Women without birth control

Lizel Torreras, the wife of a garbage scavenger in the Philippines, mixed together bitter herbs and mahogany bark, a home remedy for abortion.

She would have taken birth control pills, but she couldn’t afford to buy them.

“With just two kids, we were already struggling,” she said. “The children were going to have a hard time. We might not have been able to send them to school.”

But, in the end, Torreras, a loyal Catholic, did not drink the potion. She had the baby. And another one.

In January 2017, President Rodrigo Duterte signed an executive order that would give women like Torreras free government-distributed contraception and reproduction health services.
However, the Catholic Church and other contraception opponents have filed petitions in the Philippines Supreme Court, and the court has issued several rulings blocking parts of the law.

Women are still battling for birth control in the Philippines and for equal rights in other countries around the world. In our country, too.

We read about Torreras in the January 28, 2017, issue of The Dallas Morning News.