By Amy Phillips Bursch, Media Relations Manager
Oh
Vatican.
For an organization that does a huge amount of good (nuns advocating for poor people, for example),
the Catholic Church sure can gum up the works on what should be noncontroversial reproductive health issues.
(Disclosure: I used to be a practicing Catholic. My husband
and I planned on getting married in the church. But after 40 hours of premarital
education – including a “natural family
planning” seminar – we were told to leave if we didn’t agree with all of their
stances. So we did.)
The latest front in the Vatican-fueled culture war is in the
Philippines. You
see, the Philippines has a big problem: Dying women. In fact, its maternal
mortality rates have skyrocketed – from 162 deaths per 100,000 in 2006 to 221
per 100,000 in 2011. Not good.
What’s one of the best ways to cut maternal mortality?
Make sure women only get pregnant when they want to. So the Philippines hopes to invest about $12 million in contraception this year.
 |
| Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Manila (Salim Photography) |
Hope is the operative word here. The Catholic Church – an extremely
powerful force in a nation that’s more than 80% Catholic – is in the midst of
an intense lobbying campaign to kill a
reproductive health care bill that would allocate money for contraceptives
and provide sex education for the nation’s children. The church’s objections
all center around one argument: Contraception
is immoral. You know the drill.
So the Vatican will keep derailing
reproductive rights, and fighting
against insurance coverage of contraception. Meanwhile, the women of the
Philippines are suffering:
"The statistics and acronyms mean
little to women like Irish Gili, 31, a mother of eight who had just delivered
her latest baby at Fabella (Hospital). She has never had access to family
planning advice, much less free contraceptives. She nearly died while
delivering her seventh child, but found herself pregnant again, barely a month
after giving birth."
No comments:
Post a Comment