PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider the restraining order it issued against subdermal implants that prevented the government from fully implementing the Reproductive Health law.
The President was referring to a body modification placed underneath the skin, therefore allowing the body to heal over the implant and creating a raised design, such implants falling under the broad category of body modification.
During his second State of the Nation Address of his six-year presidency, Duterte said “The TRO [temporary restraining order] has become the bane of [government] projects.”
Directly looking at Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno who was also in the audience, Duterte said “I will not attribute anything ma’am to the Supreme Court.
“Maybe I’m at fault. So I’m sorry. If I misquote or I did not have the complete facts. But this Congress passed the Reproductive Health law. It was already a law that should have been implemented because we were already going into family planning.”
But the Supreme Court on August 2016 issued a TRO on contraceptive implants such as Implanon and Implanon NXT, and remanded the authority to lift the injunction to the Food and Drugs Administration.
Implanon and Implanon NXT are thin rods inserted under the skin, which release hormones that prevent pregnancy for up to three years.
The high court said “it never meant to enjoin the processing of the entire gamut of family planning supplies that have been declared as unquestionably non-abortifacent,” adding the injunction “was only subject to the condition that the respondents afford the petitioners a genuine opportunity to their right to due process.”
The President said: “I am not for abortion, I am not for birth control, but certainly I am for giving Filipino family (the choice) of the size of the family.”
But the Court in a resolution issued last May 2017 said the government could proceed with the implementation of programs under the RH Law because the injunction order issued was not for the entire family planning supplies.
Duterte said he had asked Health Secretary Pauline Ubial to consider selling the contraceptives to other countries instead since these were nearing expiry.
Duterte said the purchase of the contraceptives was not a “reckless purchase” because the government then did not expect a TRO to be issued by the Supreme Court.
“It was not really a reckless purchase, it was in preparation of the implementation of the law. We did not expect it to be stopped by a TRO,” Duterte said.