It is estimated that 28.4 percent of pregnant women were nutritionally at-risk in 2005, based on the weight-for-height index. In addition, about 40 percent of pregnant women were anemic, with even higher levels of 50 percent and over in some provinces in Mindanao in 2006. The diet of pregnant women was also found to be grossly inadequate, with 78.4 percent adequacy level for calories and low micronutrient levels. These conditions increase the risk of both maternal mortality and the delivery of low-birth weight infants. The latter, in turn, are also at risk of dying within their first year or of becoming undernourished in their pre-school years.

At the national level, high population growth rates express themselves in discouraging levels of per capita GNP. The country’s population growth, at 2.36% (average annual growth rate from 1995 to 2000), is one of the world’s highest, almost twice the global rate of 1.3 percent. With population growing at this rate, the growth of output per capita averaged only 1.4 percent from 1980-2000. Given the rate of GDP over the last three decades, it is estimated that per capita GDP would have been 50 percent higher than it now stands, had population (in 2003) only grown at the same rate as Thailand’s, where fertility rate is 1.8, as against the 3.5 of the Philippines.

United Nations Development Program

In cities (of the Philippines), adolescents and young adults are exposed to the cosmopolitan life and consequently receive more information on sex and sexuality (than youth in the countryside). They are also freer to experience numerous options than are less educated youths. Youth in small towns have narrower and more restricted ideas on sexuality, because of the family’s and Church’s strong control and influence. The majority of urban youth knows about contraceptives and can acquire these from pharmacies or from friends without problems. Despite the guilt and shame associated with sex, middle- and upper-class urban youth often engage in sexual contacts with girlfriends, household maids, and even prostitutes. For the youths of the poverty belts around the big cities, the situation is compounded by the lack of money and self-control. Even if they would prefer to use a contraceptive, they cannot afford them and there are no places where they can get them free.

It is becoming increasingly clear that first premarital sexual activities are initiated at an earlier age, especially for those in metropolitan areas, where the basic family structure often disintegrates because of a lack of parental supervision, with both parents working or the father absent and perhaps working overseas.  Among girls [...] because of guilt and shame, the majority of young females did not bother to get prior information about sexual intercourse and the possible consequences of their first sexual encounters. They perceived their first intercourse as the fulfillment of young love, motivated by peer pressure to keep their boyfriends, and at the same time as a “challenge” to parental authority or a gross transgression of a religious or social taboo. For the well-educated and sophisticated city dwellers, it was a calculated act to get rid of the old-fashioned social taboo (virginity), which they perceived as an obstacle to entering into a more mature and fulfilling sexual life, or plainly to catch the men of their dreams.

Jose Florante Leyson - The International Encyclopedia of Sexuality

Executive Order No. 003 (“the EO”), issued by former Manila Mayor Jose “Lito” Atienza in 2000, declares that “the City promotes responsible parenthood and upholds natural family planning not just as a method but as a way of self-awareness in promoting the culture of life while discouraging the use of artificial methods of contraception like condoms, pills, intrauterine devices, surgical sterilization, and other.”2 While the order does not explicitly ban “artificial” contraception, it has in practice resulted in a sweep of these supplies and services from city health centers and hospitals, depriving many women—especially poor women—of their main source of affordable family planning supplies. The EO also has had a chilling effect on the provision of information and services in non-city facilities and venues that technically are not subject to the order. Private clinics and clinics run by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that previously provided family planning information and services have been shut down. Health-care workers in such institutions have been harassed and labeled abortionists. Medical missions to offer artificial methods of family planning have ceased. Condoms and pills have gone underground

In 2001, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the second woman president of the Philippines to benefit from a political upheaval led mainly by the Catholic Church, insinuated her position on family planning early into her administration, stating that “the government needs to adopt policies that will take into consideration population and reproductive health approaches that respect our culture and values …” (emphasis added).14 Since then, through her own public pronouncements and instructions to her Cabinet, she has closely followed the line of the Catholic Church hierarchy on family planning. In March 2002, President Arroyo laid down the four pillars of her population policy: responsible parenthood, respect for life, birth spacing and informed choice. These reflect the unchanging tenets of the Philippine Catholic hierarchy on population issues since 1973. The bishops’ position is that family planning may only be (1) at the decision of couples without state interference, (2) prompted by “grave motives and with due respect for the moral law” (e.g., not to avoid the responsibility of having a child) and (3) using only NFP methods. In keeping with this ideological framework, Arroyo has made clear that the national government will not spend its funds to procure contraceptives and pushed NFP as the most effective family planning method—although artificial methods are actually still available in Department of Health (DOH) facilities.

Like the president, the leadership of the DOH is heavily swayed by the bidding of Catholic organizations,apart from the Church hierarchy. In 2001, the DOH, without public notice, banned the emergency contraceptive Postinor in response to the allegation of a conservative Catholic group that Postinor is an “abortifacient.” The ban was maintained despite the findings of a DOH technical committee that Postinor is not an abortifacient and should be re-listed. The DOH secretary at the time who was also the main sponsor of NFP in the DOH—publicly deprecated artificial contraceptives, citing the intrauterine device as another possible abortifacient.19 Under this secretary, the DOH contracted with a lay Catholic organization to implement the Department’s NFP program, granting them 50 million pesos to promote and teach NFP.

Linangan ng Kababaihan, Inc. (Likhaan)

Reproductive Health, Rights and Ethics Center for Studies and Training (ReproCen)

The Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) [pointed out] that a total of 51,850 nurses left the country for greener pastures abroad from 2000 to 2003 alone.

This means that the country lost close to 13,000 nurses every year during that short period, according to Jossel Ebesate, AHW secretary general and nursing supervisor at the government-run Philippine General Hospital (PGH). Worse, he said, more than 5,000 doctors joined the exodus to also work as nurses abroad from 2000 to 2004, and around 4,000 licensed physicians were now enrolled in nursing schools. Dr. Bu Castro, president of the Philippine Medical Association, said about 30 percent of the country's 100,000 doctors had moved to North America.

Ebesate said opportunities for Filipino nurses were particularly plentiful in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Unfortunately for the Philippines, a nurse's success abroad is a local hospital's suffering. The unabated exodus of Filipino doctors and nurses, coupled with insufficient funding from the government, has forced a number of district hospitals to shut down, Ebesate said. In Isabela, he said, at least nine government hospitals were closed in 2003 because not enough doctors and nurses could be found. He also said two district hospitals in Aklan would most likely suffer the same fate, primarily because their respective municipal governments could no longer sustain their operations. "'Understaffing' in government hospitals have worsened, [and] those who remain [are] overworked," the AHW said in a statement.

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