Religious Women Getting Abortions Even Where it is Illegal

Philippines abortion crisis
Religious women turn to illegal procedures



MANILA: Built in the late 1500s by the Spaniards, Quiapo Church is one of the most prominent symbols of Roman Catholicism in the Philippines.

Located in the center of Manila, right along a busy boulevard with side streets teeming with bootlegged DVDs, Filipinos who pray for miracles flock to this church. Inside is a supposedly miraculous life-size statue of Jesus carrying the cross.

To hundreds of Filipino women every year, Quiapo Church provides a solution - some say another kind of miracle - to a specific predicament: unwanted pregnancy.

Every day, pregnant women go to this church not only to pray but to buy abortion drugs from the dozens of stalls that surround it.

"You could say we provide instant miracles to women," said a 58-year-old vendor, who agreed to talk on the condition of anonymity.

For years now, the woman said, she has been selling herbs and certain abortifacients right outside the church's main entrance, barely 20 paces from the Monument for Children, a representation of a fetus outside the womb, cherubs, Christ's wounded hands and a sobbing mother.

Today, Quiapo Church has become almost synonymous with abortion. It is a testament not only to a people's abiding faith but also to one of the more tragic facts in Philippine society, where abortion is illegal and the Roman Catholic Church condemns any woman who has one. But more and more women are undergoing abortions, and more and more of them are dying because abortions are largely clandestine and unsafe.

Precisely because of the enormous power of Roman Catholicism - more than 80 percent of Filipinos are Catholics - the government does not have a clear policy on abortion. Filipino politicians never mention it in their public pronouncements except to condemn it. Meanwhile, reports of women dying or hospitalized because of induced abortion, or of fetuses found in garbage dumps, are becoming more common.

In some instances, fetuses are dumped in and around Catholic churches in the mother's belief that it would save the child's soul. Reproductive-rights groups believe, however, that it is done to spite a church that condemns women who abort their pregnancies.

Some hospitals refuse to treat women for abortion-related illnesses like profuse bleeding because, as one health official put it, "they look at these women as sinners." In a few instances, according to women's groups, doctors have performed postabortion dilation and curettage without anesthesia as a punishment for these women.

Official estimates put annual abortions at 400,000 to 500,000, and rising. The World Health Organization estimate puts the figure at nearly 800,000, one of the highest rates of unsafe abortions in Asia.

to read more,

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/15/news/phils.php?page=1[i]legal,

This is a difficult situation for me as a new pro-lifer, because my first desire is to see abortion legal so these women will be safe. On the other hand, I know one of the other problems is the lack of birth control AND the cultural condemnation of unmarried pregnant women. Plus there probably isn't adaquet governmental care for poor pregnant women, even if they wanted to give it up for adoption.

I wish they weren't aborting, but I totally understand why they are. My belief is that to truly reduce abortion in a country, you need clinics legal and you need a TON of care available for the pregnant mothers. You also need cultural revolution where pregnancy isn't viewed as something dirty.

Because none of that can happen, I think it's safer for abortion to be legal in this case. It would save the lives of at least the women who are dying right now. And proper Women's Clinics could work towards getting prenatal care for the women who would choose life if they had the resources to do so.

Eiri, I always thought you were pro-choice. What exactly caused the change of thought?

Danielle wrote:

Eiri, I always thought you were pro-choice. What exactly caused the change of thought?

It sounds as if she is pro choice for others, but pro life for herself?

Eiri used to be very pro-choice, on the Ehealth Abortion Debate Board. Now I guess her views have changed.