Popular senator and one of the 2016 presidential candidate, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago said she was “appalled” at the P1 billion cut in the Reproductive Health (RH) allocations in the 2016 national budget already approved by the administration of Pres. Benigno S. Aquino.
In an official statement to the media, the senator was quoted as saying “When I am president, I shall work to fully and conscientiously implement the Reproductive Health Law,” Defensor-Santiago said.
The 70-year-old feisty senator also added that “I am therefore appalled at the cut on reproductive health allocations in the 2016 budget. It is irreconcilable that Congress, which enacted the RH Law after much hardship in 2012, would three years later render that same law inutile,” she said.
The senator explained that the P1-billion budget cut “threatens to deprive some seven million women of reproductive health services.”
The budget cut of the RH was earlier defended by Sen. Loren Legarda, the chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, explaining that it was realigned to augment the budget of other agencies such as for upgrading of the air assets of the Department of National Defense’s and to raise the budget of the country’s State Universities and Colleges.
