With respect to health, the law highlights the state’s obligation to provide for a
comprehensive, culture-sensitive, and gender-responsive health services and programs
covering all stages of a woman's life cycle, and which addresses the major causes of
women's mortality and morbidity. Section 17 of the law enumerates the services that
need to be provided: maternal care; family planning; youth sexuality education;
prevention and management of reproductive tract infections; infertility and sexual
dysfunction; services for women and children victims of violence; and care of the elderly
women.
The law underscores the obligations of the State, its agencies and
instrumentalities, and local government units, to implement its provisions. It designated
the Commission as the Gender and Development Ombud mandated to advocate for the
promotion and protection of women’s human rights. In the Commission’s Gender Ombud
Guidelines, one of the discriminatory acts under the Magna Carta of Women which it can
investigate, monitor, and take cognizance of is discrimination in relation to right to health,
including reproductive health.
The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act (RA 10354)
The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012 (Republic Act
10354) or RPRH Law gives a special focus on the reproductive health rights of women. It
underscores the state’s obligation to provide universal access to medically-safe, nonabortifacient, effective, legal, affordable, and quality reproductive health care services,
methods, and commodities; and to eradicate discriminatory practices, laws and policies
that infringe on a person’s exercise of reproductive health rights.
The law enumerates the elements of reproductive health care, as follows:
1)
Family planning information and services which shall include as a first priority
making women of reproductive age fully aware of their respective cycles to make them
aware of when fertilization is highly probable, as well as highly improbable;
2)
Maternal, infant and child health and nutrition, including breastfeeding;
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