When a Country Cracks Down on Contraception: Grim Lessons from the Philippines

[FarCenter]

Over the past few decades, as most of the world has embraced family planning, the majority-Catholic nation has waged war on reproductive rights. There, abortion is strictly prohibited and crackdowns on contraception are common. Church officials promote what they call “natural” family planning: women are advised to track their cycle and abstain from sex on all but their least fertile days. They cast “artificial” contraception as an affront to God’s will, a gateway to abortion and a threat to public health. In their minds, condoms are “abortifacients” and family-planning campaigners are, as Archbishop Paciano Aniceto told me in 2008, “propagandists of a culture death.”

This type of thinking has led several jurisdictions to try to curb the use of modern contraception. For much of the past decade, for instance, the city of Manila kept birth control from city-funded clinics. The architects of the plan told me that it was designed to discourage promiscuity and, as much as possible, keep public funds away from private vice. The evidence suggests the bill did little to promote abstinence (what Aniceto called “self-mastery”) and did much to hurt women’s health. A report by the Center for Reproductive Rights documented a relative rise in maternal mortality, a slew of unwanted pregnancies and evidence of injury caused by clandestine abortions.

And it’s not just Manila. The church’s decades-old campaign against modern contraception has led to an epidemic of unsafe abortions in the Philippines. The country’s high unmet need for contraception means that almost half of pregnancies are unwanted and about 500,000 per year result in abortion. All too often, these procedures are unsafe. Every year, an estimated 60,000 Filipinas are injured trying to terminate a pregnancy. About 1,000 die from abortion-related complications.


Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2012/02/21/when-a-country-cracks-down-on-contraception-grim-lessons-from-the-philippines/

[tblue]

1. STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID!

[hifiguy]

2. Which are exactly the results to be expected.

Fascist asshats.

[libodem]

3. Sad

And wrong.

[Dawson Leery]

4. This is what the Catholic Church, Born Agains, and Sharia thugs want for the whole world.

Disgusting!

[get the red out]

7. Exactly!

I am sure they don't care when women die, but THEY are the immoral ones. They do more to promote abortion than anyone in the world. They desire a CULTURE OF DEATH.

[Enrique]

5. but I'm sure the elites are doing just fine there

I'm guessing they have no problem at all getting both birth control and abortions.

[fasttense]

6. Anti-abortion laws Do Not stop abortions.

Remember the 60s and 70s here in the US? It seems stupid people who like to call themselves Christians (and I seriously doubt Christ will recognize them.) have forgotten.

Anti-abortion laws merely allow rich women to get safe abortions but poor women resort to coat hangers and back alley abortions. Abortions don't decline with anti-abortion laws, abortions continue go unrecorded and underground, while making it very dangerous for women.

[Ron Obvious]

8. Such inconsistency

Ending a pregnancy is playing God and thwarting God's will (that omnipotent blighter's will seems rather easy to thwart, doesn't it?), but vaccines and curing disease is not? How can anyone over the age of 12 or so not see through this?

Also, an abortion is merely an induced miscarriage ("abortus provocatus&quot , and since about half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, God seems to have no problems with abortion as he's the biggest abortionist out there if you believe this sort of thing.

[texshelters]

9. Too bad many evangelicals, Catholics and Republicans

won't let these fact get in the way of their reality.

Peace,
Tex Shelters