A SUPREME Court temporary restraining order stopping the Food and Drug Administration from recertifying contraceptive products already in use in the Philippines for years will result in population explosion, abject poverty and an increase in the 1,000 or so Filipino women who die each year from induced abortion.
The cause-oriented group Taumbayan Para sa Iyo led by activist Louis Biraogo issued this warning today, noting that at least 77 contraceptive products have already been taken out of the market since the SC issued the TRO in June of 2015.
“The Population Commission has already noted a big increase in the number of unwanted pregnancies in the last 18 months and it may be assumed this is so because the go-to contraceptive products used by poor Filipino couples have already been banned because of this TRO,” said Biraogo.
“The doomsday scenario we are seeing is that there will be a total stock-out of all contraceptive products in about a year’s time if this TRO is not lifted ASAP by the Supreme Court,” added Biraogo.
He pointed out that if 1,000 Filipinas die each year from induced abortion according to data from the Guttmacher Institute based in the United States, hundreds of thousands more may die not only from induced and spontaneous abortions but also from complications arising from pregnancy and childbirth.
Biraogo said the SC TRO rendered useless the Reproductive Health Law signed in 2012 because it deprives Filipino women and couples of universal access to contraceptive methods, sexuality education and maternal and child care.
“The TRO is the single most vile form of repression of the millions of Filipino women of reproductive age. That TRO violates the human rights of Filipinas because it removed from them the decision when to have children and what contraceptive methods to use,” said Biraogo.
Biraogo said that the TRO was a “shotgun removal from the market” of contraceptive products which are, in the past perfunctorily issued re-certifications by the Philippine FDA because of their proven efficacy and non-abortifacient nature.
“The fallacy of this TRO becomes very apparent when applied to other drugs because it would require the FDA to treat as new products and up for thorough scrutiny all drugs that are in the market for years,” said Biraogo.
“Due to this TRO the simple re-certification process of products already vetted by the FDA and the World Health Organization as safe will now take years to complete if at all they will be ever re-certified again because they are subject to unceasing harassment complaints by anti-RH groups.”
Biraogo said that “the evil design of the anti-RH groups is just to stop the FDA from recertifying contraceptives by filing non-stop harassment complaints.”
TAYO lamented that despite numerous petitions by pro-choice groups and by the Department of Health and Popcom, the SC has chosen to sit on the petitions to lift the TRO issued by one of its divisions.
“The original complaint was only for two products but the TRO shotguns all contraceptive products, including those up for mere recertification, out of the reach of Filipinos and even by the government whose family planning program based on the full implementation of the RH Law has been hijacked.”
“When would the SC lift the TRO? When there’s hundreds of thousands more dead Filipinas from abortions and complications from childbirth and unplanned pregnancies? If that happens, there’d be blood in the hands of our honorable justices of the Supreme Court.
Biraogo shot down the claim of the anti-RH forces that contraceptives induce or cause abortion because based on scientific and medical literature, most if not all of the contraceptives in the Philippines stop ovulation or the release of the female egg, thus no conception to be aborted takes place.