5. What is the status of legislation on abortion in the Philippines? Abortion is illegal in the Philippines. The Revised Penal Code (Act No. 3815, Article 256-259) defines the various ways and means by which abortion is committed, by whom, and their corresponding penalties: reclusion temporal, prison mayor, and prision correccional .
|
The penalties cover:
-
any one who causes intentional abortion by using violence on the person of the pregnant woman; or, if he acts without violence, acts without the consent of the woman;
-
any person who causes unintentional abortion by violence;
-
abortion practiced by the woman herself or by her parents;
-
abortion practiced by a physician or midwife dispensing of abortives;
-
any pharmacist who, without the proper prescription from a physician, dispenses of abortives.
While it makes abortion punishable, the law has been hard to apply because no aggrieved party or complainant comes to the courts to file a criminal case on an abortion.
But just because the law is hardly applied does not mean that crime is less offensive. It only indicates that the right to life of the unborn is an issue that Philippine society, in general, has refused to confront.
6. What is significant about having a provision in the new Constitution on protecting the unborn from the moment of conception? The Constitution enshrines the basic rights of persons and citizens. The right to life is the most fundamental right of all. From it proceeds all other basic human rights.
In this Constitution, the right to life and the protection of the unborn becomes an absolute value and norm that cannot be repealed by any ordinary legislation, now or in the future.
This means that abortion will never be legalized.
Protecting the unborn from the moment of conception means that any intentional intervention that could be medically considered abortive (whether through chemicals, surgical, or abdominal massage) in the natural process of the growth of the fertilized ovum will be illegal.
7. But how do we know when life really begins?
The humanity of the unborn child is not just a legal principle or philosophical, oral, and ethical belief. It is an established biological fact. This has been made possible through the vast amount of knowledge acquired in the field of genetics, embryology, and fetal development.
On the question of when human life really begins, authorities from around the world in the fields of medicine, law, ethics, and the social sciences met together in the First International Conference on Abortion held in Washington, D.C. (October, 1967) and unanimously concluded that:
"The majority of our group could find no point in time between the union of sperm and egg (or, at least, the blastocyst stage) and the birth of the infant, at which point we could say that this was not a human life. The changes occurring between implantation, a six-week embryo, a six-month fetus, a one-week- old child, or a mature adult are merely stages of development and maturation."
At the very moment of conception, when the chromosomes of the father and the mother unite, a new being (an absolutely unique, never-to-be duplicated individual) is created. It has, by any standard, a life of its own and in no way is part of the mother or the father.
By three weeks, the unborn human being already has the beginnings of eyes, spinal cord, nervous system, lungs, stomach, and intestines. By the end of the first month of pregnancy (about the time when the women may be first aware or suspect that they are pregnant), both the brain and the heart are functioning.
The internal organs will continue to grow and mature for 25 to 27 years before all are fully developed, but they are all present by the end of the eight week.
By the end of the third month of pregnancy, the child can kick its legs, curl and fan toes, make a fist, move its thumb, turns its head, squint, frown, open and close its mouth.
Before the midpoint in the pregnancy, the baby has developed most of the characteristics it will show after birth.
The baby sleeps and wakes; when sleeping, it usually settles in a favorite position. Not only can it hear, but it can even recognize its mother's voice.
Birth does not represent the creation of a new human being. The only real functional change following birth is in the source of food and oxygen. Scientific evidence indicates that the unborn child is very much a living human individual.
|
|
