personal convictions, take the
place of national legislation, producing disjunctions and contradictions in the way government operates
Looking at three policy cases, one national and two local, this section examines conflicting
government responses brought about by the unresolved national legislative debates regarding
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reproductive health. The first case looks at the national government’s natural family planning-only
program implemented in 2001 and continued up until 2010. The program highlights how a discourse of
equal opportunity has been developed to justify the radical shift away from a more comprehensive
family planning program to one that solely focuses on natural family planning. It also shows how policy,
in the form of presidential and administrative directives, gets translated by its implementers into a full-
blown program with a philosophy, a schedule of tasks, and a set of targets, in order to accommodate the
Catholic Church’s position within the rationalizing technologies of governance. Religious ideas and
natural family planning techniques embedded in the program work to fashion husbands and wives into
morally responsible parents who maintain both sexual discipline and reproductive openness. What gets
understood, practiced, articulated and circulated by intended beneficiaries are ideas about the family
and responsible parenting that emphasize a harmonious moral-social order based on faith and religion.
This process reveals how the public reworks the ideological positions and policy discourses that the state
propagates, oftentimes taking these in directions not intended by official discourse (Greenhalgh and
Winckler 2005).
The language of policy, according to Apthorpe (1997), is both a form and a source of power.
Policy language uses different ‘styles’ of expression that may be characterized as clear, plain or vague in
order to attract, please and/or persuade. What is clear derives from the omission of something; what is
plain emanates from the refusal to elaborate; what is vague is rendered clear by context. Moreover,
policy language, even if vague, already sets the conditions that may reinforce the status quo, limit the
changes that can be achieved, or introduce radical changes into the system. While policy is not always
successful, the language that it uses always has an effect – on the people it targets, on those charged to
The second case reviews Executive Order 003 enacted by Manila City in 2001, which effectively
banned modern artificial contraceptives in public hospitals and health centers. EO 003 illustrates how
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seemingly vague and plain language creates its own linguistic interpretation aided by the public
recognition of the personal statements and actions of its author-executor. By its vagueness, the policy
already oriented the rules - official and perceived - for its implementation and practice, while its
language provided cover for its real intention. At the same time, even as EO 003’s objective was masked
by vague language, the linguistic cues about the policy’s moral orientation was clear. Its invocation of
universal “pro-life” values works as linguistic and ideological devices that are recognizable – and
therefore interpretable - by the public and meant to persuade Manila constituents of the worthiness of
the policy. The last case looks at Quezon City which approved in 2008 Ordinance No. 1829, establishing
reproductive health programs and mandating adolescent health education in public schools. In contrast
to Manila’s Executive Order, Quezon City’s Ordinance employs a language of efficiency and rationality
associated with economic and social development goals. For the wealthiest city in the country, this
developmental discourse exerts a powerful influence on the debates, overcoming opposition from the
Catholic Church.
These three cases reveal that, as the contestations over reproductive health policy are played
out at the local levels and on the ground, the lines that define the actors on opposing sides of the
debate gets more blurred. Those who implement the natural family planning-only program find ways to
justify talking about modern family planning methods in communities. Advocates of natural family
planning undermine each other as they debate over which NFP methods are more moral and legitimate.
And political allies of the Catholic Church shed their allegiance to the Church position as they confront
their religious leaders and criticize the latter’s actions. What may appear as a clear cut demarcation
between contending parties at the national level are revealed as tangled threads of conflicts and
Coming from the different cities of Metro Manila, they had gathered to recognize the best.
Officials of the Commission on Population and the Department of Health called the regional conference
to mark the first two years of the government’s Responsible Parenthood and Natural Family
Planning (RP-NFP) program, inviting married couples who had actively participated in the campaign to
be part of the ceremonies. Representing the model couples from the national capital, the husband-and-
wife teams were selected based on their regular attendance of responsible parenting classes, consistent
practice of natural family planning for at least three months, and declared satisfaction with the natural
method. They must also be of reproductive age and already have children. The award for the Best RP
Couple goes to the partners who have absorbed the knowledge, attitude and practice of responsible
parenting; use natural family planning properly; and intend to motivate and recruit other married
couples to the program. As judges for the competition, population and health officials weighed these
It was a festive occasion, pop music blaring during the breaks, the programmed proceedings
enhancing the Christmas spirit that was in the air on that December day. The program started with a
spiritual message and a prayer by a bishop, followed by the singing of the national anthem, after which
came the inspirational speeches from top government officials, and the midterm report on the
accomplishments of the Responsible Parenthood and Natural Family Planning program. Sitting at
designated round tables, local health and family planning workers, in their color-coded t-shirt uniforms,
together with their nominated couples, made up the majority of the audience, lending a grassroots
atmosphere to an otherwise ceremonial event. The program’s highlight was the award of the title Best
RP Couple and the first and second runners-up; the winning couples each receiving a glass plaque and a
publications.
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Bearing the theme, “Sa tamang agwat ng panganganak, pamilya’y aangat” (“With proper birth
spacing, your family will be better”), the conference reaffirmed the four pillars of President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo’s population policy: responsible parenthood, respect for life, birth spacing, and
informed choice. Through the showcased posters and infomercials, the program highlighted natural
family planning as a symbol of responsible parenting and a way of improving the conditions and fortunes
of families. The event formalized the Responsible Parenthood Movement (RPM), envisioned as a
nationwide grassroots organization that would promote natural family planning and convince Filipino
couples of its health, social and moral benefits. As a culmination, the elected officers of the Responsible
Parenthood Movement in Metro Manila took their oath and were sworn in by population officials.
A few days prior to the regional conference, a National Population Congress had brought
together in Manila the local executives, health representatives, non-government organizations (NGOs)
and Catholic Church-affiliated groups from the other regions in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The
mayors of Naga, Marikina and Tanay - local governments recognized as having the most successful
natural family planning programs in the country - presented their “best practices” to their counterparts
from other cities and provinces. From the non-government side, a nun representing the Parish of Ipil in
Cagayan de Oro, talked about the archdiocese’s pastoral experience in running a natural family planning
program since the 1970s, which was the precursor of the Philippine Federation for Natural Family
Planning. The presence of local elected officials and health workers in these meetings demonstrated
that the RP-NFP program had found support from local government units (LGUs). Moreover, the
participation of NGOs, and, especially, of Church-affiliated groups, gave the much-needed approval to
the government’s NFP-only population policy. These groups came with their information and education
materials -- comics, calendars, posters, brochures, stickers, manuals, t-shirts -- and exhibited their
knowledge of the various natural family planning methods. Also gracing the occasion was a movie
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celebrity, who has a second career as a respected family and child development specialist and was
The search for the Best RP Couple, the organization of a Responsible Parenthood Movement
(RPM), the mobilization of local governments, and the enlistment of Catholic Church support, were
elements that articulated the natural family planning-only program of the Arroyo government. The RPM
conferences in late 2008, the same time that the debates on the Reproductive Health bill finally reached
the plenary of the House of Representatives, served as a culminating stage in the institutionalization of
this program. Initiated in 2001, the natural family planning-only program was then President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo’s response to the political conflict and the pressure from the Catholic Church that
resulted from the introduction of the RH bill. Arroyo’s directive on natural family planning marked a
radical shift in the direction of the country’s family planning program, which until then took a “cafeteria
approach” of making available all methods of legal and safe contraception. For the first time since the
1970s, the government’s family planning program was officially aligned with the Catholic Church
position.
evolution of the national family planning program and population policy. The NFP Handbook
(Department of Health, 2003) traces the origin of natural family planning services to the programs
started by the Catholic Church in the 1970s, which were later taken on by NGOs and integrated into
health, community organizing and organization-building activities. On the government side, NFP was
part of the range of family planning methods (or, method-mix, in bureaucratese) promoted in the earlier
years, giving LAM (breastfeeding), and the rhythm method a place alongside oral contraceptives,
condoms, IUD, injectibles, and sterilization. In 1994, the Philippine Family Planning Program started to
distinguish between “traditional NFP” and “modern scientific NFP” methods, with the latter being
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recognized as equally effective as the “artificial” methods of contraception, such as the pill. Modern
scientific NFP endorsed by the government by this time included LAM, and the cervical mucus, basal
temperature, sympto-thermal, standard days, and the two-days wet and dry methods. These were
distinguished from the traditional NFP methods, withdrawal and rhythm or calendar, which were
deemed ineffective; the latter was officially removed from the program, while the former was never
found that its personnel lacked the skills and training to deliver NFP information and services. This led
to a partnership with the Philippine Federation for Natural Family Planning and, subsequently, with the
Institute of Reproductive Health at Georgetown University, Washington DC, which aimed to develop the
Department’s capability in NFP training and service provision. By 1996, then President Fidel Ramos
directed local governments to include NFP in their family planning services. The DOH further refined the
implementation guidelines and improved the standards of NFP services in the following years.
While these developments aimed to strengthen natural family planning services, government
viewed NFP as part of a range of family planning services that it should provide. There was no intention
to make NFP the only method endorsed by the government. It is important to remember that the 1990s
was also the period that the government started to take a population management approach and
integrated reproductive health and rights into the population and development framework. The closest
that the government came to introducing a NFP-only program was in the late 1980s during President
Corazon Aquino’s administration, when the Catholic Church and its supporters attempted to get Aquino
to sign secretly an Executive Order that would have prevented government from using public funds for
artificial or modern contraceptives. When this was discovered, women’s groups protested and the EO
was never signed. However, the family planning program during this period was effectively halted as
Mita Pardo de Tavera, then Secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, then the
agency responsible for running the government’s family planning program, stopped distributing
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contraceptives. A big howl was raised when stocks of donated contraceptives were later found in the
followed, and the implementation and provision of family planning services were transferred to the
Department of Health, whose responsibility it remains. The experience of having a family planning
program whose implementation (or non-implementation) depended on the personal or religious biases
of the administrator currently in power was one of the major reasons reproductive health and family
planning advocates saw the need for a reproductive health law. If programs were to be effective, their
The language of Administrative Order 125 s. 2002 (Department of Health [DOH] 2002), which
details the National NFP Strategic Plan Year 2002-2006, describes the government’s new approach as
“mainstreaming natural family planning”. A DOH brochure states that this means “putting NFP into the
center, into focus, in a dominant discourse in the Philippine Family Planning Program (PFPP) where
political will, policies and support systems including budget for information and services are in place”
(DOH NFP brochure, n.d.; DOH NFP Handbook, 2003). In our interview, Director Marcelino further
explained that the history of the Philippine Family Planning Program is a history of providing information
and services on “artificial” methods. This time, she says, the government of President Macapagal-Arroyo
wanted to “level the playing field” and give “equal treatment” to natural family planning. To put this
into action, under the mandate of the administrative order, Congress allocated a budget of 50 million
pesos to fund the information and education activities on NFP. The President’s policy directive
instructed the Department of Health to collaborate with the Couples for Christ, a Catholic group, in
implementing NFP. In fulfilling this, the DOH awarded the 50 million pesos contract to the Catholic
religious group in 2004 to enable the latter to undertake NFP-related activities nationwide. It was
considered a controversial transaction as no official bidding had occurred, but defended by the DOH in a
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press statement as “beneficial because CFC is not charging for its services. The P50 million is allotted for
operational costs of their activities. No salaries or honoraria will be drawn from the said money” (DOH
press statement, 2004). As of 2008, no assessment of this collaboration had been conducted.
In addition to allocating funds for NFP, “leveling the playing field”, more significantly, also meant
that no national government resources would be used to purchase or promote artificial or modern
contraceptives. This came at a time when USAID, the country’s main donor of modern contraceptives,
announced that it would stop supplying these commodities by 2006. Former DOH Secretary Manuel
Dayrit, in a Letter to the Editor (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 2004), responding to criticisms from a women’s
First of all, it has never, at any time been my job or the job of the Department of
Health to buy contraceptives. It would be recalled that all contraceptive supplies
that, in the past, were distributed free-of-charge through the government
healthcare system were donated to the Philippines by foreign governments or
organizations. After many years of this, it became the tendency of many
Filipinos to equate government’s role in attending to maternal and child health
and responsible parenthood with the distribution of contraceptives. The use of
contraceptives is, in fact, only one of the available approaches employed in only
one of the many essential elements of maternal and child health and
responsible parenthood. It does not spell out the totality of the DOH’s work in
this area.
Asked by media who the government expected to fill the gap in services and provide modern
contraceptives, President Macapagal-Arroyo replied, “The NGOs” (Sison, 2003). Equal treatment, in this
case, did not mean increasing support for NFP while maintaining the existing support level for modern
contraceptives; rather, it meant ending services prioritized in the past, but which are now politically
unacceptable, in favor of the Church-endorsed natural family planning. Moreover, as family planning
services get fragmented, the government shifts its responsibility to provide comprehensive services to
In arguing for “ensuring adequate and honest information on the various modalities or
approaches families can choose to ensure their health and well-being,” then Secretary Dayrit also
stated:
The former Health Secretary was right in saying that the contraceptive use prevalence had tapered off in
past years. According to the National Demographic Health Survey (2008), the modern contraceptive
prevalence for all women in the Philippines has increased from three percent in 1968 to thirty four
percent in 2008. However, women’s use of modern contraceptives increased by only five percent
between 1998 and 2003, and by only one percent between 2003 and 2008. But far from what Secretary
Dayrit had implied, the leveling off of the modern contraceptive prevalence cannot be interpreted as a
decrease in demand for modern contraceptives. In this, the NDHS provides a more complete picture.
Reporting on the proportion of women who want to stop childbearing or who want to space their
children, it states that twenty two percent of married women have an unmet need for family planning.
This statistic, however, could be an underestimation as it represents only those who are married and
does not include single women who are sexually active and want to avoid pregnancy. The NDHS further
reports that the level of unmet need has increased by more than one-third since 2003. It suggests that
this increase could be a result of USAID’s withdrawal in 2006 of its large-scale contraceptives supply to
the national family planning program, a funding support that lasted 30 years.
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Secretary Dayrit does not also mention that the natural family planning-only program was a
result of political pressure from and negotiation with the Catholic Church and its allies who had gained
key positions within government agencies. The former Secretary of Health during the first years of the
Arroyo administration was a member of the Opus Dei, a Catholic organization known for its religious
orthodoxy and whose members mostly come from the elite; it was during his term that the Department
of Health declared IUD an abortifacient and banned emergency contraceptives from the market. At the
Commission on Population, two prominent members of the Opus Dei were appointed Board
Commissioners, filling two of the three positions allotted for NGO representatives. A population
To be frank with you, it is the President who appointed the two Commissioners.
The appointment did not go through the regular process. (We) nominated two
others from the NGOs. You can just imagine the discussion in the Board (about
the RH bill). All the GOs (government organizations) and the (Chair) are for the
RH bill, except for the two Commissioners. The Board cannot make a common
stand. Individual members and agencies can have their own position, but as a
collegial body, the PopCom Board does not have one. Secretary Cabral (of Social
Welfare) gave her own personal position supporting the bill. Secretary Duque
(of Health) said let Congress debate on the issue and let them decide. It’s hard
for us in PopCom. At the same time, we are the beneficiary (of the funds for
NFP)… Our Secretary (PopCom) advised us not to join the fray. Our hands are
tied. We have no choice but to be silent.
President Macapagal-Arroyo’s personal position on the issue was the critical factor in the change in
policy. A hard-nosed economist, who used to head the Department of Trade and Industry in the mid-
1990s, Macapagal-Arroyo is also a devout Catholic. Elected Vice President in 1998, she was installed as
President with the blessing of the Catholic Church, when Joseph Estrada was ousted in January 2001.
Given her own religious beliefs and acknowledgment of the Church’s political influence, she was
prepared to follow the Church position on the reproductive health bill and natural family planning to
keep the support of some bishops and hold on to power after the 2004 elections. Giving credence to this
quid pro quo was the discovery in 2011 that Macapagal-Arroyo had granted seven bishops their
personal requests for donations of expensive sports utility vehicles. The bitter irony, however, as some
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legislators pointed out, is that Macapagal-Arroyo admitted in an interview that she used oral
contraceptives when she was a young mother (Sison, PCIJ 2003). A legislator was reported to have
remarked, “I guess at the back of our mind we were all thinking, ‘if you did it yourself, then why are you
depriving women from having the same choices that you had?’” (Sison, PCIJ 2003).
The pressure from within government, together with the President’s support for the Catholic
Church position, shifted radically the focus of the PopCom, and the agency drew widespread criticism
from both NGOs and lawmakers. For PopCom personnel who believed that the agency’s mandate was to
set population policy within the broader economic goals of the country and who affirmed the principles
of reproductive and sexual health and rights during the UN conferences in the 1990s, the conflict
between the new official policy and their previous mandate was something they had to struggle with. As
the PopCom program official admitted, changing their own mindset was a challenge, “It was very hard to
internalize. It was difficult for us in the first years because it was a sudden shift.” The shift was obviously
a big turnabout, brought home by the fact that Secretary Osias, who had previously criticized natural
family planning as ineffective, was now traveling the country to extol the benefits of the method. Osias,
a well-known reproductive health advocate, gained the disapproval of former colleagues in the NGO
community, who perceived him to be too willing to tow the government line. This became apparent
during a congressional hearing, when he was grilled and shamed by a pro-RH legislator who thundered
that he didn’t deserve the salary that taxpayers were paying him; his former colleagues, while feeling
sorry for the treatment that he got, also felt that it was a direct result of his political decision to submit
Aware of the criticisms from women’s health and family planning groups, with whom they
worked during the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the Fourth
World Conference on Women, the program official explained that the PopCom had not abandoned
reproductive health. The way PopCom had managed to avoid stating explicitly that it opposed the
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reproductive health bill was telling, especially during congressional hearings where government
agencies such as the Department of Health, Department of Social Welfare and Development,
Commission on Women were always invited to present expert opinion. It was a diplomatic way of
following the marching orders from the President while ensuring the agency did not publicly oppose the
bill. In addition, while the agency’s resources were concentrated on promoting natural family planning
at the national level, PopCom still talks, if quietly, about modern family methods at the local level. The
PopCom program official points to the flexibility at the local government level, where cities and
provinces are free to determine the health services that will be made available to their constituents.
However, if a local government wants resources from the national government for its family planning
program, it has to be for activities that will promote natural family planning specifically; otherwise, local
officials must look for or use their own funds to make modern or artificial contraceptives available in
public clinics and hospitals. The problem with this arrangement is that not all local governments are first
class municipalities or cities, or have adequate resources to run social services and programs. Struggling
local governments, if they want to provide any reproductive health services at all, are left with no choice
but to implement natural family planning programs in order to offer some form of service to their
communities.
A NATURAL PLAN
In his speech during the regional conference, Tomas Osias, Executive Director of the Commission
on Population (PopCom), proudly reported that, in its first two years, from January 2007 to December
2008, the government’s NFP program had reached 153,000 couples in 8,000 of 42,000 barangays
nationwide. The National Capital Region (NCR), or Metro Manila, he added, contributed 30,000 couples
to the 4.2 million total number of couples targeted, and ranked third overall among all the regions. To
frame this accomplishment within the country’s broader population and health goals, Secretary Osias
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talked about natural family planning and its potential impact on development. As Secretary Osias
elaborated,
Also evident from this statement is how the impact of NFP is seen in terms of creating a harmonious
family life. Natural family planning, as the articulation of responsible parenting, supports the desires and
aspirations of the heterosexual married couple and, in so doing, empowers the family upon which the
nation is built. In envisioning responsible parenting-cum-natural family planning as a way of life for
Filipinos, health and population officials seek to elevate it above the category of a health or social
service program. Linking it with the creation of a Responsible Parenthood Movement that will mobilize
men and women to spread the good news about natural family planning adds a cultural weight to the
campaign.
During our conversation, however, PopCom regional director Marcelino revealed that, despite
the positive tone of the conference, the program’s accomplishments fell short of government targets.
PopCom had expected to saturate the country’s 42,000 barangays by 2010; in NCR alone, the
government needed to cover more than 1,600 barangays to reach the target figures. To achieve this
objective, 10 RP classes for 10 couples in each barangay had to be conducted. The ultimate goal by the
end of the four years was to reach 4.2 million couples, and to convert 17 percent of this population (or,
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714,000 couples) into NFP users. Since the 1970s, the Philippine Family Planning Program had offered a
broad range of methods but it was geared toward modern methods, which until 2002 were viewed by
health officials as more effective. The new strategy now required the (re)training of frontline health and
population workers in responsible parenting and natural family planning methods to enable them to
conduct the classes. Director Marcelino admitted that her agency had not yet undertaken any
documentation of NFP use among the couples who had attended the responsible parenting classes.
Thus, at the time of the interview, the PopCom did not have any data on how many couples had actually
been converted to the NFP method under the new strategy. She hinted that even with two years still left
in the program, it would take a massive deployment of health and volunteer workers to reach the
Another program official talked on the lack of assessment, suggesting how PopCom had been
At the regional level, no appraisal or assessment of the program has been done
yet. But if you want to know how it is faring, you look at the SWS (Social
Weather Stations) surveys. They indicate how NFP is accepted on the ground.
It’s so hard to promote. It’s a difficult method, because it needs discipline. But
we’re giving it a try and we plan to evaluate. We plan to target poor couples. At
the end of the day, this is not just about reaching couples, but how many
couples are using the method. But before you can produce one NFP user, you
need three months to work on it. Even then, you are not sure (if you’ll be able to
convert).
In the same breath, however, the program official also clarified that the government does not view
natural family planning as a method of contraception, rather, “it is an educational process, a discipline, a
lifestyle and a practice,” echoing Secretary Osias’s statement. Administrative Order 125 s. 2002 defines
NFP as “a technique for determining the fertile period” which relies on fertility awareness to prevent or
achieve pregnancy. As the path that leads to a harmonious married life, NFP “promotes close
involvement of the man and shared responsibility of the couple for planning their family, enhances
communication and cooperation and respect for each other within the family”(Administrative Order
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125, DOH). In the language of the government, natural family planning has become synonymous with,
But even as officials insist on presenting NFP as a way of life, the pressure to meet the target of
more than four million couples and convincing hundreds of thousands to become NFP users within four
years creates tension between vision and strategy. Any educational process needs time to be
implemented, but given the public demand for government to produce results within a short time
frame, coupled with government’s own rush to prove that Filipinos do prefer NFP - even without the
evidence to show that it is effective and economical - the touted program of NFP is undermined. A
deeper contradiction, however, is that population officials and personnel themselves seem to be
undergoing the same educational process and trying to convince themselves that the NFP-only mandate
was an effective strategy. During informal conversations with PopCom personnel, it was common for
them to express frustration over the direction of their work, at times even offering half-articulated
apologies for it, yet they would diplomatically speak about the merits of the program in official venues.
This kind of political accommodation characterized the actions of population and health officials.
Speaking at a national conference in March 2011, the new DOH Secretary under President Benigno
Aquino Jr’s administration acknowledged the same political accommodation by national leaders
(http://portal.doh.gov.ph/node/3036/pdf):
The advocacy for reproductive health in the government especially during the
previous administration was characterized by “accommodation” and a policy of
vacillation. By their own reasons, previous national leaders have chosen or were
forced not to take the less traveled road of reproductive health apparently
because of political accommodations. But we do not dare to question their
decisions as leaders, what we should do is to face the challenge that is thrown
to us who are now given the opportunity to improve the lives of the Filipino
people.
The dissatisfaction and frustration over the strategy that makes natural family planning the only
method offered by the National Family Planning Program have not been limited to government
population and health personnel. Disagreements among NFP advocates and practitioners have also
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surfaced, over which NFP methods are legitimate and moral, and how NFP should be treated in relation
to modern contraceptives. Esper Dowling, Executive Director of the Philippine Federation for Natural
Family Planning, was predictably happy that the government has provided more support for NFP.
However, she insisted that the government should not limit the choice to only natural family planning
and the decision on which methods to use should be left to the couples themselves. From her
experience of running NFP programs for more than 30 years, from the time she worked with the
Catholic Church until the present, Esper had learned that the emphasis should be on fertility awareness
and this should be the foundation of any family planning training. This, she says, can be applied by
individuals to their reproductive lives, regardless of the method they would eventually decide to use.
She adds that fertility awareness is crucial because surveys have shown that Filipinos practice
Dr. Ligaya Acosta, President of Human Life International Philippines, on the other hand, has
taken exception to the inclusion of the Standard Days Method (SDM) in the program, which she says
encourages the use of artificial method (condoms) as a back-up method. Developed by the Institute of
Reproductive Health (IRH) at Georgetown University, Washington DC, SDM was introduced in the
country in the 1990s when the government collaborated with the Institute in giving NFP training to
health personnel. In the intervening years, a local IRH was formed and has established itself as a player
in the reproductive health field, working with NGOs, government and the Catholic Church groups. In a
two-day Pro-Life workshop I attended in 2008, Mitos Rivera, head of IRH Philippines, was a speaker. But
while Sister Pilar, founder of Pro-Life Philippines, enjoys a working relationship with IRH, Ligaya Acosta
The Standard Days Method (SDM) is a calendar-based method which identifies the fertile period
to be between days 8 and 19 of the menstrual cycle for women whose cycles are between 26 and 32
days. This theoretical fertile window was established based on computer-modeled data from the World
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Health Organization (WHO) study on the Billings method, which tracked 7,400 actual menstrual cycles.
In order to practice SDM, couples are given necklaces made of 32 colored beads to monitor the
woman’s fertile and infertile days. Brown beads correspond to infertile days, or spouse days, and white
beads to fertile days, or baby days (Rivera, n.d.). A small rubber band around the necklace serves as a
marker, which the woman moves from one bead to the next to mark the daily progress of her cycle.
Communication about the woman’s fertility status and sexual negotiation are supposedly facilitated by
showing the necklace, and the advancement of the rubber band, to the husband or partner.
Dr. Acosta, a former DOH Information Officer and IEC Manager for the HIV/STI Program, insists
that the formulation of the 12-day fertility period, being computer-generated, is flawed and bound to
fail. In her briefing paper to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, she states that this
flawed premise only encourages the use of artificial contraceptives (i.e. condoms) as a back-up method.
She says, “…In my days at DOH, SDM is normally taught with the use of condoms during fertile days”.
The inclusion of condom use in SDM trainings, she adds, occurs “particularly when there are no
participants from the Catholic Church” (Acosta, 2007: 3). The use of the WHO concept of reproductive
health in the SDM Training Manual is another reason why SDM has been deemed an objectionable
method. For Human Life International-Philippines, reproductive health is another term for abortion, its
use “an example of verbal social engineering” (Acosta, 2007: 7). Moreover, Church allies think the
collaboration between Georgetown University, IRH and USAID in the development and promotion of the
method represents an “un-Holy Trinity” – as all three forces, and especially USAID, promote abortion
and population control (Bullecer, n.d.). Dr. Acosta and HLI have thus called on the bishops to exclude
SDM from the natural family planning methods authorized by the Catholic Church.
In defense of SDM, Mitos Rivera, the first NFP National Coordinator for the Catholic Church’s
Episcopal Commission on Family Life and a Principal Teacher for a WHO Project on the testing of the
fertility learning package, wrote the piece, “Lighting the Candle of Truth” (n.d.). She argues that the
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method is intended only for women whose cycles are within 26-32 days. This cycle length, according to
the study, characterizes 75% of women’s cycles. The method, she adds, does not pretend to work for
women whose cycles do not fall within this range or for those who have irregular cycles. She also
defends the method’s efficacy rate of 95.25%, calculated based on scientific standards and protocols,
peer-reviewed and validated by the WHO. As for the possibility of couples using a back-up method
during the fertile period, Rivera explains that, although difficult at first, many couples eventually manage
the 12-day abstinence period. In cases where abstinence is difficult, the SDM training instructs couples
to use another NFP method. Rivera adds, “SDM is not in competition with any other method” (p. 2).
While conceding that SDM literature used in other countries carry the phrase, “abstain from
unprotected sex,” which suggests the possibility of protected sex and condom use, she clarifies that
some faith-based SDM programs, of which IRH Philippines is one, espouse an abstinence-only approach
to NFP. Moreover, reproductive health as used in training manuals references the definition employed
in papal documents, which “the Holy See considers…in a more general concept of health. (The term)
embrace(s)… the person in the entirety of his or her personality, mind and body…The Holy See rejects
the act of abortion or access to abortion as a dimension of these terms” (p. 3). Rivera concludes, “There
is so much to do, and we will not waste our time and effort arguing about the merits of one method and
The institutionalization of the Responsible Parenthood Movement was crucial to the national
strategy on natural family planning. The membership of the movement would be drawn from all those
who participated in the RPM classes conducted by PopCom. The strategy is as follows: Ten RPM classes,
each with 10 couples participating, will be conducted in each barangay. At the end of each class, the
formation of a Responsible Parenthood Movement will be discussed, the participants will be given their
IDs, and then are expected to elect their representative to the RPM barangay federation. The barangay
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representatives will then come together and elect their representative to the municipal or city
federation. Then all municipal and city representatives will elect their representative to the regional
level, which will then form the national level federation. Leaders of the RPM federation are expected to
conduct and sustain the RPM classes, while collaborating with each other. They also have the
responsibility of linking up with barangay, municipal, city, provincial and national officials and
advocating for policies in support of responsible parenthood. A look at the NFP brochure developed by
the Parish of Ipil reveals that the RPM federation is structured similarly to the way the Parish had
organized its NFP services at the parish, diocese and archdiocese levels.
A RPM class takes about eight hours to complete, either given as a one-day session or broken
into two half-day sessions. To support the conduct of RPM classes and formation of the RPM federation,
PopCom developed several information and education materials. These are the Responsible Parenting
and Natural Family Planning Facilitator’s Guide (for the trainers), Responsible Parenting Handbook (for
the participants), and the Operations Manual for the Responsible Parenting Movement (for PopCom,
trainers, RPM leaders) [Commission on Population 2007]. These documents indicate that the classes
1) Responsible parenting. This covers the meaning of parenthood, parenting and responsible
parenting; core elements of responsible parenthood; essence of children; children’s rights;
family formation.
2) Family relationship. This covers the topics of marriage, the “real meaning” of marriage and
making marriage work; parent-child relationship; and relationship with relatives and in-laws.
3) Home management. This includes topics such as activities and time management, budgeting
and maintaining a safe and happy home.
4) Fertility awareness. This discusses the difference between male and female fertility. Its link
to responsible parenting is established as “the natural starting point since it is fertility that
determines whether a couple will have children or not”.
5) Natural family planning. This describes the five modern scientific natural family planning
methods endorsed by the government, namely, LAM, billings method, basal body
temperature, symptom-thermal method, standard days method, and the two-days method.
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These are perplexing documents in that they combine eclectic references to develop the
philosophy, rules, and techniques that will cultivate responsible parenting among (low income) Filipino
couples. The bibliography for the Responsible Parenting Handbook, for example, includes policy
documents, government population and health manuals, an academic book, magazine articles, the
Humanae Vitae, the Philippine Constitution, the Child and Youth Welfare Code, a few items on
responsible parenthood by NGO advocates, and an obscure reference written by Ellen Gould White, a
Mormon who wrote about family life in the early 20th century. The RP Handbook, for example, moves
from one section to the next without any transition, thus the enumeration of the rights of children,
including: “Children have the right to be born well once they are conceived” and “Children have a right
to a wholesome family”, is immediately followed by tips on proper hygiene, such as: “Keep your
fingernails and toenails clean and trimmed” and “Move your bowels daily and urinate regularly”. In
examining the documents, one gets a sense that one is reading a mash-up of a legal rights primer, a
moral values paper, a home and lifestyle magazine, and pop psychology. In the section on family
relationship, the Handbook gives some rules on making marriage work. For example:
Mutual love and respect. Why would two people get married who did not love
and respect each other? The fact is, as time passes and life becomes increasingly
complicated, the marriage often suffers as a result. It is all too easy for spouses
to lose touch with each other and neglect the love and romance that once came
so easily. It is important that husbands and wives continue to develop love and
respect for each other throughout their lives. If they do so, it is highly likely that
their relationships will remain happy and satisfying.
The Handbook gives several definitions of responsible parenting derived from the Philippine Population
Management Plan, a DOH training manual on pre-marriage counseling, and the Humanae Vitae, without
providing a critical explanation for each and treating each equally. The Handbook explains that the
government’s responsible parenthood program is “based on several social and economic development
and cultural and religious views” (Department of Health, 2003:1). Thus, responsible parenthood refers
to the shared ability, decision-making and responsibility of parents to determine the desired number,
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spacing, timing of their children according to their life situation (Population Plan); and “it is exercised by
the deliberate and generous decision to raise a numerous family or by the decision made for grave
motives and with due respect for the moral law, to avoid for the time being, or even for an
indeterminate period, a new birth”(Humanae Vitae). Finally, the Handbook presents the various
methods of natural family planning from which couples can choose and which will enable them to fulfill
responsible parenthood. This establishes the use of natural family planning as a hallmark of responsible
parenting.
BEST COUPLE
The winners of the Best RPM Couple were Elmer, 38 years old, and Gina Antonio16, 42 years old, from
Marikina City, who have three children, ages 12, 6, and 1. They were introduced to the Standard Days
Method (SDM) in 2007 and had been practicing it for about year at the time of their award. Gina had
just given birth to their third child when she heard about the RPM classes being conducted by their
barangay and asked Edgar to attend. Trained as a midwife (although she had stopped practicing), Girlie
admitted being naturally interested in self-improvement courses and thus did not need much convincing
to get involved in the program. She puts to good use the knowledge she gets from attending free
workshops as she shares them with her younger relatives and neighbors. Because of her readiness to
impart to others what she knows, Gina has become an adviser of sorts to the other women who consult
her on many issues regarding health and family life. She jokes that she should start charging her friends
a consultation fee. Likewise, her husband Edgar, a Born-again preacher, shares Gina’s inclinations and
interest in learning, and needed no prodding to participate in the classes. Articulate and confident,
Edgar hosts a regular radio program that tackles faith, family and community life. He also makes a living
using his talent in drawing, making signage and hand-painted shirts and bags. This ability to
16
Not their real names.
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communicate and the credibility of their family story made Gina and Elmer perfect candidates as a
model couple for and leaders of the fledgling Responsible Parenthood Movement.
Married for 13 years, the couple from the start wanted to limit the number of their children and
had been practicing family planning even before turning to the Standard Days Method. Growing up in
poor families, both Gina and Elmer experienced fending for themselves because their parents could not
afford to support all their children. The hardship, says Elmer, influenced their thinking on how to raise
their own family and made them determined not to reproduce the poverty that they have experienced.
However, while they originally wanted only one child, a second child followed their first born after five
years. And because both children were boys, Elmer convinced Gina to try for a third pregnancy, which
finally gave them their much-hoped for baby girl. Although they ended up with more children than had
been planned, Gina was satisfied with the birth spacing that they were able to achieve and thankful for
Before shifting to natural family planning, condom and withdrawal were the couple’s choice of
contraceptive methods. While these methods proved effective in spacing their children, Elmer says that
these did not remove their anxiety, especially when they would fail to use condom or withdrawal for
one reason or another. For him, the fertility awareness that they learned as part of the natural family
planning method was what made the difference. This made the practice of SDM more comfortable for
the couple.
Sometimes, not often, we failed to use the rhythm (and condom). Why? It was
at the height of our sexual desire. We were newly married, especially in my
case, I am younger than she is. Whenever that happened, I’d feel guilty. I would
really pray, please, not yet. But I realized God was guiding us. I saw how He
acts… With natural family planning, it’s good. It’s natural and proven (effective).
With the cycle beads, we become aware of the period when she’s fertile. We
don’t have to use a condom, and it depends on the cycle of the woman. What is
the value added of SDM? It’s so much easier. Not like before, it was really hard
on my part. During that time, we didn’t know, we had to always watch. With
SDM there is no problem, because we know when we’re fertile. Our sex life is
even better.
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For Elmer then, knowing when his wife’s fertile period occurs during the month means sexual relations
can follow a schedule that ensures no pregnancy will result from sexual intercourse. The regularity of
this cycle provides Elmer and Gina with a predictable schedule that they can work with and thus ease
their anxieties. What appears then as the element that would discourage couples from practicing
natural family planning is actually the very reason that draws Edgar and Girlie to rely on the method.
The discipline of following a schedule provides a logic that the couple is able to control. Making sex
follow this cycle is a small sacrifice to pay for the peace of mind that the couple gets from feeling “safe”.
Although the effectiveness of SDM remains to be seen – as the couple achieved the spacing and limiting
of the number of their children by using condoms – Elmer and Gina have embraced NFP as suitable for
their lifestyle.
Elmer stands on the platform in front of the big hall, beside him is a wooden easel, a beige
canvass bag, stretched and flattened, pinned on it. He is introduced as the better half of the Best Couple
and the President of the Responsible Parenthood Movement-National Capital Region. The emcee builds
responsible parenthood and natural family planning. The audience - about a hundred barangay officials,
health workers, Best Couple nominees and their children - is expectant. They give their full attention to
the diminutive man whose self-assurance, communication skills and gentle demeanor inspire confidence
in those that he encounters. Population and health officials beam, looking proud of their discovered
talent.
Elmer, artist, Born-again preacher, NFP educator, directly looks at his fellow Best Couple
nominees and government officials, and begins to speak, “I think it is safe to say that we all believe that
we’re created by God. I think all of us will not allow the belief that we’re descended from apes.”
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As if to make sure that everyone is listening, he pauses to ask, “Are we all in agreement about
this?” and answers the question himself, “I don’t think anybody will question me about this.”
Prepping his audience, he continues: “I believe that we’re all God’s creatures -- because
everything has been ordered by God. Here in the center, God placed human beings. So God saw a human
being but He did not see anything that was suitable for this human being. So God put the human to sleep
and gave him a woman, from the human’s own rib. It is clear that the woman was taken from the man’s
rib, not from the rib of a cow. The rib is close to him, to his heart, that’s why the woman is loved.”
He turns to the easel, a tube of paint in his hand, and with a skilled flick leaves a dot of color on
the canvass, “This is Nanay.” And, another dot, “This is Tatay.” And then, another dot, until there are
“Here is Ate, here is Kuya, and here is Bunso,” he introduces the rest of the family members to
He continues his story, “This is Mother. This is Father. God said, go forth and multiply. So, here is
“I teach hand painting,” Elmer shifts gears, “and in hand painting, spacing is important. Then
pointing to how the dots are arranged and evenly spaced, he instructs, “If you don’t put space in
between, you’ll squeeze out the rest of the design. This is basic in design.”
He expounds, “First, the eldest son’s needs are different from the needs of the next child. (With
spacing), we will be able to take care of (the different needs of the children).”
His right hand moves across the canvass, quick and precise. “We can use family planning. One of
the methods is SDM. It’s very good, affordable, no side effects. There are other alternatives, especially,
Taking a dot as his starting point, Elmer’s hand glides up, then down, his lines form a bulb shape
that begin and end on the dot. As each bulb forms, he names them, “The eldest daughter. The eldest
The shapes begin to take definition, all five dots get their bulbs. A flower emerges. The artist
declares, “This is very perfect. This is a beautiful concept of a perfect family. A flower -- it’s perfect --
The audience gets more curious. Elmer shades the petals, a shade of pink here, an orange there,
turning quiet for a few moments as his hands get busy. He begins to speak again, “Each family member
Elmer becomes more animated, reaching more and more to the audience, “But sometimes, the
light disappears, and father gets crazy. Mother leaves – because life is hard, she goes away to work
overseas. So, if mother leaves, if father leaves, then the family has a problem.”
Then he leaves the problem, fills each petal with color, and goes back to his main point, “So,
here Kuya, Ate, Bunso. Each has a function. This creates a design. A good example of this is that each
member works toward a common goal. Whatever you do, together we have just one goal. Mother and
father have to instill in their children that they have a goal for the family.”
Elmer continues to work. This time he focuses on the space in the center of the flower. He says,
“This circle, this holds together every member of the family. This is God - the center of the family. We
have to have God inside the family, not to make God our enemy. When God is inside the family, we’ll
receive blessings.”
“This is a good example of a good family. This is a responsible family. When there are many
responsible families in a community, let’s see what is created? The audience listens and watches
intently.
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Then he continues, “Why three children? Three, because it will make it difficult for couples to
separate. With two, you can say, you can have the boy, I will take care of the youngest. Then what
happens to the middle child? But with three, you have some protection. They will think hard. But if you
want to have two, that’s also okay.” A few people in the hall nod, some laugh quietly, seemingly in
agreement.
He offers, “Also, if there is a second Nanay, the flower becomes ugly. It loses the symmetry, the
Moving to another section of the canvass, the artist adds more dots, more petals, more color
covering the space. “When we bring all these families together, what can be created? Each family has
their role, each one brought together by love, by one goal. If the lines of communication are open
between them, they have a good relationship. If there’s an emergency in one family, community… it’s
easy to find a solution, if there is good rapport (among members). The outcome is good. Like a flower,
Elmer goes deeper into his lecture and into his painting. On the top right of the canvass, a new
shape appears, bolder, more colorful. The canvass becomes more alive. He further explains, “When
other communities see this, the couple, they see an example. Ay, we can now have a pattern. We can
attract the youth. What can possibly happen to them? They won’t lose their way anymore. They have
someone to look up to and idolize. This will produce a new and beautiful generation.”
He shows off his new creations, “Like butterflies. What attracts butterflies? - Beautiful flowers.”
A garden of flowers and butterflies is revealed on the canvass. The painting looks pretty and charming
and happy.
Elmer proceeds, “There are two reasons why families break up. In performing our role,
sometimes, we encounter problems. We commit mistakes. A classic example: Tatay wonders why the
budget that’s supposed to last until the next month, after only a week, it’s already spent. Because Nanay
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made a decision to buy something on installment, but did not tell Tatay. So, there is conflict. Tatay then
He adds that the influence of friends is another reason why families break up, and, with a tube
of paint, Elmer smears a flower with black, intones, “… A flower gets destroyed.” Seeing the colors on
the canvass ruined, the audience lets out a collective sad “huuuuuh”.
As his audience waits for what will come next, Elmer takes a pause. He offers positive thoughts,
“What is the process of restoration? Of course, acceptance. Admit that you bought something on
installment. When there’s honesty, there’s trust in the relationship. So, restoration starts with
acceptance…”
“What is good is, in confessing, there is forgiveness. Our wounds get healed, not in time, but
because of love. If your spouse doesn’t forgive you, it’s because he/she wants you to separate, because
he/she might also be doing something. But the truth is, when you say sorry, the forgiveness is already
there.” He takes white paint, covers the black with it, and cleans up the messy part. The audience
“Asking for forgiveness is hard, but once you do it, there are benefits. Affection. A more colorful
Using his fingers, Elmer expertly mixes the colors, intent on erasing the black, transforming the
dark into vivid colors. He presses his point, “The process of restoration, we use our hand, not foot. To fix
the problem, we use our hands. When we do it, gradually blessings grow. Let’s see how it works.” He
works some more, his fingers now covered in paint. “By using our hands, we can add color – orange,
then yellow.” Slowly, the painting changes colors. “This is the fruit. See.”
He continues, “The process of healing asks that we use our hands, our touch, love, care. We
won’t be able to restore our family if we use our fist. The result, we realize that the bad that happened in
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our life, when we get it fixed, we come to a realization. Ah, we fought, it’s because my wife really wanted
More flowers appear, red, green, yellow, pink. Blue skies. Butterflies. The painting is restored.
Elmer concludes, “Yes, we have lapses, but we have to focus on what is the goal of the family.
The family, that’s from God. If we realize this, we won’t hesitate, we won’t allow it to be destroyed.”
People give Elmer a vigorous applause in appreciation of what they’ve seen and heard. A small
crowd gathers around the easel, examining and admiring the work. They congratulate Elmer for his
creative presentation and for showing that lectures on health and family planning need not be boring.
Edgar asks who should get the hand-painted bag and everyone agrees it should go to one of the
family planning program. Since the 1960s the government had sought women’s participation and
leadership in the implementation of family planning program in communities. But for once, a man is
seen as an important part of how the government needs to think its way through reproductive health
issues. Further, his lecture highlights how men’s involvement in the program can potentially be
harnessed to achieve program success, since a man who can talk about fertility awareness and family
planning can be more effective in reaching out to other men. A troubling aspect, however, is how men
tapped as spokespersons and leaders for community-based family planning and reproductive health
programs may focus on giving rules rather than on listening to and articulating women’s reproductive
health needs. Given men’s dominant position within their families and communities, there is a real
possibility that lectures by men may end up silencing women’s voices and perspectives, or attributing
the source of family planning problems to women, which is hinted at in Elmer’s presentation. In this
sense, the “Best Couple” becomes yet another policy mechanism by which male authority is (re)asserted
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over women’s reproductive lives and gender inequality reinforced. The credibility and legitimacy that
extension of the authority roles already traditionally held by men. Thus, grassroots women, who have
been playing key roles in community programs and movements, may be reduced to secondary or
background roles to accommodate the men, who are accustomed to taking leadership positions. For
this reason, developing comprehensive reproductive health education for both men and women leaders
and trainers, as well as building equal partnership in movements, are critical. In the case of this natural
family planning presentation, however, the opportunity to educate based on an informed and inclusive
understanding of health, sexuality and reproduction was sacrificed; instead it relied on the sway of
religious language and the charisma of a male leader to deliver messages about family planning. In this
instance, even the much-vaunted “scientific” methods of NFP get undermined when those who promote
NFP advance ideas that refute scientific principles (e.g. the denial of evolution). Even more troubling,
however, was how population and health officials, who were keen to show that sound science underlies
NFP, were willing to let these distorted ideas about science become part of a supposedly evidence-
based program.
The seeds for the national government’s natural family planning were planted in 2000, two
years before the conception of the NFP Strategic Plan. It came in the form of a local executive order
signed in 2000 by then Mayor of Manila, Lito Atienza. At the time, the presidency was still held by
Joseph Estrada, who had managed to sustain the family planning program despite attacks from the
Catholic Church. Atienza, who was previously the Vice Mayor for several terms, is a Board member of
Pro-Life Philippines and has always been open about his anti-abortion position. Part of his vision as
Mayor was to restore the old glory of Manila by rehabilitating its historical and colonial landmarks and
ridding the city of pesky illegal street vendors. A few years into his term, the change in the city’s
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appearance was marked. Concrete sidewalks have been turned into bricked walkways, their edges lined
with those old-style cylindrical barriers. Graceful lamp posts adorned and lighted corner streets and
main highways. Manila Bay became an attraction again, its romantic view of the setting sun, wide
thoroughfares and musical events pulling in locals and tourists alike. The entire length of Rizal Avenue
(simply called Avenida by locals) was rid of vehicular traffic and turned into a promenade, reminiscent of
Another project was the preservation of the old Quiapo Church, through which hundreds of
devotees who come from all over Metro Manila stream during the day and whose patron, the Black
Nazarene, attracts more than a million devotees when its image is paraded through the streets every
year on January 9. Alas, the Mayor’s idea of preserving Quiapo Church was to paint the roof of the
Church beige. The historical society was aghast, to say the least. Beside the Church is another historical
landmark, Plaza Miranda, the site of the fateful bombing of the Liberal Party election rally in 1971 and
the excuse for the declaration of martial law. Activists and radicals have used the plaza for small rallies
and as an assembly point for big political demonstrations. As a plaza, it looked nothing like one; it was
simply this busy asphalted square of a space beside the Church that has a recognizable name but no
recognizably special features, and yet all the streets radiate from and lead to it. But under Mayor
Atienza, the plaza was transformed: its asphalt replaced by granite-looking surface, its perimeter
surrounded by columns and arches, its open space now enclosed and tighter. With these features, the
place now did not only have a recognizable name but also a set of noteworthy features. It became a
plaza. But a plaza needs a central figure, a monument, a hero. In the transformation, a Shrine to the
Unborn has been erected, occupying a prominent space just before the main entrance of the Church.
The stone sculpture features an infant being presented by two giant hands, presumably the hands of the
resurrected Christ; the extended palm of the left hand holds the infant, while the right hand, its palm
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showing a wound in the center and fingers in a loose peace sign, gives a gesture of blessing to the child.
For Mayor Atienza, the Shrine showed that the city of Manila was pro-life.
In its introductory passages, Executive Order 003, Declaring Total Commitment and Support to
the Responsible Parenthood Movement in the City of Manila and Enunciating Policy Declarations in
Pursuit Thereof, states that Manila “takes an affirmative stand on pro-life issues and responsible
parenthood” and “condemns criminal abortion, euthanasia, divorce and same-sex intermarriages as
amoral and deplorable practices”. It also states its position on contraceptive methods:
To fulfill these principles, the EO lays down several policy actions. These include gearing health and
social services to promote responsible parenthood; advocating citizen participation and involving NGOs,
religious and civic organizations; and establishing natural family planning programs in major hospitals.
These activities, the EO further states, will be “geared on moral rejuvenation” and “equip its people
Even though the EO was signed in 2000, its existence was not realized and news spread only in
2004. But residents and NGO practitioners had already been observing that contraceptives had started
to disappear and become unavailable in government health centers as early as 1998. During the press
conference on the court petition to declare the EO unconstitutional, Fe Nicodemus, a resident of Manila
I learned about it only from the women, because they were complaining. In
Tondo, barangay officials were telling me, ‘That’s not allowed, Mayor said.’ But
these officials didn’t know yet about the EO, either. And have not even read it.
So, in network meetings, I would just share with other women’s health groups –
‘In our place we don’t get family planning’.
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Fe recounted how difficult it was to secure an official copy of the EO. A supposedly straightforward
request for a copy of the document invited suspicion from City Hall employees, and she had to parry
questions from clerks who asked why she needed a copy and for what purpose it would be used.
In the ensuing controversy over the Executive Order, Mayor Atienza asserted that he never
banned modern contraceptives and that the policy only discouraged their use. However, this semantic
distinction made no difference in how the policy was carried out. While the letter of the law specified
“discouraging”, its spirit was interpreted to mean “banning”. The NGO Likhaan, which runs clinics in the
slum communities of Manila, together with the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR),
conducted a study on the impact of the policy on poor women and on health service delivery in the city.
In their widely-cited report, Imposing Misery, Likhaan and CRR discuss the “chilling effects” of the policy
on the provision of reproductive health services. Although the vague language produced some
unevenness in the way the policy was viewed by local executives and health personnel, its overall
impact was to effectively prohibit artificial contraceptives in government hospitals and health centers.
Without a clear policy guideline from City Hall, but well aware of the Mayor’s personal position on
artificial contraceptives, local health personnel refused to provide contraceptives and even referrals to
their women clients for fear of incurring the ire of their chief executive. At the same time, pharmacies
had also stopped making available some artificial contraceptives, such as injectables, in an apparent
response to the Mayor’s personal calls regarding the sale of these products in his territorial jurisdiction.
Barangay officials also became cautious about working with health NGOs, a few of which had been
running women’s health and family planning programs in these communities for years. These NGOs
reported being harassed and intimidated by local officials and had to discontinue their services after City
Hall refused to renew their permits. Even with the change of leadership in Manila after the 2007
elections, Fe still had fears about her position, explaining, “I’m already marked. If my group needs
assistance from City Hall, it would be difficult for us to approach officials.” With many of Atienza’s allies
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still in position, defending and protecting the projects he had championed, Fe’s sentiment was
understandable.
Even with these findings, Mayor Atienza’s office argued that the EO did not constitute a ban
because artificial contraceptives were still available in pharmacies, private clinics and DOH-run hospitals,
which were not directly under the control of the city government. The market approach solution,
however, does not work for a large segment of Manila’s population. For poor women who relied on
government for their health care and did not have the means to pay for private health fees, this meant
effectively losing access to family planning services. The other option for these women was to go to
adjacent Malabon City, where the public health centers offer these services for free or at reduced prices.
But the inconvenience of distance, the additional transportation cost, and the potential loss of women’s
daily income due to hours lost to traveling remained significant barriers to women’s access to health
care. Sheryl, a 25-year old mother of three, whose family lives in a dumpsite, calculated that her jeepney
fare to and from Malabon was around 50 pesos ($ 1.20) - a prohibitive amount for a family that earns
only 150 pesos a day. To address this obstacle, Lina Bacalando, a community organizer, and her group,
MOTHERS, started to organize a regular jeepney pool that would take batches of women to Likhaan’s
Malabon clinic to get the family planning services they needed. But how to make this a sustainable
Moreover, the natural family planning program that was supposed to be in place was reportedly
limited, even token, in its implementation. In place of family planning services, Mayor Atienza was
known to visit slum communities and give cash rewards to mothers who have many children. The
When Atienza attends medical missions…he calls out to all of these moms…how
many of you have seven and above children? When they raise their hands, he
rewards them, sometimes with cash –1,000 pesos each. … He goes to Baseco –
we have so many depressed areas – and sometimes during community
assemblies, [he does this]. “You don’t really need any FP methods” – this is
condoned and rewarded by the mayor himself. If you have seven children, you
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get all these benefits, money. This now proves that the mayor isn’t having any
NFP methods, any FP at all. (p. 27)
advocate and one of the lawyers who filed the court petition on behalf of the 20 women and several
NGOs. And it had grave consequences for the women. Junice Melgar, Executive Director of Likhaan,
It made the problem of grinding poverty more glaring. In addition, the families’
overall health is poorer. Children have poor health, their mothers are also in
poor health. And if the mother is not healthy, it goes without saying the family’s
health is also affected, because she’s the one who takes care of everybody.
Moreover, the couple’s relationship gets strained. When the husband asks for
sex and the wife is reluctant, because she fears another pregnancy, this creates
conflict in the relationship. The quality of child-rearing also gets affected, when
parents have to care for too many children. The policy has real social
implications.
The discontinuation of family planning services also has serious consequences for the health
care system. During a public meeting to present the findings of the study, Imposing Misery, Dr. Michael
Tan, a medical anthropologist based at the University of the Philippines, pointed out that the decade-old
EO had effectively de-skilled Manila’s public health workers, who had lost the skills and capacity to
implement a (modern) family planning program. He lamented it would take years to undo the damage
We saw how one man, how one man’s personal beliefs can be imposed on the
whole city, paralyzing the entire health care system, penalizing thousands of
women, especially the poor. We must never forget it’s the poor who suffered.
The middle class still had their options. It’s scary to think what happened here in
Manila. We know the damage will take years to unravel. It’s a long period…We
will have to retrain our health personnel – they’re now far behind in their
knowledge of contraception, the quality of care needed, the issues around
reproductive health. I worry, too, about what anthropologists call habitus. For
almost 10 years, you did not think about family planning and reproductive
health. It’s not going to be easy to start providing those services again. Many
have to be convinced again… We need to jumpstart this. Different agencies have
to work together, give workshops and trainings, to make up for this.
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DILEMMAS
What happened in Manila raises political questions regarding the extent to which political
power and policy can be used to impose an elected leader’s religious convictions. It also opens
contentious legal questions regarding the autonomy of local governments and to what extent this can
be invoked in the formulation of policy which may have implications on existing national laws or
international commitments. Implicated in these questions is the Local Government Code that devolved
power and functions to local governments and councils. Hailed as revolutionary, the Code was enacted
in 1991 to rectify a highly centralized government that gave the President and the national government
vast powers over provincial and city decision-making. The Code enabled the formation of local councils,
the participation of people’s organizations in these councils, and the formulation of ordinances that will
govern territorial jurisdictions, as part of the democratization process after martial law. Functions, such
as the provision of health care and the development of socio-economic programs, were also transferred
from the national government local executives (Gatmaytan, 2006). With the promise of political
autonomy and democratization, a new set of governance issues emerged. Political dynasties found
local leaders’ personal priorities. Budgetary constraints hampered social services. Health services
suffered the most, and the continuity of programs such as family planning became subject to many
political conditions.
Legislation at the local level proved to be both promising and constraining. It became a critical
mechanism for setting political and social agenda independent of the priority issues being defined at the
national level. The passage of landmark ordinances on domestic violence, the establishment of gender
and development budgets, as well as the creation of local gender and development councils, was carried
out and replicated in different cities and municipalities. Policymaking on gender and women’s issues
found support from local legislative councils (Gatmaytan 2006). When it became evident that local
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legislation was a critical arena for advancing social reforms, a new battleground on which reproductive
and sexual rights would be fought emerged. With this development, the relationship between local and
Although the 2007 elections ushered in a new administration in Manila, as predicted this did not
bring immediate change to the state of family planning and reproductive health services. Mayor Alfredo
Lim, a police general who had been the mayor for several terms before relinquishing his position in 1998
to run for President, did not see any reason to repeal the Executive Order. Even as he declared he was
for informed choice and didn’t think government should dictate couples’ reproductive decisions, Lim, as
well as the City Health Office, believed the language of the EO did not specify a ban on artificial
contraceptives and therefore did not require repeal. Moreover, while the new mayor had instructed
health workers to give information and referrals on artificial contraceptives, he had publicly announced
that the City would not use any funds to purchase these supplies, claiming that the local government
inherited a one billion peso budget deficit from the previous administration. When asked if he would
restore services once the City has gained more resources, his reply was: “We’ll see. I am giving free
college education…My government is focused on providing education, health, peace and order, and
housing.” Health, in this case, seems to exclude family planning. One also has to question the
convenient lack of funds, for the mayor appeared on the University of Santo Tomas grounds during the
40th anniversary of the Humanae Vitae, and, in front of the bishops and a 10,000 strong crowd, declared
that Manila’s funds won’t be used for artificial contraceptives. On this occasion, the Mayor made no
mention of the budget deficit and gave no reason for his decision not to fund family planning.
The return of NGOs and the private sector that run family planning and reproductive health
services improved the situation. The Reproductive Health Advocacy Network Network (RHAN)
collaborated with the City Health Office and the Department of Health in organizing reproductive health
fairs in different communities and giving free services to women and men. Individual members have also
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assisted the local government in raising funds for reproductive health programs by approaching donors
like the UNFPA. But poor women still report being turned away from public health centers and hospitals
and being refused modern contraceptives. Without any official revocation of the policy, and given the
mayor’s equivocal pronouncements on family planning, health personnel were still reluctant to go
Independent of negotiations with Mayor Lim, reproductive health advocates led by Likhaan and
ReproCen lodged a petition with the Court of Appeals to declare EO 003 null and void. Twenty women
and a few NGOs were the official petitioners. Raul Pangalangan, a lawyer for the petitioners, explained
It has to be a legal claim, not just a political claim. What is at stake? This is about
the rights of individuals. Why should the individual’s reproductive decision be
defined by the Mayor? But we should be on firm legal footing to make a claim.
We want to raise the claim to a higher level. So the effects are not localized and
the effects can be felt across the board. And send the message that similar
executive orders are unconstitutional.
Advocates pressed their appeals beyond local executive and national judicial institutions.
Philippine commitments to international human rights conventions are now not only invoked; the
mechanisms that enforce these commitments have also become a venue for direct advocacy to summon
international community support. Engender, a feminist legal organization, together with Manila-based
NGOs, has filed an urgent action request to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW) to make the Philippine government accountable for failing to fulfill its human
rights obligation and urge the latter to repeal the Executive Order 003.
Manila was not the only city facing a battle over reproductive health. As the national debate
over the Reproductive Health bill raged and stalled in Congress, the issues had spilled in many parts of
the country, prompting local councils to adopt their own policies. These moves were taken either as a
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way of making a stand on the issue or as a way of addressing health and poverty conditions in their
communities. In either case, local leaders recognized the reality that the resolution of the legislative
impasse may actually lie at the local government level, not at the national political arena. In Metro
In February 2008, the Quezon City Council approved unanimously on third reading Ordinance
No. 1829, An Ordinance Establishing a Quezon City Population and Reproductive Health Management
Policy. The policy is anchored on the framework of sustainable development, which seeks to manage the
city’s growing population and the resources required to support the needs of this population. To this
end, the local government “guarantees access to safe, affordable and quality reproductive health care
services, methods and relevant information as it gives priority to the needs of women and their
children”. Further, the City “shall promote natural and artificial methods of family planning that are
deemed safe and effective” and make reproductive health information accessible to “parents and
couples, including unmarried individuals”. Under the ordinance, adolescent health education will be
taught in public schools by trained teachers starting from first year to fourth year high school. While the
policy emphasizes the illegality of abortion, it nonetheless makes provision for the treatment and
counseling of women who seek care for post-abortion complications. To prepare the City for the
undertaking, the policy provides for the mandatory and regular training of all local health workers and
barangay officials in the delivery and provision of reproductive health services. A multimedia campaign
to raise public awareness about reproductive health is also identified. A budget of twelve million pesos
The initiative emanated from the City Government’s Anti-Poverty Integration Task Force,
composed of twelve key departments, including the City Health Department, the Social Services
Department, the Urban Poor Affairs Office, among others. Created by Mayor Feliciano Belmonte in
2006, the Task Force was assigned to recommend poverty alleviation policies as well as coordinate and
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assess all anti-poverty programs of the local government. Quezon City is the wealthiest city in the
country. With a population of about 2.5 million, it also hosts the largest urban poor and migrant
communities in Metro Manila. Mayor Belmonte, whose three terms lasted from 2001 to 2010, has been
credited for rationalizing the City’s fiscal and budget policies, improving the taxation system, and
successfully turning Quezon City into a competitive city. During his term, he supported the
establishment of the Gender and Development (GAD) Council and its activities, as well as collaborations
with women’s NGOs working on domestic violence, health and other issues. Both the GAD Council and
the Anti-Poverty Task Force are headed by well-known women’s rights advocates who had transitioned
to government from their NGO involvement. Although he was from the same political party as then
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Mayor Belmonte took an independent position and pursued a
In order for the proposed measure to be taken up officially by the City Council, Mayor Belmonte
needed one of the councilors to sponsor the ordinance. After talking to several councilors, all of whom
supported the measure, he found one who was prepared to be the principal author. Joseph Juico,
Councilor of Quezon City’s first district, was in his second term when he introduced Ordinance No. 1829.
Although relatively new in politics, Joseph grew up in a political family, having parents who directly
participated in elite politics and occupied key government positions in the post-EDSA period. His father,
Phillip Juico, gained political prominence as Cory Aquino’s Secretary of Agrarian Reform in the 1980s,
while his mother, Margarita, moved in political circles as Aquino’s Executive Secretary and confidante.
Both parents are devout Catholics and, like Aquino, were close to Archbishop Cardinal Sin when the
latter was still alive. Young, idealistic and sincere, Joseph didn’t realize at the time that his decision to
sponsor the ordinance would threaten his political career and his chance of being reelected for a third
Unlike the secret issuance of EO 003 in Manila, the process of passing Ordinance No. 1829 was
public. This made for a transparent but arduous process, and left Councilor Joseph Juico vulnerable to
the campaign by the Catholic Church. The Quezon City Council started public discussions on the
proposed measure in 2007. In his privilege speech explaining why the City needed a population
management and reproductive health policy, Councilor Juico recounted his mother’s story:
There is a woman, who was once advised by her doctor in New York that given
the risk to her life and the child in her womb, it was his medical opinion that she
should undergo an abortion…(S)he was faced with a dilemma no mother should
ever suffer – to save her own life or to bring her child into this world…Guided by
her religious beliefs and a strong moral foundation, she decided to continue
with the pregnancy…She eventually gave birth to a strong and healthy baby boy.
Ladies and gentlemen, had my mother decided differently, I would not be here
today before you.
My mother’s dilemma 30 years ago is the same with married and unmarried
women everywhere. However, she is college-educated and together with my
father, has sufficient means and resources to raise a family – to provide for
food, clothing, ensure their health and give them an education…Other families
face entirely different realities…Immersion in depressed areas in my district has
opened my eyes to some disturbing truths. Mired in poverty, I talk to these
growing families losing hope for every day that they struggle to survive. I see
malnourished children roaming the streets, deprived of three square meals a
day, opportunities for their future – such as education, and when they grow up,
the cycle will begin again…Couples ask me to help them because they cannot
provide for their children and at the same time their family is just getting bigger.
Mirroring what was happening in Congress, the hearings about the ordinance mobilized
opposing groups and individuals, many of whom were also involved in the debates in the House of
Representatives and the Senate. Member organizations of the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network
(RHAN), several of which are based in Quezon City, prepared for all the hearings with their experts and
community speakers, position papers and information materials. The Catholic Church and its allies
mobilized students, parishioners and prominent figures. The prelate of Cubao, Bishop Ongtioco, in
particular, was a heavy presence. He introduced speakers on their side in one hearing, and in another,
he made a spectacular entrance: Trailed by an entourage of priests and sacristans in white, he entered
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the main hall in a Bishop’s ceremonial robe, cape and miter. The gallery hushed and hissed, as a mix of
The Catholic Church’s arguments against the reproductive health ordinance echoed the
criticisms leveled by the Catholic Church against the Reproductive Health bill in the national legislature.
Church representatives and allies raised the abortifacient effects of artificial contraceptives, immorality
of abortion, and freedom of religion. The issue of sexuality education in public schools - muted in the
Congressional hearings because of the attention to the issue of contraception – was a major debate in
Quezon City as parents and educators made their voices heard. Supporters of the Catholic Church
contended that the responsibility for children’s sexuality education lies primarily with the parents and
that the ordinance undermined the parents’ role. Sony Sison, a social psychologist and a member of the
Catholic Church panel, talked about the eight stages of psychosexual development and the dangers of
giving sexuality education starting from Grade 5 to 4th year High School:
So, what are the effects on our youth? Youth will be taught reproductive health
and secular sex education. Based on the long term study of sex education in the
United States, from 1960 to 1991, the following trends were established. I think,
the sex education course that you are going to teach is more or less similar to
this. That’s why I’m quoting this data. Abortions have increased 800%. The
illegitimate births have increased to 457%. Child abuse has increased more than
500%...The divorce rate has increased 133%. The percentage of single parent
families has increased to 114%, living together has increased to 179%. The
incident of venereal disease has increased to 145%. The teen suicide rate has
increased to 114%. You can see now there are more teenage suicides – the
juvenile violent crime rate has increased to 195%. This similar statute is
definitely the outcome of secular sex education without moral values. What will
happen to our children, to your children and to our youth? What will happen to
future marriages, families and to the societies? What will happen in Quezon
City, the capital of the Philippines, known for its wellness and the richest
treasury?
In another hearing, however, Dr. Cristina Montiel, a psychologist from the Ateneo de Manila University
and a reproductive health advocate, offered a constructive position and identified three areas as a
common ground on which the two sides could work together. First is the desire of both sides to look at
the studies that examine the effects of sex education on adolescent sexual behavior. Even as the two
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camps were looking at different sets of literature -- one showing sex education is correlated with
increasing pregnancy rates among youth, and the other, the evidence for lower rates of risky sexual
behavior – both groups can conduct a comprehensive review of these studies. The second common
ground is the recognition by both groups of the need for a school-based program that addresses their
respective concerns about adolescent sexuality. While one side refers to this as chastity education and
the other side speaks of sexuality education, recognizing the particular concerns related to adolescents’
psychosexual and social development is an opening worth pursuing. The last point of agreement is the
need to determine the appropriate and acceptable content of this school-based education.
Cracks in the alliance between the Catholic Church and its supporters also surfaced. As a
compromise position was reached providing adolescent health education starting from first year high
school instead of the original proposal of starting at Grade 5, the Catholic Church denied that it had
authorized any group to speak or negotiate on its behalf. It turned out that Pro-Life representatives, in a
meeting with Councilor Juico, made several suggestions pertaining to this provision, which was
interpreted by City Hall as the group’s openness to the revisions. For this, Pro-Life earned the
displeasure of the Bishop of Cubao, who, according to Sister Pilar, thought her group approved the
amendments and proceeded to isolate them. “They were blaming us. They say that’s why the ordinance
passed,” the nun lamented. Even as Pro-Life views itself as an NGO autonomous from the Church, it
became apparent in this instance that its positions are subject to Church approval.
The role of government in providing social services and which services should be supported by
people’s taxes also preoccupied the hearings. Supporters of the Catholic Church invoked their status as
tax payers who “collaborate with the Quezon City Government in its intentions to promote the common
good … (and) will claim our right to actively oppose any effort to undermine our belief of the common
good”. Echoing the discussion in Manila about the local budget, Fenny Tatad, Executive Director of the
Bishops-Legislators Caucus of the Philippines, pushed the Quezon City government to spend instead on
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“the labor requirements of the future and prepare the population and city for inimitable growth”. Citing
the City’s successful revenue collection, robust economic activities and responsive basic services, she
argues that this contradicts the idea that the City has limited resources for its population and debunks
Outside the City Hall hearings, Bishop Ongtioco issued several directives addressed to “all parish
priests, school directors, religious men and women, lay organizations, and transparochial communities”
and naming Councilor Juico as the one who introduced the “deadly ordinance”. The bishop wrote:
To our brother priests, include this mission in your homilies everyday as soon as
possible especially on Saturday and Sunday. (Emphasis mine.) We strongly
oppose this Reproductive Health and Population Management proposed
ordinance for Quezon City because it kills the unborn children, cause deadly
cancers, destroys the Catholic educational formation of our youth and take
away from us our intrinsic inalienable right to the free exercise of a correct
conscience and our right to freedom of worship in the Catholic faith.
Let us be ready to hold prayer rallies if and when so needed to prevent the
passage of this deadly ordinance.
Although Joseph’s father, Phillip, confessed to his son, “my heart is with you but my mind is not
sure” (See Rina Jimenez-David, 2008), his mother chose to defend him by directly confronting the Bishop
of Cubao. In response to the public attacks from the Catholic Church, Margarita Juico, wrote a letter to
Bishop Ongtioco, in which she expresses her hurt for the way the Church leaders had treated her son
I am writing to you as the mother of Joseph “Sep” Juico, who has been
mentioned adversely from the pulpit and in yesterday’s (yellow) directive written
by yourself.
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I am proud to say that my son has been a practicing Catholic and has done more
than he should for the ‘least of His brethren’. In fact, if there is anything I can say
my children have, which their parents somehow contributed, it is their sense of
social consciousness. Now if having that has moved my son to do what you
despise, I pray that you and your representatives take an active role in the
crafting of this bill instead of crucifying my son who believes in his heart that this
is the right thing to do. He claims the ordinance is ‘not written in stone’ and can
certainly stand its share of amendments. In fact, he insisted on a public hearing
to make this possible. I believe the treatment from the men in robes that he has
been getting is not fair and just. Not for anyone and definitely, not from the
Church where we belong.
I end my letter by asking, ‘If Jesus were around, would He react in the same way
toward His own’? (sic)
Sincerely,
Margarita P. Juico
CONCLUDING NOTES
Both Manila City and Quezon City cite limited resources as the reason for enacting and
continuing their respective policies on reproductive health and family planning. While Manila opted to
de-prioritize family planning services as a way of cutting spending and saving funds, Quezon City has
chosen to view these services as a long-term investment in the City’s socio-economic development.
These indicate contrasting strategies of addressing poverty and differing views of reproductive health
and rights. As ways of managing populations, Manila’s and Quezon City’s approaches are based on
contrasting ethical perspectives: The former stresses the management of moralities to protect the city’s
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pro-life values, while the latter focuses on managing health performance to achieve the city’s socio-
economic performance. The national government’s natural family planning-only program attempts to
reconcile both by locating religious values within a health and development framework, an act that
serves to accommodate the influential Catholic Church. These contrasting approaches create
disjunctions in policy at the local and national levels that, while expanding health services in one city and
limiting access in another, leave the overall status of reproductive health and rights under question.
More to the point, the contradictory policies on family planning and reproductive health do not serve to
encourage poor women, who have an acute sense of disempowerment, to demand from the
These case studies also show the promise of local policymaking to affirm reproductive health
and rights, and establish the conditions that will support the same. Two factors critical to the passage of
Quezon City’s reproductive health ordinance are worth noting: First is the open and public process and
second is the leadership’s political will. The transparent process gave advocates and constituents an
opportunity to study the proposed ordinance and subject it to critique, allowing key actors on both sides
to equally participate in the public hearings. More importantly, it enabled the dissemination of
information to the wider community, who followed the debates and formed their own opinions based
on the discussions. The very openness of the proceedings protected the City Council from charges of
political manipulation and helped to build mass support for the policy. This contrasts greatly with the
approach in Manila, which relied on secrecy to successfully issue the policy ban on modern
contraceptives while evading the potential opposition from various sectors. Interestingly, the same
secrecy was at work decades earlier, when the Catholic bishops attempted to get former President
Corazon Aquino to sign a similar executive order until the move was discovered and eventually blocked,
and more recently, when the Alabang Barangay Council issued in 2011 an ordinance prohibiting the sale
of contraceptive pills in pharmacies within its jurisdiction, triggering protests from its wealthy residents
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when the policy became public. That this secret approach to policymaking fails to secure the crucial
support of the broader community has yet to be recognized by those who have employed this strategy
time and time again. Although the Catholic Church and its allies believe in the moral ascendancy of their
position, their actions suggest that the only way their proposals can gain legal ascendancy is to subvert
The leadership’s political will is decisive in the outcome of the policy process. Regardless of
whether the policy puts in place reproductive health programs or limits family planning services, the
case studies show how local and national executives can actually push for and enact controversial
policies, despite potential public criticism, resistance and backlash. However, political will implies the
recognition of the “will of the people” and does not only mean the willfulness of leaders to insist on
their positions and overcome opposition. To the extent that this political will expresses the desires and
aspirations of the many, how responsive a policy is to these needs becomes the measure by which to
regard a leader’s sense of political will. For, while local and national leaders may succeed in passing,
even imposing, laws that address the concerns of the influential few and disregard the conditions of the
poor majority, responsiveness remains to be essential to the maintenance of political and democratic
legitimacy (Wurfel, 1988). Further, what these case studies highlight is that, regardless of pressures from
the Catholic Church and other sectors, policy decisions and actions remain in the hands of political
leaders – legislators, mayors, the President. Ultimately, the accountability lies with the state and the
The state may formulate policy but individuals engage with it in complex ways. Manila’s ban on
modern contraceptives and the national government’s NFP-only program, having been implemented for
about ten years, show how individuals have reinterpreted the state discourses on natural family
planning and modern contraceptives, revealing ways by which discourses get grounded in policy. Unlike
Manila’s Executive Order which imposed deprivations without offering a clear alternative, however, the
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NFP-only program illustrates how policy serves as a technology of self-management and self-
Beyond this, however, the cases show that there is no clear demarcation between those who
are known to be pro-life and pro-natalist and those known to be pro-choice and anti-natalist. The
complexity of the reproductive health issue shows up in how relationships between presumed allies as
well as presumed enemies get tangled and overturned in the process of engaging with each other. This
suggests that attempts to fix the moral and political meanings of these categories – pro-life and pro-
choice - will be thwarted by the complex conditions and dynamic relationships that are involved in the
policy battle.
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CHAPTER SIX
CONCLUSION
The policy battle over reproductive health has preoccupied Philippine politics for a decade. The
issues that frame this public debate have troubled the nation and Filipinos for a much longer time,
however. They emerged not directly in relation to reproduction and sexuality; rather, they arose out of
other social and political questions. As a decolonizing nation in the 1940s-1960s, the country struggled
to plot its economic development while confronting persisting and emerging problems. International aid
agencies presented the question of population as an impending crisis and as an alternative explanation
for the unequal social conditions under which Filipinos lived. This explanation muted, if not elided, the
ravages of more than four hundred years of colonialism and war, under Spain, the United States and
Japan. The state of the population became a fundamental determinant of the country’s development
and progress. But the population control policies that arose from this thinking did not go uncontested.
As the nation struggled to define itself and its future, the task of analyzing Philippine society and its
problems became critical, and different groups waged ideological battles. The radical political
movements were at the forefront of the profound questioning of the roots of Philippine dependency
and backwardness. Population control and the issue of population encountered nationalist resistance as
political movements identified these with imperialist motives and neocolonial objectives. Nationalist
ideals, however, were not a pure position as these got entangled with the state’s population control
policy and were appropriated by the dictatorship’s desire to achieve progress and greatness, and to
Interwoven in the dynamic between population policy, nationalism and the modernizing project
is the relationship between the Catholic Church and the state. Since the 1960s the Catholic Church has
opposed population control, invoking both papal encyclicals and nationalist values to explain its decision
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to end its critical collaboration with the government and its population program. The military state was
more than enough reason to oppose any government initiative. But Church and state relations have
been contentious since the Spanish colonial period; the embeddedness of the Church in the nation’s
affairs served to support and oppose the state at different historical junctions. During the negotiations
for independence with the American colonial regime, how to define the role of the Catholic Church in
Philippine society and how it should exercise its power vis-à-vis the state was the subject of
constitutional debate. Following its critical role in the People Power events of 1986 and 2001, the
question of to what extent should the Catholic Church be involved in political affairs without
overstepping its religious role was both a matter of political and legal significance. Although the
Constitution had set the rules governing the relationship between the Church and state, the historical
legacy of colonialism and the exigencies of political crises have also set in place complex socio-political
dynamics that challenge Church and state separation. Policymaking on reproductive health is caught up
in this historical and socio-political dynamic as both Church and political leaders attempt to redraw the
boundaries of Church and state relations as they fiercely battle about the reproductive health bill.
The conflation of religious identity with national identity has been the dominant narrative of
the nation, one that’s invoked by the Catholic Church to mobilize its constituents and persuade
policymakers about the bill. With Catholics making up the overwhelming majority of Filipinos, the
assumption of a Catholic morality that guides the nation has been part of the public and the state’s
discourse. There have been few instances when this was politically challenged. In many cases, these
challenges were a direct response to the Catholic Church’s attempts to dictate the substance of social
policy and restrict what can be accommodated and embraced by (what is considered) Catholic identity
and morality. The policy debate in the 1930s on requiring religious instruction in public schools was one;
another was the controversy in the 1960s around the ban by Catholic universities on the teaching of
Jose Rizal’s novels that described the abuses of Catholic friars, the catalyst for the revolution against
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Spain. The decades-long war in Mindanao waged by Muslim Filipinos and growing religious pluralism
The polarized debate on reproductive health has foregrounded these political undercurrents
and exposed the deep social cleavages brought about by poverty, social inequality and class structures.
Beyond this, the contestation over reproductive health has illuminated the politics of progress and
nationalism, Church and state relations, national identity and religious identity, questions about gender,
sexuality, reproduction, morality and lived religion. It has also brought into the arena diverse political
actors, including national and local governments, Congress and the courts, the Catholic Church and its
allied groups, reproductive health networks and family planning groups, educators, academics, parents,
economists, health providers, the media, students, youth and community women. Reproductive policy,
as the frame through which the politics of the nation, religion and the state get filtered and played out,
has forced social actors to broaden the scope of what is considered political and national. In this sense,
the politics of the personal and private become implicated in macro-political processes. Reproduction,
as the entry point and axis for these intersecting frames, has sharpened the debate about what it means
to be a Filipino, a Catholic and a moral person; what constitutes moral actions and ethical behavior, at
the level of the individual, institutions, and nation; and whose voices and realities really matter in state
Religious fundamentalism is the standard frame used by reproductive health advocates and
political commentators to explain the Church’s opposition to the proposed reproductive health policy
(Ruiz-Austria, 2004). Catholic fundamentalism, in particular, takes Vatican authority as universal and
absolute and seeks legal enforcement of Church dogma, especially on sexuality and reproduction. This
fundamentalism, it is explained, emerges from a world view that rejects modernity and Enlightenment
values (Ruiz-Austria, 2004). The defense and imposition of traditional religious values that no longer
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resonate with or apply to contemporary Filipino society are identified as main tension points. In the
Philippine political context, the religious right has succeeded in dominating the state in regard to policies
on reproductive health and rights by virtue of the Catholic Church’s influence on conservative
government leaders. Within this frame, the reproductive health debate is cast as a battle between
secular and fundamentalist viewpoints and forces, with reproductive health advocates representing the
former and the Catholic Church, the latter. This study shows, however, that this is a limited way of
framing the intersecting assumptions, critiques, tendencies, and agendas that drive the conflict about
reproductive health. Further, the use of “religious fundamentalism” fails to capture the historical and
peculiar relationship of the state, the Catholic Church and social movements in the Philippines. This is a
case of properly identifying the actors and elements involved in the reproductive health controversy but
giving the aggregated parts an improper collective name. While the debate has elements that mimic
other policy battles waged on fundamentalist terrain, such as the abortion issue in the United States,
the nature of the Philippine conflict rests on a different set of positions, motivations and relationships.
assumes the dichotomy between the nation-state and religion, and the secular character of nationalism
(van der Veer, 1999). The history of anti-colonial and anti-dictatorship politics in the Philippines has
shown how religion has been recruited and harnessed to the cause of the nation (Ileto 1979; Deats
1967; Pertierra 1989). In more recent decades, People Power politics have also gained legitimacy and
mass support through the mobilization of the institutional power and religious symbols of the Catholic
Church. Religion, and Catholicism, in particular, served as a source of national unity and rallying point for
nationalism. In the process, nationalist and democratic ideals became intertwined with Catholic ethics
and identity, at once feeding into, forming, and working in tension with each other. This fusion of
religious sentiments and nationalist imagination, or what I refer to as religio-nationalism, I argue, forms
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the critical lens which can help us understand and locate the political dynamics involved in the debate
on reproductive health.
This study argues that the tensions between nationalism and modernity are played out in the
contestation over reproductive health and resonate in the policy debates, state responses at the local
and national levels, and Catholic Church and social movement discourses. Moreover, this tension
manifests in urban poor women’s understanding and re-articulation of reproductive health policy, and in
their reproductive practices and religious experience. As they engage in the debate, the key political
actors offer overlapping and competing visions of nationalism and modernity, the desire for
development serving as the bridge between these nationalist and modernizing sentiments. As the
unquestioned category, development is the path that the nation must take toward modernity, and for a
former colony, it is also a precondition for overcoming dependency and achieving full sovereignty. With
its links to poverty alleviation and population management, a reproductive health policy promises to be
an effective means of reaching these development goals. But as the Catholic Church asserts, Catholicism
bounds the nation and defines its identity. A reproductive health policy that goes against the doctrinal
teachings of the Church constitutes a threat to the Catholic nation and its moral order. Since Catholic
religious morality guides the path of the nation and its citizens, adherence and obedience to Catholic
core values must not be compromised. In the entangled contestation over reproductive health then,
two perspectives on nationalism emerge: The first takes the nationalist vision of progress that rests on a
rational socio-economic development model to achieve the ideal of national modernity; and the second
takes nationalism as including Catholic virtues that make up an essential part of the nation and of being
Filipino. In the first sense, nationalism as the drive toward progress and greatness strips the idea of a
distinctive set of specific ideational characteristics. In the other sense, being Filipino (in a Catholic way)
becomes the main value, even (and maybe, especially) if this means repudiating standard global
practices and agreements, such as those related to reproductive health and rights. In other words, in the
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first instance, it becomes less important that Filipinos become Filipino (and Catholic) than that they do
what is necessary to achieve progress; in the second, being Catholic is held as the measure by which
The assertion of a Filipino nation within a Catholic moral order was for the most part an
accepted truth that the Church, state and public helped weave into the political imagination of the
nation. It wasn’t until the insistence of the Catholic Church to govern the intimate lives of individual
Filipinos according to a fixed meaning of religious and national morality that cracks in the unity between
nation and religion began to show. Sexual intimacy outside of marriage, reproductive self-
determination, family planning and birth control are part of the modern project of self-regulation,
personal conscience and self-governance. Individual choice and personal freedoms associated with self-
governance are supposed to be supported and protected by the modern state, not to mention
encouraged by the capitalist market. At the same time that the state can claim jurisdiction over this
intimate sphere, the Catholic Church asserts its position as the rightful overseer of the space of personal
morality, which it thinks properly covers the sexual and reproductive lives of Filipinos. Changing
attitudes regarding sexuality and reproduction as well as the need to improve family conditions have
increased the resistance to the Catholic Church’s strict restrictions and interventions into the intimacies
of social life. Whereas past social conflicts involving the Church had resulted in the questioning of its role
in the political arena, the policy battle on reproductive health has led to the challenging of the Church’s
authority over both political and personal matters. More importantly, it has opened the field for the
In all this, the state must answer to the tensions and contradictions between nationalist and
religious sentiments. At the same time, it must provide the administrative, political and policy
framework for the nation, which rests on secular notions of nation-building, Church and state
separation, and individual human rights. This modernizing impulse of the state, however, must take into
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consideration the historical role religion has played in legitimizing and propping up the state through the
harnessing of nationalism in the post-colonial era. To what extent it should accommodate the Catholic
Church and not risk its own legitimacy in the nationalist and modernizing terms is a question the state
must confront.
The social conflicts surfaced by the contentious debates on reproductive health reveal the myth
of a unified moral nation under the Catholic Church. Discourses counter to the Catholic narrative of the
nation provide an alternative vision and practice of politics and religion. The possibility of passing a
reproductive health policy destabilizes long-held truths about the Catholic moral order and the national
character of Filipinos. Moreover, it potentially shifts the power configurations between the state, the
Catholic Church and civil society that could change the national political fabric. Further, it points to a
potential reorganization of the relationship between Catholicism and a significant majority of Catholics,
who do not see a conflict between reproductive health and their religious beliefs. At stake is the
authority of the Church in relation to the state to shape and define the moral good, either for the nation
or individual Filipinos. Also at stake is the right of individuals, especially, women, to govern their sexual
and reproductive lives, and determine the conditions of their lives. And as the state is expected to
resolve these social tensions, at stake is the state’s ability to support the materialization of
modernization without losing a powerful ally in the building and formation of the nation.
The state, the Catholic Church and reproductive health movement advance competing
discourses that explain and support their stand on reproductive health. These discourses revolve around
population and development, women’s health and rights, and religion and morality. But even as they
compete and seek to undermine the other’s validity, they also overlap and find common ground with
one another. At the same time, as the protagonists in this battle constantly react to each other, ready to
disprove the other, they end up defining the ground on which they make their claims according to the
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terms of their antagonists. Alliances also carry contradictions within them, as conflicting views by
members threaten the group’s unified stance. In the engagement between the state, the Catholic
Church, and the reproductive health movement, the result is a mutual co-construction that
simultaneously locks the actors into their respective arguments and reinforces their adversaries’
discourses.
This co-construction is reflected in how these different actors view contraception and abortion,
the most controversial issues in the reproductive health bill. For reproductive health advocates, easing
the burden of poor families, saving women’s lives, and upholding women’s reproductive self-
determination are the major reasons why it is imperative that government give women access to the full
range of contraceptive methods. They argue that access to safe and affordable contraceptives is
essential in addressing women’s need to space or limit the number of their children and have control
over their bodies and reproduction. By preventing pregnancies that are too early, too many, and too
frequent, the provision of contraceptives can help reduce maternal deaths, especially among poor
women. For the poor, who are the most affected by having large families that they cannot support,
family planning services are not only a means to achieve their desired family size; it is a matter of family
survival.
As a public health and poverty alleviation measure, family planning services find strong
proponents among economists, population planners, demographers, family planning groups, and the
business sector, who bring a macro-economic perspective to the links between women’s contraceptive
behavior and fertility rates, on one hand, and the state of the country’s population, poverty and
development, on the other hand. While reproductive health advocates are careful to point out the
complex and indirect link between population and poverty, demographic thinking that promotes notions
of an ideal family size and zero population growth, and views women as targets of population policy still
lingers in the movement. The emergence of a more nuanced understanding of population as a factor in
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socio-economic development, however, has not dislodged population control from its niche in
development policy and in the public’s mind. This undermines what women’s health activists and
feminists have fought for a long time: the perspective that access to contraceptive methods must be
taken from the point of view of women’s basic needs and rights. Yet, regardless of their starting
frameworks, contraception is one issue on which reproductive health advocates are in full agreement.
On the other side of the debate, the Catholic Church supports the fight against poverty, but
stresses that the cause of the problem is the pervasive corruption in government which undermines the
provision of basic social services. But for the Church, social services do not include family planning
programs, especially those that promote modern or artificial contraceptives, such as the pill, IUD and
injectables, which are deemed abortifacients and go against the culture of life and the teachings of the
Church. Within this doctrinal framework, individuals and couples who use modern contraceptives are
committing a grave immoral act. The Catholic Church also brings women’s health and rights into its
moral position, arguing for the need to protect women’s health from the harmful effects of artificial
contraceptives and to rescue women’s dignity from sexual objectification. The state, therefore, if it
approves the proposed bill, will be propagating a culture of death and endangering women’s health,
The unity within the reproductive health movement on the issue of contraception and family
planning does not extend to abortion, with segments of the movement taking differing views on the
issue. While the movement espouses women’s reproductive self-determination as a general principle,
only a small section would unhesitatingly include in this a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.
Members’ personal moral positions, reflecting the prevalent prohibitive view, do not allow the
expansion of the discussion of abortion beyond recognizing the urgency of reducing maternal deaths.
Even the agreement about the necessity of providing women with services for post-abortion
complications has not overcome the fundamental divisions among advocates arising from their own
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differing moral convictions. The charge that the reproductive health bill is intended to pave the way for
the legalization of abortion has only been met with denials from advocates. Given the sway of moral
proscriptions and legal prohibition against the practice, advocates, in an echo of the Catholic Church and
government positions, end up affirming the criminal status of abortion. With its defensive stance on the
issue, not only has the reproductive health movement posed no real challenge to the Church position, it
has also found itself unintentionally reinforcing the discourse of immorality and illegality regarding
abortion.
Missing in these competing discourses are the voices of poor women. Although the situation
and image of poor women have been summoned in the debates, to prop up arguments and justify
claims, their involvement in the public discussions has been muted. While they are mobilized for rallies
and hearings, they are not directly involved in shaping the debate, identifying the relevant issues, or
directing the campaigns. The conditions under which women live in the urban poor community,
Sangandaan, give us clues as to why it is difficult for these women to engage in the issues that directly
affect them. Grinding poverty forces women to focus on ensuring their family’s survival on a daily basis.
Because their lives are organized around searching for ways to survive, this leaves them with no time
and resources to organize themselves or sustain any collective political action. A makeshift life that
relies on improvised solutions - at times, on opportunistic actions – also creates a consciousness that is
focused on the short term. Because of the absence of any wherewithal to realize or accomplish long-
term goals, these women cannot plan or project beyond the immediate present.
Powerlessness and patronage define women’s relationship to the state and other agents of
power. This imposes constraints on the way women confront and engage power. Women’s marginal
status and lack of political resources prevent them from learning how to engage policymakers and the
policy process. Where a simple act of trying to enter the halls of Congress becomes an occasion for the
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system to reject the presence of poor women and their children, it drives home the point that the poor
face formidable obstacles in order to be heard. In addition, poverty has positioned these women as
recipients of politicians’ patronage and largesse, in exchange for their electoral votes. Lacking in
knowledge, economic resources and political status, these women simply have to rely on more
influential intermediaries to speak on their behalf, trusting that their interests would be faithfully
Despite their invocation of women’s health and rights, the discourses of both reproductive
health and pro-life advocates represent poor women’s sexual and reproductive capacities as
problematic. Whether reflected in the language of fertility rates, desired family size, contraceptive
prevalence rates, anxieties about a growing population and its implications on national development are
accompanied by discussions of the role of poor women in this growth. Moral proscriptions regarding
sexuality and reproduction also seem to apply only to poor women, as they become the target of natural
family planning programs. Also absent in the public discussions are the sexual and reproductive health
concerns of middle and upper class women, and of men, who appear to not have contraceptive needs or
The importance of giving due attention to the situation of poor women and prioritizing their
reproductive health needs cannot be overestimated. But the sole focus on poor women results in a
“stratified reproduction” (Shelley Cohen, in Ginsburg and Rapp, 1995), where the problematization of
their sexual and reproductive capacities becomes the basis for addressing reproductive health issues of
all other women. The value placed on poor women and their reproductive health is predicated on their
revolve around the objective of lifting women out of poverty, the language of pity and charity enters the
discourse as a mechanism for gaining public support for either side’s position. There is a risk that, rather
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than the rationale of human rights, charity and welfare, already manipulated in patronage politics,
become the ethos to justify the necessity for a reproductive health policy.
Religious authority and doctrinal teachings have little influence on how women negotiate their
reproductive lives. The narratives of the women of Sangandaan show that the demands of family
survival and the desire for a better life are the critical factors that determine their reproductive
decisions and practices. Reproduction, for these women, goes beyond the biological process of bearing
and giving birth to life; it is the capacity and the right to determine the conditions of their family life. The
challenge of overcoming poverty and deprivation, rather than obedience to the teachings of the Catholic
Church, constitutes the moral and ethical basis for their reproductive actions. They, therefore, reject the
view that contraception and the use of modern contraceptives is a sinful act, asserting that it would be
more unjust for their children to be raised in an environment of want. Women’s ability to challenge the
Catholic Church on the morality of modern contraceptives does not only rest on the strength of their
development and poverty has provided a space within which women can articulate and anchor their
reproductive decisions and practices and so-called transgressions. Moreover, this counter-discourse has
created a public consciousness that aligns women’s desire to limit the number of their children and
family size with that of the country’s goal of arresting a “ballooning population”, eradicating poverty and
achieving development. In this sense, women’s decision to use contraception as a means of family
survival becomes a stand in for the nation’s preservation, and is thus legitimized by this counter-
discourse. Women’s views and handling of abortion, however, show that religion maintains its
relevance in the lives of Sangandaan women. Unlike their defense of contraception and modern
contraceptives, the women’s equivocations about abortion reveal a negotiation with religion and a
reinterpretation of religious teachings to fit their circumstances and reconcile with their realities.
Religion is made pliant in order to regain a moral equilibrium or reach a reasonable social order. Yet, in
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the process of adjusting and re-adjusting this moral order, women alternate between justification of
their actions, admission of guilt, and, finally, submission to doctrinal authority. In contrast to their direct
challenge of the Church’s position on contraception, women’s stance on abortion reflects a more
tentative resistance to the dominant religious moral view. Given the illegal status of abortion, women
have no legitimizing discourse within which to articulate and justify their experiences of abortion. The
merging of the state and the Catholic Church prohibitions against abortion has ensured that women’s
moral claims on this issue remain marginalized and illegitimate. While their ideas and practices of
contraception and abortion reflect autonomy from religious doctrine and authority, without the
protection of class status and state legitimacy, women are unable to sustain their resistance to religious
prohibitions and proscriptions. Further, the lack of reproductive health services undermines their
reproductive autonomy.
A big gap exists between institutional religion and women’s everyday religion. Women
construct a religious ethic based on their experiential and emotional relationship with God, not on
religious obedience that the hegemonic Church requires from its members. In their narratives, women
speak of faith as a source of hope and comfort, a sense of suffering underlying their language of a
benevolent, understanding God who shared their own suffering. Poor women’s experience of God is
inextricably linked to their experience of poverty and deprivation; religion provides them with the idiom
with which to express their concerns. In this sense, social class is constitutive of this religiosity and forms
the worldview through which women construct their religious morality. In the same manner, moral
views about reproduction and sexuality are shaped by the conditions of poverty and lack, not so much
POLICYMAKING
The stalled discussions in Congress have not prevented the issue of reproductive health from
finding its way through the various structures and levels of government. The lack of resolution at the
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national legislative level has provoked contradictory responses at the local levels, and the three case
studies discussed in chapter 5 reveal the disjunctures in the policy environment. They highlight how
policymaking gets accommodated, rerouted and displaced at other levels of government – local and
international, executive and judicial. Moreover, they show how discourses get grounded in policy, either
as a program, ordinance or public statements issued by political leaders, while being reinterpreted by
individuals in complex ways. As the three case studies demonstrate, these contradictions and
disjunctions in policy produce multiple channels through which power and resistance flow.
As evident in the contrast between Manila and Quezon City, local governments have become a
focal point for the policy battles. As the discussions in Congress continued to drag on, advocates and
opponents of reproductive health shifted their campaigns to city and provincial councils. This is
illustrated by policy developments in Manila and Quezon City, the country’s two most prominent cities.
While Manila issued Executive Order 003 effectively banning modern contraceptives from public health
facilities, Quezon City successfully passed Ordinance No. 1829, enacting a population management and
reproductive health policy. The outcomes of the debates in Manila and Quezon City have pushed other
local governments, pressured by contending groups, to enact their own policies. Media and local
politicians monitored especially how the Quezon City Council would manage to keep its position in the
face of attacks from the Catholic Church. Davao, Baguio City and Aurora Province are only three local
governments that have approved reproductive health policies, the last province implementing its
program even ahead of Quezon City. Meanwhile, a barangay in Alabang, a wealthy residential village,
approved in 2011 an ordinance prohibiting the sale of modern contraceptives in local pharmacies. In
Batangas and Tarlac provinces, whose Councils lean toward the Catholic position, there is now a
stronger momentum to pass ordinances that would uphold pro-life values. These policy moves are not
only responses to the absence of national law to guide local governments; rather, they are also counter-
221
offensives to prevent the forward movement of either opposing side’s policy agenda in other parts of
the country.
Contradictory local policies, however, mean that other government structures are summoned to
address unresolved issues in diverse and localized ways. In Quezon City, the Catholic Church and allies
assert that the reproductive health ordinance violates freedom of religion and promise to appeal the
Supreme Court. In Manila, reproductive health advocates have petitioned the court to declare
unconstitutional the ban on modern contraceptives and other similar local policy. Further, advocates
have also submitted a petition with the UN Commission on the Elimination of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW) to make the Philippine government accountable for the violations against women’s
human rights resulting from the contraceptive ban. These developments signal that many avenues are
still available to ensure that reproductive health stays on the policy agenda and have not been
foreclosed by Congress’ failure to enact a policy. Yet, this also illustrates that, although these alternative
governmental mechanisms have become an arena where reproductive health and rights can be secured,
instituting a national policy that will apply to everyone, regardless of class, gender and religion, remains
imperative.
These cases highlight the decisive role of political will in the outcome of the policy. The approval
of the reproductive health ordinance in Quezon City especially shows how political leaders can ensure a
transparent process and successfully enact a controversial policy, despite heavy pressure from the
Catholic bishops and the potential backlash from the influential few. While those governing Manila may
argue that their decision to prohibit modern contraceptives constitutes an act of political will, the
question of responsiveness, however, marks the difference between a policy that makes a wide range of
family planning methods available to individuals and couples and one that limits services to what is
acceptable to the Catholic Church. This responsiveness is critical in policymaking and governance as it is
essential to the maintenance of political and democratic legitimacy. Further, what these case studies
222
highlight is that, regardless of pressures from the Catholic Church and other sectors, policy decisions and
actions remain in the hands of political leaders – legislators, mayors, the President. Ultimately, the
accountability lies with the state and the leaders who govern.
LOOKING FORWARD
It is hard to predict when the policy impasse over reproductive health will end and whether an
acceptable compromise is even possible without any major political fallout for the key actors involved.
But even with many questions still unresolved by the debate (or perhaps, more so because of it),
reproductive health advocates may have to keep thinking about the direction a reproductive health
policy should take as it moves forward, noting other concerns and processes that still need to be
addressed. In reflecting on the future direction of reproductive health policy in the Philippines, I would
like to point to some issues that emerged in this study and identify possible openings for engaging in
policy.
How to ensure that poor women are able to truly participate and become major actors in the
policy discussions is a challenge for the immediate and long-term future. At the same time, a sole focus
on poor women leaves out upper and middle class women as well as men from the equation. It also
makes reproductive health appear a charitable concern rather than a right to which everyone is entitled.
For this reason, a dialogue across classes may assist in recognizing common grounds and connections
regarding experiences related to reproduction, contraception and abortion, as well as accessing and
utilizing reproductive health services. A goal of this process is to help build solidarity across classes that
can be a stronger vehicle for advancing reproductive health. It is, however, crucial that poor women
and men and their communities are strategically positioned and able to participate effectively within
this dialogue. Sustained organizing and education work among these communities may be needed in
order to build their capacities for political engagement, place them on a more equal footing with other
In terms of expanding the reproductive health policy agenda, putting men’s concerns in the
picture is important. While male involvement has been identified as part of the ten elements of
reproductive health, ‘male involvement’ has been interpreted as getting men’s support for women’s
reproductive choices, without recognizing that men have real concerns about raising their families and
managing their own reproductive lives. As some women in this study attest, in some instances it was
their husbands or partners who initiated the couples’ decision to use family planning.
For the policy discussion to move forward, policymakers must be willing to leave open the
divisive question of when life begins and the framing of abortion as killing. Getting beyond this
life/death question presents a very challenging task. However, one direction is to move this discussion
outside of the policy arena and into the larger public sphere where more voices and perspectives can be
heard. But this entails talking about abortion based on moral, social and medical grounds, and real life
circumstances – a daunting task given the illegal status of abortion. This may also be an opportunity to
have a broader discussion about faith (and non-faith), taking a closer look at the ways religion influence
and impinge on people’s lives. Ethnographic studies that examine women’s abortion experiences and
the impact of religion on personal lives could be a step towards opening this discussion.
224
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