Mar 30 2012
Bloomberg News examines family planning in the Philippines, where "[o]ne in five women of reproductive age ... have an unmet family planning need, the U.N. Population Fund says, leading to unintended pregnancies and population growth twice the Asian average." The article focuses on a reproductive health bill in the country's congress that would allow for "free or subsidized contraception, especially for the poor." The bill "has been re-filed and blocked in each three-year congressional term since it was introduced in legislature 14 years ago amid opposition from the Catholic Church," according to Bloomberg. However, with support from President Benigno Aquino, the bill "may be put to a vote in congress in three months," the news service notes (Khan/Aquino, 3/27).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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