War waged by religious groups derails bill vs teenage pregnancy

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On January 10, a days-old social media page called Project Dalisay posted a video sounding the alarm against the implementing guidelines of the Philippines’ comprehensive sexuality education (CSE).

The guidelines for implementation were outlined in Department of Education (DepEd) Order No. 31, series of 2018, which called the attention of some influential personalities who appeared in the video.

Characterized by religious affiliations, they warned against Senate Bill (SB) No. 1979, the pending measure seeking to prevent adolescent pregnancies in the country. To them, it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing that would strip children of their innocence.

The video, featuring personalities like former Supreme Court chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and Jerika Ejercito Aguilar, daughter of former president Joseph Estrada, went viral within a week. 

As of posting, Project Dalisay’s explainer video has received over 282,000 views on Facebook and has been shared over 5,300 times. An initial scan by Rappler’s digital forensics team found that the video transcended political echo chambers, shared by pro-administration and opposition groups whose users also expressed alarm.

The common ground among those who shared the video appeared to be religious and conservative views.

The explainer video included screenshots of documents of sex education guidance which were not explicitly referenced. Among these was a 2010 document from the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe and Germany’s Federal Centre for Health Education, which provides that children aged 0 to 4 may be taught about early childhood masturbation, and those aged 6 to 9 may learn about sexual rights.

The group’s concerns were able to capture the attention of no less than President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and several senators who agreed that the bill had questionable provisions.

Within two weeks, years of lobbying work by advocates and nongovernment organizations specializing in children’s rights and reproductive health were derailed. 

The anti-teenage pregnancy bill, having gone through at least three Congresses, was so close to passage — it had undisputedly passed the House of Representatives, and was up for second reading at the Senate.

Concerns over CSE

According to its website, Project Dalisay is an initiative by the National Coalition for the Family and the Constitution (NCFC).

In its video, figures from the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches, Couples for Christ, the National Coalition for the Family and the Constitution, Living Waters Philippines, and the Christian Educators Network described their main concerns — how CSE was to be guided by international standards, and what they saw was the unconstitutionally minor involvement of parents in educating their children.

They believe that the “international standards,” namely guidance from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and the WHO, had provisions that were “harmful” and incompatible with Filipino culture and values.

“Because SB 1979 says you must be guided by international standards, the curriculum developer can look at these…and say, we need to introduce the normality of masturbation, and teach children to touch themselves early, and in fact, in the 0 to 4 level, you will talk about the enjoyment of touching yourself. Tell me if that’s not a foreign ideology,” Sereno, NCFC convenor, said in a press briefing on Tuesday, January 21.

A few days before, on January 15, Education Secretary Sonny Angara said the DepEd’s doors are open to feedback about CSE. The briefer the DepEd released on the same day directly addressed Project Dalisay’s criticism, claiming CSE to be age-appropriate, contextualized, and with parental involvement.

“The earliest discussion of genitals is in Kinder, but simply the difference between male and female genitals. Further, there is no instruction on masturbation,” the DepEd wrote.

For older children, the DepEd said the intent is not to encourage sexual activity, but rather to ensure that learners “understand how to protect themselves from serious health risks, such as STIs (sexually transmitted infections).”

CSE also emphasizes the importance of respecting personal boundaries and learning to understand safe and unsafe situations, and “equipping learners with tools to protect themselves and respect others.”

Still, Project Dalisay wants CSE totally junked, and replaced with something that it deems more appropriate.

Deputy Minority Leader Risa Hontiveros, children’s rights champion and principal author of the Senate bill, was quick to debunk the group’s concerns. 

On Wednesday, January 22, she filed a substitute bill, amending the provisions the religious groups had issues with. 

But with even the President saying he would veto the bill should it reach his desk, advocates are distraught at the prospect of everything going down the drain before the 19th Congress adjourns on February 8.

‘Smear campaign’

Advocates who put in the work for the anti-teen pregnancy bill are worried over the “fake news” and “fearmongering” being fanned by the video.

“With all due respect to former chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, her group knew what it was doing by placing ‘childhood masturbation’ and other clickbait front and center in their explainers to ignite opposition against CSE and the bill,” the Child Rights Network (CRN), the largest alliance of pro-children organizations in the Philippines, said in a statement on Monday, January 20.

CRN said it supports bills after doing rigorous research and consultations with various stakeholders, including faith-based groups — some of whom are their member-organizations. 

If the group behind Project Dalisay wanted to help, they said, they should have reached out to the network or the bill’s sponsor instead of “waging a clear smear campaign.”

“Project Dalisay unfortunately cherry-picks and misrepresents parts of the bill to ignite populist fears of hypersexualization and infiltration of international entities,” it said.

A convinced President?

After initially saying he supported CSE in schools as a way to address teenage pregnancy, President Marcos again spoke days later, still standing by his view, but claiming he was “shocked” and “appalled” by some parts that he claimed to have read in SB 1979.

“You will teach four-year-olds how to masturbate, that every child has the right to try different sexualities. This is ridiculous. It is abhorrent. It is a travesty of what sexual and sex education should be to the children,” Marcos said, adding he would veto the bill if it was passed to him in its original form.

Since the video was released, and especially after Marcos’ statement, Hontiveros has posted a series of videos challenging false information about the bill. She emphasized that the DepEd will implement CSE, and not any international body.

In the substitute bill prepared by Hontiveros’ committee on women, children, family relations, and gender equality, the portion about CSE being guided by international standards has been removed.

The substitute bill also amends Section 5, which previously allowed adolescents to access health facilities, goods, and services without parental consent. In Section 7, minors under 16 will only be allowed to access sexual and reproductive health services with their parent’s or guardian’s consent.

But with the President having spoken, and the domino effect of senators withdrawing their signatures from the committee report for the public to see, the future of the bill may seem bleak. 

Young Feminists Collective co-founder Shebana Alqaseer, who has worked on the anti-teen pregnancy bill since 2019, said she is concerned about how fast the opposition to the bill spread.

“I am worried because of how disinformation works in our country. It has been echoed and re-echoed so many times that even the President believed it, right?” said Alqaseer.

Adolescent pregnancy: A national emergency

The fight to stop adolescent pregnancies in the Philippines has been long and challenging, with advocates and NGOs weaving through intersecting issues of education, access, abuse, and cultural norms. Former president Rodrigo Duterte in 2021 declared the prevention of teen pregnancies a national priority.

On January 15, the Commission on Population and Development (CPD) noted a spike in the number of very young mothers under 15 since 2019.

There were at least 142,276 adolescent mothers in 2023, which included mothers aged 15 to 19. While this total number is lower than the 180,916 recorded in 2019, live births from mothers aged 15 and below were higher. From 2,411 live births among this age group in 2019, the number rose to 3,343 in 2023. 

The CPD is among the groups calling for the passage of SB 1979.

Meanwhile, in 2020, the United Nations Population Fund named the Philippines as having one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Southeast Asia. 

The same report found that only 3% of the live births were fathered by men of the same age group, which “suggests that teenage pregnancies among girls among the 15-19 years old may be a result of coercion and unequal power relations between girls and older men.”

Before the debate with Project Dalisay came up, advocates had pointed to the insufficient rollout of CSE as one of the factors why adolescent pregnancies were still rampant.

Smaller groups forge on

Alqaseer said her group is still determined to fight against misinformation about the bill and CSE, even if it means dispelling misconceptions one group chat at a time. 

“I actually felt how unfortunate that we do not have that access that they have…. I wish I could have some airtime with the President and explain this. And I hope that the President is very much willing to listen to advocates to explain the bill and its provisions, to explain why CSE is important, as he said, and what type of CSE are we advocating for,” said Alqaseer.

On Monday, January 20, over 100 civil society organizations, advocates, and child rights stakeholders released a statement standing by their support for CSE and SB 1979.

“We urge parents and guardians to be critical of the information they receive and share online, especially about CSE. The internet is rife with hate speech that sows fear and confusion. We encourage parents to base their opinions on evidence-based and trustworthy sites,” the statement said in Filipino.

Dr. Junice Melgar, executive director of the Likhaan Center for Women’s Health, said: “We will ask Filipino families the same way they were asked about the RH [Law] — are you okay with this? Because that’s how democracy works, right? Not just one can say, no, this is how it should be.”

Alqaseer is still hopeful that the controversy will serve as an opportunity to finally take up the bill, as it has been in limbo at the Senate’s period of interpellation since August 2024.

“I am worried because of the polarization on CSE, but on the other hand, it gives me, somehow, relief or hope that maybe it’s a good time to actually tackle it,” she said.

“We have the same bottomline,” said Melgar in Filipino. “We want the best for our children.” – with a report from Dylan Salcedo/Rappler.com