‘Artificial family plan hard to promote’

At 22, Suzzete Ortega is determined to undergo tubal ligation.

Five months pregnant, the skinny mother of two said her third baby was an “accident.”

She said she became pregnant again after she and her 24-year-old husband stopped using birth control.

“We are already having a hard time raising our two children. Things will get worse when I give birth to this third one,” Padilla told Cebu Daily News.

“I even thought of aborting the child, but my conscience prevailed,” she said in Cebuano.

Ortega’s husband works as an assistant to a disco operator and earns P300 daily. They live with her mother-in-law in Mabolo, Cebu City.

A full-time homemaker, Ortega said she has a hard time keeping tabs on the budget for daily needs like milk for the kids, clothes and shelter.

Ortega attended a forum to kick off Family Planning month organized by the Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7) last week.

Dr. Lutgarda Hermias, DOH-7 family planning coordinator, said implementation of their family planning program has not yet covered all the housewives in the region.

The grassroots program is managed by local government units, she said.

“Some of our areas are not yet well oriented, lack education or accessibility to the program,” Hermias said in an interview.

She said many couples are hindered by fear that family planning, especially permanent birth control methods, would affect sexual performance and have side effects.

Hermias said religious influence is also a major factor why family planning is not practiced in many households in Central Visayas.

She said Catholic beliefs have a specially strong hold on its flock in Cebu.

Hermias said there is no proof that using birth control pills can contribute to cancer.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines website “CBCP for Life,” however, posts a medical primer showing the positive correlation between contraceptive use and cancer.

The Catholic Church encourages married couples to use only natural methods of regulating births.

Nurse Bernardita Pongan, family planning coordinator of the Cebu City Health Office, said most of their patients prefer using progesterone injectables that prevent pregnancy for up to three months.

Pongan said injectables have 99 percent reliability for women.

The next most preferred birth control method is the intrauterine device (IUD).

Pongan said that if a couple is determined not to have more children, they can undergo a permanent surgical method—vasectomy for men and tubal ligation for women.

Pongan said both methods are 99 percent reliable.

To improve implementation of the family planning, Pongan said LGU-based health centers should strengthen their advocacy.

“Family planning is synonymous to maternal health intervention,” Pongan said.

Philippine lawmakers have yet to decide whether to pass the Reproductive Health bill, which promotes greater access to various methods of family planning.