Rh Law

The historic RH law is not only a statute that will protect and promote the sexual and reproductive health and rights of Filipinos and enhance maternal and infant health. It is also a calamity-risk reduction strategy and a climate change mitigation and adaptation policy. The nexus among population, reproductive health and climate change are empirically given as they are well-established and validated. The absence of a comprehensive and national policy on RH also contributed to the level of devastation and impact of climate change on the lives of people. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) defines climate change as “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity”. This definition truly demonstrates the link between population and climate change. The following are the relevant impacts of the RH law on population in relation to calamity-risk reduction and management: 1. Upholding the basic human right to reproductive self-determination wherein couples and women are empowered to freely and responsibly determine the number and spacing of their children, thus mitigating the population growth rate. 2. Enabling couples and women to fulfill their fertility goals. Studies have shown that the gap between wanted and actual fertility rates is alarmingly high in women in the poorest quintile. According to the 2006 Family Planning Survey, an average of 44% of pregnancies in the poorest 10% of Filipino women are unwanted. 3. Increasing the contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR). Again, the FPS 2006 reveals that contraceptive use remains extremely low among poor women whose families are at greatest risk during disasters. Among the poorest 20% of women, over 50% do not use any form of family planning because of lack of information and access to services and commodities. 4. Decreasing