MANILA – Several Philippine government agencies along with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) pushed for the promotion and protection of bodily autonomy, or the right to govern our own bodies, as major driver for a more inclusive and robust economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The UNFPA launched its State of the World Population report which showed almost half of all women surveyed in 57 countries are denied their bodily autonomy, particularly on issues related to healthcare, contraception, and sex.
It also showed the same trend in the Philippines with data showing, Filipino women, on average, give birth to one child more than they intend.
This is made worse by poverty as women with less income and lower educational attainment usually have higher unplanned births.
Likewise, the report noted an increasing trend in the number of adolescent pregnancies particularly among women aged 10 to 14 years old.
“Girls and adolescents, and young people need to stay at school as long as it’s possible. Education is the basis of patrolling the rights of young people,” said UNFPA country programme representative Leila Joudane.
“Comprehensive sexual education is very important as well so that young people will know about their rights, their sexual opportunity health rights, and will make the right choices about their future, about their life.”
For National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) Undersecretary Jose Miguel de La Rosa, pushing the gender and development program in government is necessary for the overall development of the local economy.
“In the Philippine Development plan, gender and development is one key program that all sectors of society should promote especially the government, the administration,” de La Rosa said. “As a society, we would like to make sure that equal opportunities are there for both male and female.”
He said NEDA as well as the Commission on Population and Development (POPCOM) and the Department of Health are beefing up the implementation of the Reproductive Health (RH) law and the National Program on Population and Family Planning (NPPFP).
“Our goal is to provide every Filipino with full access to sexual and reproductive health care services and comprehensive sexuality education, so that they can make informed decisions and exercise their freedom over their own bodies,” de la Rosa said.
For his part, POPCOM executive director Jeepy Perez said, the commission is focusing on 25,000 barangays that have been hit by COVID-19 to ensure the communities still have access to reproductive health education as well as family planning services.
“We continue to have an increase in population. This means that the economy, of course, has to expand to accommodate an increase in population and health services are going to be still under pressure to deliver services, particularly for maternal and child health and for public health programs,” Perez explained.
Based on POPCOM’s preliminary data, the Philippines was seen to have added up to 1.5 million to its population in 2020, during the height of the health crisis.
RELATED VIDEO
The UNFPA launched its State of the World Population report which showed almost half of all women surveyed in 57 countries are denied their bodily autonomy, particularly on issues related to healthcare, contraception, and sex.
