In Response to Vivian's Rethinking Abortion Debates

Reading Vivian's post about abortion debates really stood out to me.

For someone who is going to do their Practice Experience in a family planning non-profit organization, the talks of abortions and its casualties are very sound.

When doing my research for my literature review, I ran into a few statistics and some are kind of outrageous. 

In the Philippines, at least 500,000 women die yearly due to unsafe abortions. Another 300,000 women suffer from the repercussions of having unsafe abortions. That is a total of 800,000 women who are consistently affected by policies of the government. That is almost a million people.

 The Philippines is a very conservative country in which abortion laws are out of the question due to through the dominance of Catholicism. 

In Vivian's post, a line stood out that said " Women are dying because society has yet to decide that their lives are worth saving." That line is so relevant in every day society. Everyone gets so caught up in the policies coming from each end of the different realms that nobody actual considers the well-being of the women who have to resort to physically hurting themselves in order to fit into this society that consistently opposes them. In the Philippines, what bothers me the most, is that a lot of the policies that are getting established in regards to women are made by men. I'm sure that this is common in a lot of developing countries that lack proper policies for the safety of women. 

Women do end up getting abortions regardless of who agrees and disagrees. This is what is troublesome about the issue, that women have to resort to being unsafe because everyone believes they have a say in what happens to their body. There are so many casualties in regards to this issue world wide, and even though it has been decades and decades of talks; everyone remains in a stand-still. For example, the Reproductive Health Bill in the Philippines just passed in regards to making contraceptives more available and sexual education in the school system be implemented. There was a subsection in the bill in regards to abortion that had to be taken out because nobody could come to terms with the agreement. The reproductive health bill has had multiple drafts for the past 14 years. It's crazy to think that even after that many years, abortion is still an issue. 

Abortion debates do not only resonate within the developing countries, but still very apparent in the US as well. Even though the US is known to be a "melting pot" and have a diversity of different ethnicities and religions, the government still cannot come up with a policy that would be in regards to the safety of women. 

People of higher power have a lot of control over this issue, I only hope that they begin to truly recognize how their work affects these women and people in general.

Laws do not control whether women will continue with their abortions, laws only control HOW women can do it safely/unsafely