Free Birth Control in Philippines Ignites Religious Skirmish

New York Times (Jan. 27, 2017): Duterte’s Free Birth-Control Order Is Latest Skirmish With Catholic Church, by Aurora Almendral:

The Philippines, where six million women have no access to contraceptives, delivers free birth control to indigent women through a program that also offers prenatal care and mandates that sex education be taught in schools and that companies provide reproductive health services to their employees.  The program has been billed as "pro-life, pro-women, pro-children and pro-economic development." 

But the Catholic Church has long fought the implementation of the program, going so far as to block key components of it via petitions filed in the Supreme Court.  Unable to implement the program, the Health Department's budget has been slashed.  Sex education in schools remains substandard, based in abstinence-only rhetoric.  The Philippines is the only country in Asia where rates of pregnancy among teenagers increased. 

President Duterte's administration is coming back strong against the court's decisions, vowing to uphold the law and eliminating some of the decisions' ambiguous wording.  Two archbishops have acknowledged defeat.      

One commentator, contrasting Duterte's clash with the church with President Donald Trump's reinstatement of the Reagan-era global "gag rule" forbidding foreign NGOs from receiving U.S. family planning funds if they perform, counsel or refer women for abortion services or advocate for the liberalization of abortion laws where they work, sees the policy of the United States, not the Philippines, as the real threat to women's health.