Nonetheless, the leader of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, Archbishop Socrates Villegas has reacted to the court decision with a conciliatory tone, and called on his flock to respect the judical process.
He urged members to “move on” from being a reactionary group and instead focus on its moral teachings within the church.
For Bantasan and many women living in slum squalor, the need for the law is painfully obvious.
“There are so many kids who are not aware of their situation and get pregnant. One of my friends was just 14 years old when she got pregnant. It was just her first time to have sex and the father abandoned her,” she recalled.
Many of the women in the seaside slum said they knew there was a need for wider spacing between births, but in many cases, were not aware how to do it.
Myrna Nucup, 51, wife of a construction worker and mother of three, said she had avoided using contraceptives thanks to a folk method of birth control passed on by her parents.
“Get up after having sex, go to the bathroom and wash it out,” she said. “After that, make sure you don’t go straight to sleep so your husband’s seed dries out”.
But as she watched television in her ramshackle home no bigger than a garage, Nucup agreed there was a need for the law to the implemented.
“If women had fewer children, they could afford to send them to school,” she said.
Caroline Nazario, 21 and already a mother of two, said she was aware she risked being reprimanded by the village priest, but got a contraceptive implant from a non-government organisation anyway.
“If I followed my faith, we would have children every year and we would get even poorer,” she said.
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