12 prosecution if they present themselves with abortion-related complications as well as the fear among health care providers that they can be held liable as accomplices or accessories to a crime should they provide necessary medical treatment.118 With these provisions in place, both patient and provider will no longer be deterred by their fear of the law and punishment from seeking and providing timely care. In a retrogressive measure, these provisions were deleted from the 2018 PMAC policy along with the penalty provisions discussed above. Further, unlike the 2016 PMAC policy which called for institutional safeguards and protocols to “ensure patient confidentiality, privacy, [and] protection of women’s human rights” in general,119 the 2018 PMAC policy focused only on ensuring “audio visual privacy” to protect the patient from “public scrutiny.”120 In repealing the 2016 PMAC policy, the new policy failed to formally clarify existing misconceptions harming women and girls and failed to ensure that women’ and girls’ rights to privacy and confidentiality are protected when seeking post-abortion care. Proposed recommendation: For the Department of Health to reintroduce and ensure the availability of misoprostol as an essential medicine with the goal of reducing maternal mortality and morbidity rates. Since 2016, the state party has not taken any step to reintroduce misoprostol which has been classified as an essential medicine by the World Health Organization for the prevention and treatment of post-partum hemorrhage, management of incomplete abortion and miscarriage, induction of labor, and medical abortion.121 Misoprostol has remained an unregistered drug for over a decade in the Philippines because of strong opposition to its potential use as an abortifacient.122 Recommendations on post-abortion care received by the state party since 2016. The Committee against Torture recommended that the state party “develop a confidential complaints mechanism for women subjected to discrimination, harassment or ill-treatment while seeking post-abortion or post-pregnancy treatment or other reproductive health services” and to “investigate, prevent and punish all incidents of ill-treatment of women seeking post-pregnancy care in government hospitals and provide effective legal remedies to victims.”123 III. Suggested questions Reflecting on the information and concerns presented in this submission, we respectfully request that the Committee pose the following questions to the state party: 1. What steps has the state party taken to ensure women’s and girls’ equal access to the full range of contraceptive services, including by: a. repealing discriminatory laws and policies e.g. Sorsogon City’s Executive Order 3, and ensuring that other local governments do not adopt similarly restrictive local laws and executive orders, b. finding local government officials e.g. Sorsogon City mayor, accountable for refusing to implement the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act (RPRHA), c. removing the need for spousal and parental consent to access certain reproductive health commodities and services, d. entirely prohibiting the institutional practice of religious-based refusals of care,