Inquiry Results
The 2019 National Inquiry on the Reproductive Health of Women with
Disabilities (a) documented individual and/or systemic barriers to WWDs
access to sexual and reproductive health information, services, and
commodities; and (b) documented the barriers and problems experienced by
service providers in providing reproductive health information, services, and
commodities to women with disabilities.
The entire process aimed to gather data on the lived experiences of women
with disabilities through calls for submission, public hearings and fact-finding
missions, survey with government, and a validation session.
During the fact-finding missions and public hearings, the Commission covered
five areas: Cagayan de Oro, Baguio City, Cebu City, Butuan City, and the
National Capital Region. The fact-finding missions and the public hearings
gathered lived experiences of women with mobility impairment, deaf women,
women hard-of-hearing, women with low vision, women who are blind, and in
a few instances—women with psychosocial, intellectual disability, women with
chronic illness, and women with multiple disability.
After five months, the Commission’s National Inquiry has engaged and
consulted a total of 601 individuals. Of this number, 298 were women with
disabilities. Broken down into the different disabilities, we have engaged: 138
with mobility impairment, 19 blind, 20 low vision, 64 deaf, 8 hard-of-hearing,
10 psychosocial, 6 intellectual/learning disability, 12 chronic illness, and 13
multiple disabilities. These numbers show how almost half of the women who
participated had mobility impairment, and with very low participation from
those with psychosocial, hard-of-hearing, and those with intellectual/learning
disability.
The fact-finding missions and public hearings gave us rich data on the lived
experiences of women with disabilities and the multiple barriers that they