Ayala Alabang ban on condoms faces judicial challenge

CATHOLIC residents of Ayala Alabang have passed a village ordinance banning sex education, condoms, pills and other birth control devices in their posh subdivision, triggering a constitutional challenge from their equally rich but more famous neighbors such as former President Fidel Ramos, Senator Pia Cayetano, former Health secretary Esperanza Cabral, and Muntinlupa Rep. Rodolfo Biazon.

Ordinance 1, passed on Jan. 3 by the Ayala Alabang Barangay Council, penalizes anyone who advertises “by billboard, brochures, leaflets, flyers or similar means or any manner of form, sell, offer for free or endorse, promote, prescribe or distribute abortifacients.”

The ordinance also requires people buying condoms to present a doctor’s prescription.

Sex education for children within the jurisdiction of the village is prohibited.

“Barangay Ayala Alabang endorses the view that contraceptive pills and hormonal contraceptives and the IUD may kill children and injure the health of women who use them,” the ordinance says.

“The barangay condemns the irresponsible and indiscriminate use of contraceptives as they undermine the solidarity of families by promoting premarital sex, giving rise to more fatherless children, more single mothers, more poverty, and more abortions when the contraceptives fail to prevent conception, and by causing a decline of legitimate marriages.

“The barangay denounces the use of condoms as far as they promote and sanction immoral sexual congresses among the unmarried and especially among the young….”

The ordinance favors instead the promotion of natural family planning methods to married couples and those about to get married.

The ordinance, a copy of which was furnished the Manila Standard, was signed by its chairman, Alfred Xerez-Burgos Jr., and council members Alice Bacani, Joanna Calugcug, Maria Carmen Reyes, Maria Soledad Tugade, Mariano Manas Jr., Apolinario de los Santos III and Giancarlo Nazario. It was also signed by Sangguniang Kabataan chairman Juan Enrico Parfan and attested by barangay secretary Santos Rancudo.

“The ordinance is not only unconstitutional and a violation of resident’s rights to health, information, education, privacy, and to found a family according to their own convictions; it also misuses and misquotes the Constitution,” said Elizabeth Angsioco, national chairman of the Democratic Socialists Women of the Philippines.

Angsioco said wealthy women and children also had reproductive health rights, and that the passage of a reproductive health law would prevent such ordinances from intruding on personal rights.

Angsioco learned about the ordinance from Cabral, who championed the use of condoms to prevent the spread of the HIV virus and AIDS.

Biazon is one of the principal authors of the reproductive health bill in the House, while Cayetano is chairman of the Senate committee on health and demography that is set to vote on a consolidated bill being prepared by the panel.

Ramos is founding chairman of the Forum for Family Planning and Development, whose president is Benjamin de Leon, a board member of the Population Commission. The Forum is lobbying Congress to pass the consolidated reproductive health bill, which undergoes plenary debates starting March 1.

Angsioco says the ordinance is coercive as it forces residents to adhere to the wrong view that contraceptives are abortifacients and dangerous to women’s health.

In fact, the World Health Organization includes contraceptives in its list of essential medicines, which attest to their safety and efficacy, she says.

“The Ayala Alabang barangay council cannot be more authoritative than WHO on this matter. The fact is, even the country’s Food and Drugs Administration recognizes the safety and efficacy of contraceptives,” she said.

“This ordinance is anti-women.”

Most online reactions ridiculed the Alabang ordinance.

“There is a thin line between religious fanaticism and fascism,” said musician and educator Jim Paredes on the social network Twitter.

“Ignorance, at the end of the day, is what will be the death of us all. Plain and simple,” international artist Lea Salonga said. –Christine F. Herrera, Manila Standard Today