NUMBERS aren’t supposed to lie.
Lobbyists for the Reproductive Health (RH) bill are using “dubious” and even outdated statistics on maternal deaths and induced abortions in their bid to ram through Congress a nationwide contraception mandate.
One is the oft-repeated statistic that 11 mothers die every day due to maternal complications.
The latest data, however, show that the range is now down to three to eight deaths a day, according to the group Filipinos for Life (F4L).
Maternal deaths are declining as shown by a study by the World Health Organization titled “Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990 to 2008.”
Meanwhile, according to “Maternal Mortality for 181 countries, 1980-2008: A Systematic Analysis of Progress toward Millenium Development Goal 5,” the country’s maternal mortality rate plunged by 81 percent from 1980 to 2008.
The study was conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation of the University of Washington, Human Life International Asia and Oceania executive director Dr. Ligaya Acosta said that if 11 women died everyday, “the population of the Philippines would have plunged way below.”
Gabriela Party-list representative Luzviminda Ilagan, a principal author of the bill in the House of Representatives, said in an interview that the number of women who die due to maternal complications is not important.
“Even if there is only one or two women dying every day, it’s still a big implication as there are still people dying,” she said.
Inflated abortion stats
Aside from maternal death statistics, F4L is also questioning the number of induced abortions claimed by RH bill supporters.
Pro-RH lawmakers often refer to the study titled “Meeting Women’s Contraceptive Needs in the Philipplines” by the Guttmacher Institute, which estimated that 573,000 out of 3.371 million pregnancies ended up in induced abortions in 2008.
“The methodology, developed by New York-based Guttmacher Institute and the UP Population Institute, simply multiplies the number of women hospitalized for complications due to abortion by six or seven, based on multiple assumptions that cannot be validated,” F4L said in a statement.
“This is another made-up, exaggerated figure meant to scare the people into supporting the RH bill,” said Acosta, who worked for the Department of Health for almost 29 years.
The data were biased and not reliable because of the nature of the Guttmacher Institute, being the research arm of the International Planned Parenthood Federation—the number one abortionist organization in the world, she added.
The Guttmacher Institute is a staunch advocate of reproductive health and abortion.
Reduction of cases
RH bill lobbyists have always said that the bill would reduce cases of maternal deaths and abortions, but Acosta believes that RH is not really about health.
“It is actually a marketing term for abortion created in the 1980s by abortion rights activists,” she said.
However, Ilagan said the bill is about giving information and access to health services to lessen maternal deaths.
According to her, giving information and services to families with limited access to healthcare services will help reduce cases of “unwanted pregnancies.”
“If we have the RH bill, then pregnancy is planned,” said Ilagan. “In other words, the pregnancy is wanted.”
But RH bill advocates know that abortion is prohibited by the Constitution and yet they present it as if it would benefit the people, said Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines secretary general Msgr. Juanito Figura said.
“It’s just a play of words,” he said, adding that maternal health is just a front for the agendum of contraception.“In fact, campaigning for contraceptives will only lead to more abortion. RH lobbyists only speak of induced abortion but not contraceptive abortion.”
According to Ilagan, the main aim of contraceptives—condoms, pills, and intraurine devices (IUD)—is to prevent the meeting of the sperm and egg cells.
“How can it be abortion when there’s no fertilization that happened?” Ilagan said.
But Acosta said contraceptives induce abortion in the sense that by preventing implantation, it would kill a newly conceived baby.
“This is the reason, in fact, why the explanatory note of the RH bill says that it protects the life of the unborn from implantation, contrary to the Philippine Constitution which says that the state shall protect the life of the mother and the unborn from conception,” she said.
In a position paper, the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) said that “experience from practitioners reveal that still, pregnancy is not absolutely prevented by the new version of the IUD and thus, abortion is still a possibility.”
Ilagan said those who oppose the bill should not merely focus on contraceptives but also consider the fact that the bill is also about giving health services in general.
“Kung ayaw mong gumamit ng contraceptives, huwag kang gumamit,” she said.
For Figura, some legislators simply want the poor to limit their children, viewing them as a burden to society.
“Pero ang mga mayayaman, kung ilan gusto nilang anak, bahala sila,” he said.
