The Departed

In my country, 4,500 women die every year from child-birth related complications. This means that everyday an estimated 11 Filipinas die while giving life.

A woman losing her life while giving life is an irony that is unheard of in other more developed countries around the world.

Factors like limited access to reproductive health information and services and the fact that more than half of the total annual childbirths are not attended by a health care professional aggravate this problem.

Last Mothers' Day, supporters of the Reproductive Health Bill lit a candle to commemorate the departed ones.

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH ADVOCATES PROTEST AGAINST YEARLY DEATHS OF 4,500 MOTHERS




Thousands of reproductive health advocates and supporters all over the country gathered last May 13 in a symbolic protest against yearly deaths of an estimated 4,500 mothers due to maternal and childbirth related complications such as severe hemorrhage, hypertensive disorders, sepsis, and problems related to obstructed labor and abortion. The event was timed after Mothers' Day.

In an event dubbed, “Light a Candle, Save Mothers’ Lives: Support the Passage of Reproductive Health Bills,” national and local lawmakers, government officials, health workers, community folks, civil society and interfaith leaders lighted candles and offered flowers to commemorate the wasted lives of around 11 Filipino mothers who die everyday while giving life to an offspring.

“Reproductive health advocates from the cities of San Pablo, Laguna, Legazpi, Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, Tacloban, Sultan Kudarat and Quezon City conducted a simultaneous candle lighting ceremony to call the attention of our lawmakers on the graveness of our maternal health condition,” said Beth Angsioco, Secretary General of the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN). “Its heart wrenching to note that 11 lives of mothers are wasted everyday while giving birth to an offspring and three out of four women who die each day are in the prime of their lives, aged 15-19, and come from poor families,” Angsioco lamented.

“We hope to remind all of us that flowers and gifts during Mothers’ Day are not enough. A law that will make pregnancies and childbirths safe is needed. We call on our legislators to truly honor Filipino mothers by immediately passing the Reproductive Health Bill into law,” Angsioco stressed.




Meanwhile, Ramon San Pascual, Executive Director of the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development Foundation, Inc. (PLCPD) has expressed hope that reproductive health bill will pass this congress. “We are positive that this time, the reproductive health bill will see the light despite the deliberate delaying tactics of the anti-RH legislators in the House of Representatives,” San Pascual added.

San Pascual elaborates: “As of today, there are already 118 co-authors in the House of Representatives, and with the new entrants, the number is still growing. There are also legislators who said they would vote for the bill come voting period. “On the other hand, the Senate deliberation has been going on smoothly and even Sen. Aquilino Pimentel who is known to have anti-RH position has expressed his amendments so that the bill will be more acceptable even to his co-religionists,” San Pascual said.

RH Advocates staged the simultaneous nationwide candle lighting ceremonies to dramatize the call for an immediate passage of Senate Bill 3122 and House Bill 5043, titled “Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act of 2009.” Both houses are conducting plenary interpellations of the measure.