Answer the following questions and post your answers here. Cite references if possible.
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What is your opinion about the practice of family planning? Are you for it or against it?
Despite all the controversy it has stirred up within religious groups, I believe that family planning is as vital as any other health practice in ensuring a woman’s holistic health.
Family planning enables parents the voluntary choice to deliberately and responsibly decide the number and spacing of their children. It would not be imposed on the parents; instead, they will be educated and sufficiently informed regarding different methods to avoid unwanted pregnancy. This would empower them to take responsibility of the future of their children, whilst taking into account their own psychological preparedness, health status, socio-cultural, and economic concerns.
Family planning would also protect the woman from any health risks that may occur before, during or after childbirth. Aside from contraceptive services, family planning services would also include:
- Pregnancy testing and counseling
- Pregnancy–achieving services including preconception health services
- Basic infertility services
- Sexually transmitted disease services
- Broader reproductive health services, including patient education and counseling
- Breast and pelvic examinations
- Breast and cervical cancer screening
- Sexually transmitted infection (STI) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention education, counseling, testing, and referral
All these are vital in identifying and reducing risks to a woman’s health and improve pregnancy outcomes through prevention and management of health conditions.
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Are you in favor of the Reproductive Health Law and its provisions? Elaborate your answer.
Yes, I am in favor of the Reproductive Law and its provisions stated under Republic Act No. 10354.
The RH Law’s main provision is that the State will provide “universal access to medically-safe, non-abortifacient, effective, legal, affordable, and quality reproductive health care services, methods, devices, supplies which do not prevent the implantation of a fertilized ovum and relevant information and education thereon according to the priority needs of women, children and other underprivileged sectors.” This is especially urgent in our country now where induced and unsafe abortions have already numbered 560,000 annually as of 2008 (Cabral, 2013).
The law would also provide services especially for the poor and marginalized to be able to utilize public health care facilities for their reproductive health needs. The RH Law provides a win-win situation for both the wellness of individual women and children, and benefit the economy and environment too. I believe that not having an RH Law is a cruelty to the poor, most of are entrenched in economic problems, which are exacerbated by a big family and having multiple pregnancies which they do not know how to safely avoid. Providing reproductive knowledge and information can help them escape the vicious cycle of poverty by giving them options on how to manage and plan their family.
REFERENCES
Cabral, E. (2013). Reproductive health law in the Philippines. Journal of the ASEAN Federation of Endocrine Societies, 28(1), 26-26. https://www.asean-endocrinejournal.org/index.php/JAFES/article/view/48/471
Center for Reproductive Rights. (2014). Philippine Supreme Court Upholds Historic Reproductive Health Law. https://reproductiverights.org/philippine-supreme-court-upholds-historic-reproductive-health-law/
HealthyPeople. (2020). Family Planning. https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/family-planning