THE Population Division of the Davao City Health Office revealed that the temporary restraining order (TRO) on the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health (RPRH) law will affect all Filipinos, not only the poor as what many people think.
Jeff Fuentes, CHO population division head, during Connect media forum held at SM Lanang on Friday, October 27, said the TRO will eventually cause the Filipino people to have very limited number of choices for contraceptives and will have very limited access to these.
He said the TRO on the reproductive health law, as a result of the objection of the Alliance for the Family Foundation Philippines Inc. (ALFI), will not only cover the contraceptive implants (Implanon) but all the other 77 commodities (brands of pills and methods of contraceptive).
"Very direct lang yong sa implant but I could say in the 2020 if we cannot reverse the decision or the perspective of the Supreme Court this country will be seeing condom as the only contraceptive method (available)," he said.
He said the certification of the registration of these commodities is being the subject of the TRO. Thus, the Food and Drugs Administration is doing a series of public hearings of these products but there are those who oppose it, claiming that these commodities are abortifacient.
He, further, said that what the oppositors of the RPRH are doing is delaying tactic and not really about finding out the abortifacient nature of a certain contraceptive brand or method.
Imagine, if there are 77 brands and methods of contraceptive being questioned, and the FDA conducts studies of these one by one, and the opposition will question the validity and other issues of the FDA's research, they can subject the study to another question in the Supreme Court which can result to endless FDA study just to revert the SC's decision.
He said the public is not feeling the effects of the TRO since there are still a lot of brands of pills and contraceptive methods in the market.
But by 2018, since a number of brands of pills and other artificial contraceptive methods cannot pass the certification as indicated in the TRO, these pills will be regarded as "illegal drugs" and will be prohibited from coming inside the country. This will result to only 17 brands of contraceptives that will remain in the market.
"And these are the more expensive brands, like Diane pills, which costs hundreds of pesos (each)," he said
He also said that since the Philippines is not manufacturing contraceptive pills and only import these from other countries, then eventually, all the pills will be consumed and we cannot import anymore as long as the TRO is not lifted.
He added that currently, there are about 5,000 to 8,000 contraceptive implants that the city cannot distribute because of the TRO. Each of the implants costs around P1,000.