Category: women

on self-help and the Pinay

or let’s begin 2012 by talking about oppression, shall we?

radikalchick

My issue with self-help books is that they are mostly American. And anyone who lives off of the Philippines’ contradictions and silences, crises and sadnesses would know that not much of American self-help applies to the every Pinay.

The 11 stupid things women do by Veronica Pulumbarit, based on the book by Dr. Laura Schlessinger Ten Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Lives among other sources, reeks of a universalizing and stereotyping of the woman that just fails to consider how differently women – and men – live in third world Philippines. Of course Dr. Schlessinger and every other self-help guru or magazine would have its own market in this impoverished nation, but that’s really the phenomenon of a first-world-pocket in the age of transnationalization, where social class differences are becoming more and more stark, and Pinays of a certain class can actually live believing in the ideologies of the first world.

read on

armed women & children?

got this from the grapevine via the friend of an uncle of a family friend of a soldier who was wounded in the deadly clash in al barka.  allegedly, our soldiers did not, could not, fight back, not because they were ill-prepared for combat in mindanao, or because they felt bound by the ceasefire agreement, but because the muslim fighters / killers were mostly women and children, who were quite ruthless.  i hope it’s not true.

RH hurrahs! and a boo

the first HURRAH! is for dr. sylvia claudio, director of the u.p. center for women’s studies, who spoke up in congress at the 2nd deliberation of the house committee of population and family relations on the critical question of when life begins, and fearlessly unequivocally contradicted the notion that life begins at fertilization.

I have a prepared statement today but let me respond to the questions posed to the medical doctors by Representatives Biazon and (Anthony) Golez on the issue of when life begins.

I note that the Chair called upon me because Rep. Biazon also asked who does not believe life begins at fertilization. I do not, for two reasons. The first reason is that as an agnostic I do not subscribe to the beliefs of the Catholic Church. In this regard I would like to remind everyone that the Constitutional provision on religious freedom protects not just the right to belief but also the right to non-belief. …

The second reason I do not believe that life begins at fertilization has to do with my expertise as a medical doctor. . . . I would like to note that “conception” is not a medical term. The terms fertilization and implantation are medical terms and we can describe and explain these processes to lay people. Any scientific discussion requires the precise use of terms. The Philippine Obstetrics and Gynecological Society is correct when it states that the mainstream medical and scientific community agrees that pregnancy begins at implantation.

the second HURRAH! is for dr. marita v.t. reyes, chair of the women’s health care foundation, who recently gave a talk on “Biomedical Ethics and RH” in a u.p. forum. reyes points out that only upon implantation does the woman’s urine test positive for the hormone that signals a pregnancy.

Conception is usually equated with fertilization described as the union of sperm and egg. Clinically, however,conception is synonymous with pregnancy and is established by a pregnancy test based on the presence of the human chorionic gonadotrophin in the blood and the urine. This hormone is secreted by the chorionic villi after implantation of the embryo.

… Implantation is completed 14 days (2 weeks) after fertilization. Studies have shown that 45-70 percent of fertilized ova do not successfully implant. It is after implantation that individuation may be said to occur since twinning and fusion no longer take place. Some books refer to the fertilized ovum prior to implantation as a ‘pre-embryo.’ After implantation, it is referred to as ‘an embryo.’ Sometimes, debates are unresolved because of differences in terminologies! It is at implantation that the hormone, human chorionic gonadotrophin mentioned earlier, is secreted and is used as an indicator of pregnancy.

so there.   as far as these lady scientists are concerned, human life begins with implantation, which doesn’t happen until more than a week after fertilization, if at all there is an egg that is fertilized after unprotected (uncontracepted?) sex.   so what’s the harm of emergency contraception, or the morning-after pill, when one is not pregnant and just wants to make sure one does not get pregnant?

of course the anti-RH folks will insist that life begins with fertilization and any intervention in the reproductive process is morally wrong.   i say again, it’s for the woman to decide who to believe and what to do with her own body.

of course it would help if mainstream media would level-up the information-gathering, yes?   and lead discussions that would help women understand that they have options, and that would make the golezes and sottos in congress see that millions of impoverished men and women who may want to practice contraception (instead of having to resort to abortion) just can’t afford to buy condoms and pills when they can barely feed their families three meals a day.

this brings me to the BIG BOO! which goes to anc‘s the brew that guested paranaque representative roilo golez the other thursday but instead of truly grilling him on his anti-RH stance, the brewhas just let him go on and on — high population is good, contraceptives are already available, maternal deaths should be blamed on lack of doctors and midwives, at kung ano-ano pang kamachohan.   they should have posted a disclaimer: the opinions expressed herein are not those of the brewhas, or the network’s, unless of course anti-RH din pala sila.

sure they tried, pitifully unsuccessfully, to bring the talk to the level of the impoverished family, but golez was just too “good” — poor din daw siya noon but his parents had the right values, sent him to school, blah blah blah.   hay naku.   so the brewhas changed the subject na lang:  how daw kaya to produce more pacquiaos.

like i posted in facebook, the girls didn’t help the RH cause any.   they should stick to trivial issues for which knee-jerk reactions are good enough if they can’t be bothered to do their homework.   if they had bothered to check out golez’s website they could have at least maybe prepared an intelligent counter-attack.   or maybe not?

in last thursday’s episode the brewhas reacted to criticisms lightly, patawa effect — kesyo they didn’t wanna “mess with golez”…  he will “stoop to nothing”…   kesyo  it wasn’t supposed to be a debate, nothing wrong with letting the “charming” golez have his say…  maiba naman from “shrewish zealots” with “magical reasoning”…   ganoon?   ewww

so what do we make of one brewha’s  rant vs. tibaks and the suc budget protests.   i guess matapang lang sila vs. the left at pag di nila kaharap?   ‘yan ba ang girl power, anc style?   BOO!

abortion

it’s something women don’t really talk about, even among themselves, but if one needs that kind of help, it’s not hard to find out where to go, depending on one’s paying capacity.   there are crude back-alley operations (catheter style, the unsafest unkindest scariest), there are clandestine clinics (d & c, pain pain pain), there are even small hospitals (suction, painless, relatively).    also there are meds, pharmaceuticals, banned here of course but widely known about even in the provinces and can be had under the counter, or in quiapo, requiring little medical supervision.   but elizabeth angsioco is right, it is never an easy decision, rather always an agonizing one, and always out of desperation.   poor women.

The ‘A’ word
Elizabeth Angsioco

A stands for abortion.

Five hundred seventy thousand Filipino women underwent induced abortions in 2008. Around 90,000 of them were hospitalized, and 1,000 died from complications. Surely, these abortion figures (Guttmacher Institute) should be more than enough to shock people. But will these make us closely look at the problem? More importantly, will these data jolt the government into action? Or will we be like the moralists whose knee-jerk reactions are to condemn women and brush these numbers aside as untrue?

Abortion is illegal in the Philippines. The Constitution criminalizes it. Because it is also culturally taboo, abortion is rarely discussed and done mostly within the context of religion or morality – that abortion is a mortal sin. Opportunities to objectively, honestly and intelligently dialogue on abortion is severely lacking. There is virtually no venue for women to freely discuss abortion without the moral prescriptions and judgment from others. Because it is illegal and stigmatized, abortion remains hidden; the data are hard to come by.

Admittedly, the above-mentioned numbers are estimates. These are, however, intelligent estimates, and the result of a rigorous process of research and data extrapolation based on factors used in comparative estimations in other countries. Thus, these figures cannot and should not be disregarded as untrue.

These numbers show how critical and widespread the problem is. Despite its being illegal, more than half a million women undergo abortion a year. This is more than the entire population of Makati City in 2007. The number of women who are hospitalized as a result of the abortion is a few thousands more than Isabela City’s population. The number of women who died is comparable to the population of an entire small barangay. Such is the magnitude of the problem.

Abortions are performed clandestinely. In many cases, unsafe manners are used by those who perform them. They endanger women’s lives. There were cases of women who used barbecue sticks and clothes hangers to induce abortion. Highly dangerous ways such as these are more common for poor women. Their rich ‘sisters’ can pay for needed services, sometimes even getting the procedure (and vacation) in another country.

Profiling women having induced abortions will reveal that 68 percent are poor, 91 percent are married/in union, 57 percent have more than three children and 87 percent are Catholics.

When asked why they resorted to abortion, 72 percent cited poverty, 54 percent said they already had enough children, and 57 percent indicated that the pregnancy occurred too soon after the last one.

Therefore, contrary to popular notion that those who have abortions are young women who sleep around, the reality is that it is the poor, Catholic married women with several children who are forced into this situation. Moreover, it is clear from the women’s reasons that their pregnancies were unplanned or unwanted. Fifty-four percent of those who had abortion were not using any contraceptive when they got pregnant. Of those who were doing family planning, 75 percent were using a traditional method.

In my decades of working with community women, I have yet to meet one who is pro-abortion but have encountered many who said they had to resort to it out of desperation. Deciding to have an abortion is never easy. Women agonize over this and in most cases, make the decision not for themselves but for their families, especially the several children they already have.

Take D, for example. Now 48 years old and an ambulant vendor, she gave birth to her first child at 17 and was pregnant each year for the next five years. Thus, at the age of 22, she already had six children. A devout Catholic, D. had three abortions after her sixth child because her husband would not hear of pills when they could hardly provide food for their children. She said that the abortions saved her six living children. After, she decided to take the pill and only told her husband five years later. She now says that without the abortions and pills, she could have given birth to at least six more children, something that they definitely could not afford.

T also had an abortion. She and her husband used to work in the same factory but her man was retrenched and became seriously ill. T became the sole breadwinner and then she got pregnant. With four children, high medical costs for the husband, no savings and only her meager earnings to tide the family over, the couple knew that it was the worst time to have another child. They decided that an abortion was the only solution.

While invisible, women having abortions are real women with real stories to tell. Unfortunately, society seems uninterested.

In fact, the abortion scare is used by the Catholic hierarchy and its fundamentalist allies against the reproductive health bill. Virtually all anti-RH positions equate the bill with abortion. Particularly, the FP provisions are under attack. Let’s look at what House Bill 96 (Lagman) actually says.

Section 3, i. states that, “While nothing in this Act changes the law against abortion, the government shall ensure that all women needing care for post-abortion complications shall be treated and counselled in a humane, non-judgmental and compassionate manner.” Clearly therefore, the RH bill does not promote abortion’s legalization but takes serious notice of and addresses abusive treatment suffered by poor women in the hands of medical practitioners even when these women are already suffering from complications.

The same section says that government shall promote, without bias, all modern natural and artificial, medically safe, legal, and effective family planning methods. The bill has related provisions that ensure access to family planning of those who need the services the most – those in poverty. Note that the unmet need for family planning of poorest women is 51 percent and; those who are not poor need much less. (National Demographic and Health Survey, 2008).

Addressing abortion necessitates dealing with unplanned, mistimed and unwanted pregnancies. Access to family planning programs is a must. Studies show that correct and regular use of contraceptives can bring down abortion rates by as much as 85 percent (Allan Guttmacher Institute). Therefore, contrary to what anti-RH groups say, the bill’s passage will bring down the number of induced abortions in the country.

Anti-abortion groups should actually support the reproductive health bill.