MANILA — Mary Nepomuceno separated from her husband almost 15 years ago. She is still in limbo because divorce is prohibited in her country. Thousands of people like Nepomuceno are trapped in dead marriages in the Philippines, where nearly 80 percent of the population is Catholic. Apart from the Vatican, it is the only country where divorce remains illegal. High legal fees and reams of paperwork make an annulment impossible for many.
But attitudes in the country are changing. Polls show that half of Filipinos now support divorce.
Still, the powerful Catholic Church has labeled pro-divorce activism an “irrational defense.” Conservative lawmakers remain firm in their opposition.
This has led some on the legalization side to frame divorce as a basic human right, like access to healthcare or education.
“We are saying this is like medicine,” said Nepomuceno, 54. “You only take this if you are sick, but you don’t deprive the sick of medicine.”
This approach departs from the previous strategy of sharing personal stories in hopes of gaining sympathy from lawmakers.
“Before, we would cry and get angry,” said AJ Alfafara, founder of the Divorce Pilipinas Coalition, which has more than half a million members. “It used to be a fight, of how do we get people to listen?”
For the first time in more than 30 years, a Senate committee approved a bill to legalize divorce. The bill now awaits a second reading in the Senate, which lawmakers say could happen next year.
Senator Risa Hontiveros, the bill’s sponsor, said she had been moved by her meetings with activists.
“To me, one of the most compelling themes that emerged from them is that this is a second chance—a second chance at life, a second chance at love, a second chance at happiness—and why should we deny “Do people have that right?” he said.
Divorce became illegal after the promulgation of the country’s Civil Code in 1950. But Muslim citizens, who make up 5 percent of the Philippines’ population, have been allowed to divorce since 1977.
Alfafara, a Protestant, separated from her husband in 2012. She said she had not seen her son in more than a decade, because he chose at age 9 to live with his father. When Alfafara, 46, wanted to buy a house, she was told she had to get her husband’s signature.
Keeping divorce illegal means that abusive husbands can retain joint custody of their children and have the right to share in their wives’ assets. Millions of women may also remain in abusive marriages.
Janet Guevarra, 36, spent $5,200 for her annulment — 15 times more than she earned monthly in the Philippines. To save money, she left her job in IT administration and moved to Singapore to work as an assistant in a nursing home. In 2022, a court rejected her petition, which she had filed three years earlier.
The judge ruled that Guevarra’s testimony that her husband “grabbed her by the neck, pushed her, and attempted to hit her during heated arguments is not a sufficient basis to prove her claim of physical or verbal abuse.” The judge added, “Marriage, as an inviolable social institution protected by the State, cannot be dissolved at the whim of the parties.”
Any bill passed by the Senate would also have to be approved by the House of Representatives before reaching the President, who would choose whether to sign it into law. Unlike his predecessors, President Ferdinand E. Marcos Jr., son of the former Philippine leader, has signaled that he is open to legalizing divorce.
Father Jerome Secillano, executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, said last year: “It is sad to know that we have legislators who prefer to focus on breaking up marriages and families rather than fixing them or strengthening the marriage bond.”
A decade ago, when the Philippine Congress passed legislation providing access to contraception, clergy staged protests and threatened to excommunicate lawmakers for supporting the bill. This time, said Edcel Lagman, a congressman who has lobbied for both issues, church officials have been less vocal.
“We have shown that we can beat the church and we can do it again,” he said.
By: Sui-Lee Wee
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6975590, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-11-08 18:30:07
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