Mind the Meme

By Frances Vincent Decena

Guzman were two youths who were targeted as part of the antidrug campaign, and in 2018, a court found a police officer guiltyoftorturingthem. Andbeforeyousaythat“notall police are like this”, you should read between the lines. Police misconduct is a prevailing pandemic, and the Philippine government must make sure that officers are held accountable. Themostcrucialthingtokeepin mind is that state authorities, including police, have a duty to respect and safeguard the people thattheyhavesworntoprotect.

The pervasive misperception we had is that we think of and consider police as our heroes who seek and fight for justice when behind the curtains, the exact opposite exists. Police misconductsandunlawfuluseof forceleadstodeprivingsomeone of their right to live, right to liberty, security, free from discrimination and equal treatmentunderthelaw.

On Abortion: When Justice Bleeds

In the narrow margins of Philippine society, women have long been treated as commodities: the terms childgiver and tagadalang-tao have been used to aptly describe womanhood, and while giving no room for women to think otherwise. Women’s rights to their own bodies have been shuddered in the shadows of the patriarchy and catholic ideologies that lacked since the 1870s, when the right for abortion was criminalized under the colonial rule of Spain. This criminalization of abortion, however, still hasn’t gone out. And for many women, criminalizing it only makes things far worse than it already is.

The criminal abortion ban punishes women, physicians, and midwives who perform the procedure—under the revised penal code, they may face up to sixyearsinprisonifcaught.The

Opinion article and graphics by Frances ban constrains women from taking abortion no matter how valid their reason is for taking them: From rape survivors, sexualassaultvictims,high-risk, unintended and unwanted pregnancies, to incest survivors, the cause of why women take abortion are vast and plentiful. Yet they shouldn’t need to have suffered sex crimes in order to validly take it. While the ban appears to prevent women from undergoingtheprocedure,andto safeguardthedeveloping“baby” in its mother’s womb, make no mistake: the criminal abortion ban only further endangers women by leading them to unsafe practices that may potentially end their life and the developingfetus’.

ManyFilipinowomenwho arecarryingunwanted, unintended,andpotentially lifethreatening pregnanciesare

Vincent Decena

givenonlytwooptions:to continuetheirpregnancies,or turntounsafehealthpracticesto abortthefetus.Both,however, areatthecostofriskingtheir lives.Unsafeabortionpractices andthecontinuationofhighriskpregnanciescatalyzea majorityofmaternaldeathsthat occurinthePhilippinesevery day.Infact, accordingtothe Centerfor Reproductive Rights,the criminal abortion banhad takenthe livesof 1,000 women and had resultedinthecomplicationsof 90,000moreFilipinosin2008 alone.Asalarmingasitsounds, thesenumbersindicatewhywe needabortionnowmorethan everbefore.

On top of that, criminalizing abortion would only terrorize people who live below the margins of the poverty line. While some families have the privilege for proper health care, women who are born in poorer familiesdonot.

While some parallel abortion to murdering a human baby, the truthis far from it: a clump of cells that has no self-consciousness is still just a clump of cells that’s incubating in a womb. It has no individuality that makes it a viable human being. The one who’s carrying the baby is much more alive and human than it.

We’veputtoomuchofourtrust into thepoliceforce, butallthat, totransmogrifyintoabrutalplay of power against us. We’ve engraved inside our heads that they’re our heroes of freedom— butthequestionbegs:arethey?

Then why don’t we value them over the other? Meanwhile, sending kids of unwanted pregnancies to the orphanage wouldonlyleadtopsychological decline in the child and the mother. According to an article from the Drexel University CollegeofMedicine,theyare“at risk of behavioral and psychological issues in adolescence.”

Women are more than just an afterthought of an archaic systemthatfailstoprovidethem justice. Women should be given a choice to choose from, instead of being antagonized for somethingthattheyhadtosuffer. By decriminalizing abortion, we remove the stigma that it has in women. It’s been years since the catholic church and the patriarchy have reduced women’s bodies as mere objects of procreation—it’s time we makeastand.

The school expands its progressin providinghigh quality educationwith the help of different sports organizations, clubs, sponsors, solicitors, the Science, Technology, and Engineering (STE), and the Basic Education Curriculum (BEC). With the growing advancement ofPNHS, the schoolnowofferstwobrandnew specialcurriculumprogramsthat will further enhance students in arts and journalism—the SPJ andtheSPA.

SPJ: Shaping the Future of ModernJournalism

PNHSpaveditswayasone of the most competitive schools across the region in the field of campus journalism, placing spots in press conferences and baggingdifferentrecognitionsin journalism meets. And one way to boost this even more is through the Special Program in Journalism.

“SPJ will help students to further develop their writing