Pushing 14 years for Philippines reproductive health bill took 'courage'

Jose "Oying" Rimon, deputy director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Ben de Leon, president of the Forum for Family Planning and Development, Inc., write in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog that the many people who worked for 14 years to pass a reproductive health bill in the Philippines are "profiles in courage." They continue, "This is the story of these courageous people but it's also a story of resolution in staying the course, abiding with scientific evidence and facts, and the nobility of staying positive against on onslaught of insults and misinformation." The bill represents "an unparalleled educational process in which common sense and science prevailed," they conclude (1/2).