Ruizo 33
with taking other factors into consideration may be arguably seen as a
clear reflection of how its drafters were writing not only as legislators,
but more evidently as representatives of the belief-system that they have.
Consequently, this may lead to conflicts in the law where a legislator may
have been producing laws that serve the interest of the ruling class to which
that legislator belongs, to the (deliberate or unintentional) disadvantage of
the non-represented, non-ruling class.
The second portion of the law which I would like to look at more
closely is the decidedly contentious provision under section 17 entitled
“Women’s Right to Health” where paragraph (a) on Comprehensive
Health Services states that,
The State shall, at all times, provide for comprehensive, culture-sensitive
and gender responsive health services and programs covering all stages
of a woman’s life cycle and which addresses the major causes of women’s
mortality and morbidity. Provided, that in the provision for comprehensive
health services, due respect shall be accorded to women’s religious convictions,
the rights of the spouses to found a family in accordance with their religious
convictions, and the demands of responsible parenthood, and the right of
women to protection from hazardous drugs, devices, interventions, and
substances.
Access to the following services shall be ensured:
Xxx
Xxx
(3) Responsible, ethical, legal, safe and effective methods of family
planning (“LawPhil Project: Philippine Laws and Jurisprudence
Databank”) (Italics supplied).
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The above quoted portion of the law is litigious on two points:
first, its qualifying statement stating that the comprehensive health care
services for women will halt as soon as it begins to threaten the sacredness
of the woman’s religious convictions, and secondly, the insertion of the
word “ethical” as one of the descriptions of the kind of methods of family
planning that are mandated under this law.
Women advocates are arguing that the inclusion of those statements
significantly weakens the potency of the law, and actually allows for wide
elbowroom within which the women may, for one religious/ethical reason
or another, be deprived of the services which this law precisely seeks to
provide to all women. Via the statutory construction principle that in order
to interpret a clause, one must look at the context wherein such clause was
found, the word “ethical” in this particular context may be argued as that