European Union Ambassador Supports the passage of RH bill into law

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FROM: http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=643267&publicationSubCategoryId=63

1) MacDonald said at the launching of the Emphasis-RH project that lack of access to reproductive health services is anti-poor, anti-women, anti-children and anti-development.

He noted that the total fertility rate (TFR) for the richest quintile of the population is 2.0, while the TFR of the poorest quintile is 5.9. The TFR for women with college education is 2.3, about half that of women with only elementary education (4.5).

He also said the lack of access to RH services is anti-women, citing the slow decline in maternal mortality ratio in the Philippines.

He also said surveys suggest that the total wanted fertility rate for the Philippines is 2.4 children, or below the actual TFR of 3.3 children.

“It seems to me extremely unlikely that the Philippines will be able to meet its commitment under the MDGs under the present policy,” he said.

2) "The risk of childhood diseases and child mortality associated with large numbers of unplanned pregnancies is frightening, to think of the opportunities which children in the country are being denied because of the strain on health services, on education services, and the lack of employment opportunities, in a country which is straining at the seams,” he said.

“And even more immediately, infants and children have a greater probability of dying if they are born to mothers who are too young or too old, if they are born after a short birth interval, or if they are of high birth order,” he said.

3) “There is, however, one issue where the absence of effective RH services is not ‘anti.’ I have to underline that the lack of access to RH services is not anti-abortion – rather it serves to encourage abortion, to create a situation in which... there are more than 500,000 illegal abortions per year in the Philippines,” MacDonald said.

He cited the “astonishingly high proportion of abortions” at 15 percent of total pregnancies.

The EU’s current poverty reduction program in the Philippines is focused on the health sector.