A CRIMINAL ACT TO END A LIFE BEFORE BIRTH

The Philippine Constitution promotes a hierarchy of rights -- life, liberty and property. The right to life is the most fundamental and essential right of all and without such right other human rights would be inexistent.

Under our present Constitution, the State equally protects the “life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”1 This does not say that the unborn is a legal person; nor does it deny, however, that the state under certain conditions might regard the unborn as a person. It does not assert that the life the unborn is place on exactly the same level as the life of the mother. It recognizes that, when necessary to save the life of the mother, it may be necessary and legitimate to sacrifice the life of the unborn. It, however, denies that the life of the unborn may be sacrificed merely to save the mother from emotional suffering or to spare the child from a life of poverty. The emotional trauma of a mother as well as the welfare of the child after birth can be attended to through other means such as availing of the resources of welfare agencies.2

In the Roe vs. Wade3 decision, abortion law was liberalized by allowing such up to the sixth month of pregnancy at the discretion of the mother any time during the first six months when it can be done without danger to the mother. The Supreme Court decision in the said case overturned a Texas interpretation of abortion law. It held that a woman, with her doctor, could choose abortion in earlier months of pregnancy without restriction, and with restrictions in later months, based on the right to privacy. It invalidated all state laws limiting women's access to abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy. State laws limiting such access during the second trimester were upheld only when the restrictions were for the purpose of protecting the health of the pregnant woman. Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion in the United States, which was not legal at all in many states and was limited by law in others. The decision was rendered in protection of a person’s right to privacy having it based primarily on the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a part of the Bill of Rights stating that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”.4

The unborn’s entitlement to protection begin from the moment of conception. In biology, it means the fertilization of an egg cell by a sperm cell and thus marks the beginning of pregnancy. By its meaning as a noun in the Encarta dictionary, it means the beginning or origin of something. The moment of conception, however, is hard to pin-point hence abortion is made illegal in the Philippines by leaning to the safer side of the argument.

Pursuant to this policy and principle, the Revised Penal Code penalizes and makes it a crime to a willfully kill the “fetus in the uterus or the violent expulsion of the fetus from the maternal womb which results in the death of the fetus.”5 Articles 256 to 259 of the same code define the various ways and means by which abortion is committed and this ordinarily means as the “expulsion of the fetus before the sixth month or before the term of its viability, that is, capable of sustaining life.”6 Therefore, once a woman is known to be pregnant, a life of a new being, distinct and separate from her body is existent and that made her decision to herself becomes questionable.

In the Philippines, there being harmony between the State principle and the criminal law on abortion, the decision in Roe vs. Wade will never be realized.

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1 The 1987 Philippine Constitution, Article II, Section 12.
2 Bernas, The 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines: A Commentary (2003), pp. 84-85.
3 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
4 Jone Johnson Lewis, Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Decision, Retrieved March 19, 2008 at http://womenshistory.about.com/od/abortionuslegal/p/roe_v_wade.htm.
5 Reyes, The Revised Penal Code: Criminal Law, Book II (2001), p. 488.
6 Ibid.

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Submitted to Atty. Farah Decano in my Legal Writing Subject. I do not know what grade I got on this one.