Monday, December 15, 2008

UK official backs Reproductive Health Bill

Because the global financial crisis is making it hard for governments to improve standards of living, the importance of the Reproductive Health bill that is pending before the Philippine Congress should not be ignored, a United Kingdom official said.

According to Mark Pritchard, the chairman of the Philippine Committee in the UK Parliament, he recognizes the stand of the local Catholic Church that having a small family is not the key to fighting poverty, but that the Philippines’ rapid population growth has made it more difficult for the government to improve or even maintain the living standards of Filipinos.

The Philippines is the 12th most populous nation in the world with an estimated 88.7 million people. Its fertility rate is 3.05 percent, placing it at the upper bracket of 206 countries. There are approximately four babies born every minute and the country’s population is expected to hit an alarming 160 million by 2038.

The Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008, which Rep. Edcel Lagman of Albay and five lawmakers authored, seeks “to promote respect for life, informed choice, birth spacing and responsible parenthood in accordance with internationally recognized human rights standards thru guaranteeing universal access to medically-safe, legal and quality reproductive health-care services and relevant information.”

“The bill just encourages a responsible family life through improved sex education in schools and universities and provide universal access to contraceptives,” Pritchard said.

He added hat while the church condemns abortion, the main issue here is providing free will and choice to couples.

Various Catholic Church groups, including the influential Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), view the Reproductive Health bill as pro-abortion and a measure that would entice unmarried couples to have sex, because of the bill’s provision that classifies hormonal contraceptives, intrauterine devices, injectables and other allied reproductive health products as essential medicines. The bill would make available all these contraceptives to all national and local hospitals and other government health units.

The country’s population growth, according to Pritchard, has reduced standards of living that would make the country more reliant on food imports.

“Progress cannot be based solely on a country’s export or gross domestic product, or even decreased budget deficits. Authorities should have social and economic reforms that will empower the people with the right skill set that will eliminate them from poverty,” he pointed out.

Pritchard said that better access to quality education would put the debate on the population control bill to rest.

During an international conference on population, President Gloria Arroyo had cited pillars of population and development: parenthood, informed choice and birth spacing. But Mrs. Arroyo has yet to issue an official position on the controversial bill.


Author: Llanesca T. Panti
Source: Manila Times (Philippines)
Friday, December 05, 2008

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Safe, satisfying

Last Friday I had to deliver a lecture on an assigned topic, “gender sensitivity, sexuality and sexual rights.” I was feeling uncomfortable about the title, which seemed boring and staid, so I did a quick change. I had a good feeling seeing the new title, projected on the billboard-sized screen of the Philippine International Convention Center: “What’s wrong with safe and satisfying sex?”

The title takes off from sexual rights that have been proposed. These include “choice of partner,” “consensual sex,” “respect for bodily integrity” and others which I brought out in the Philippine Obstetrical and Gynecological Society (POGS) lecture. The last of the 10 sexual rights was “safe, satisfying and pleasurable sexual life.”

These sexual rights are controversial. The mere concept of sexual rights itself is rejected by many, especially those who feel sex should be only for reproduction. The idea that it might be pleasurable is seen almost as dirty and repulsive.

Yet, even from a biomedical point of view, sexual rights, especially this right to “safe, satisfying and pleasurable sexual life,” makes a lot of sense. A few years ago, a multinational team of researchers conducted a “Global Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Behavior” in 27 countries, including the Philippines. The survey looked as well into people’s evaluation of their own subjective sexual wellbeing. Some results of the study were published in 2006 in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in an article that had Edward Laumann as lead author. The article was featured in many newspapers throughout the world, but more often sensationalized, with headlines like “Austrians most sexually satisfied.”

I’ve read the scientific report and there are more important findings than Austria being able to produce good music (Mozart) and good sex. Foremost is the finding that the better the subjective sexual wellbeing of an individual, the better too is his or her general wellbeing and health. To put it more succinctly: Sexual wellbeing also means better health. The medical studies conducted in this area are unequivocal: Good sex has many dividends, all the way up to longer life expectancy. It’s almost as if nature provides a long and healthy life as an incentive: Go forth and have sex (and if you multiply in the process, that’s fine).

‘Kulang’
The concept then of “sexual health” and “sexual rights” shouldn’t be limited to ob/gyn conventions; every medical specialty should consider it, too. Let’s face it, outside of the academic conventions and journals, people have always used common sense to link sexual health and general wellbeing. If you’re particularly difficult or irritable today, close friends will joke, “Had a bad night?” And if you’re habitually grouchy, especially if you’re a woman, people will talk behind your back and say, “Kulang sa dilig,” comparing you to a parched plant.

How did the Philippines fare with subjective sexual wellbeing? Not too well, I’m afraid. That finding wasn’t surprising to the researchers because as they looked at the sexual wellbeing scores, they were able to cluster the countries. The ones that did very well were countries where there was more gender equality. Countries that were “male-centered” (and they included the Philippines) trailed behind the “gender-equal” countries.

Oh, but wait, some readers might go, especially if you read my column last Wednesday, which mentioned another international survey, by the World Economic Forum, on gender equality. That survey put the Philippines at the top among developing countries with regard to gender equality. But if you go back to my article, and to the survey itself, you’ll find that what that study did was to look at access to resources, with measures like gender ratio in schools, corporations and government. It did not consider male-female relations at more personal levels, including sex. Which is why I find the Global Sexual Attitudes and Behavior study useful in getting a better picture of gender relations in the Philippines.

I’m going to share with you some figures to make the study more concrete. Asked about physical sexual pleasure, 47 percent of Filipino men and 40 percent of Filipinas responded positively (I’ve rounded off figures). That doesn’t look too bad, but note that our women are less satisfied here than our men. Not only that, people in gender-equal countries did much, much better. Among Canadians for example, the figures were 71 percent of men and 68 percent of women. Not only were more Canadians physically satisfied, but the gap between men and women was smaller.

Another dimension to subjective sexual wellbeing was “importance of sex.” Among Filipino men, 57 percent responded that sex was very important or important, compared to only 30 percent among women. With Canadians, only 45 percent of men and 35 percent of women considered sex important. They’re revealing statistics: sex is more important to Filipino men than Canadian men, but there’s a large gap between Filipino men and women as well as in Canada, although with a smaller spread.

Fears
It’s clear that women in the Philippines, for various reasons, are not enjoying sex as much as men do. And if you’re thinking, “Ah, but that’s natural, women shouldn’t enjoy sex as much as men do” or even “Women shouldn’t enjoy sex,” then it shows what I mean by a gender gap.

There are many reasons why our women may not enjoy sex. There can be a fear of acquiring sexually transmitted infections, and this happens to many wives whose husbands are away from home often, overseas or domestically, and who know their husbands are philandering. The situation is worse with women who can’t protect themselves, unable to ask their husbands to “behave,” or to use a condom. (Ironically, our machismo allows wives to ask their husbands to use condoms with sex workers, but not with themselves.)

There can be a fear of getting pregnant. It’s a real fear especially when there are several young children sleeping in the same room with the parents, constantly reminding the mother what another child would mean.

There can be a fear of sex itself, partly because our culture is harsher on women when it comes to messages about sex being a task, a responsibility to procreate and anything else would be dirty.

Ob/gyns can help women to overcome some of these fears, if the women bring up sexual pleasure in the first place. Otherwise, they’re left on their own (as are the men). Incidentally, our men suffer too, from machismo, which imposes unrealistic expectations about male sexual performance.

A safe, satisfying and pleasurable sexual life is not about size and techniques, but about rights: to say no as well as to say yes—and even for the wife to say, “I want it.” It’s about being sensitive to the many concerns one’s partner might have, not just about having sex itself but what happens afterwards.

If sexual rights are controversial, it’s because they imply an obligation on the part of the state, of communities, schools and families, to satisfy people’s needs for information and services. That includes sexuality education that tackles relationships, rights, and respect.


By Michael Tan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
11/21/2008

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