ALBAY Rep. Edcel Lagman has refiled the bill seeking to legalize absolute divorce in the country.
Lagman, the leader of the opposition bloc at the House of Representatives in the 19th Congress, filed House Bill No. 78, expressing hope that “beleaguered and tormented wives can soon be liberated from irretrievably dysfunctional marriages or inordinately abusive marital relations.”
A similar bill was passed on third reading by the House of Representatives in the 17th Congress, but was not acted upon by the Senate due to time constraints.
While the State continues to protect and preserve marriage as a social institution and as the foundation of the family, the lawmaker said “shattered marriages beyond rehabilitation happen due to human failings and frailties.
“When a marriage totally breaks down and reconciliation is nil, it is also the duty of the State to afford relief to the spouses in irreconcilable relations and bail them out and their children from the tempest of incessant discord,” Lagman said in the bill.
Lagman said that the bill reinstituting absolute divorce “is an apt sequel to the Reproductive Health Act, which he also authored, since in both measures the central figure is the woman.”
He pointed out that the Philippines is the only country, aside from the Vatican, “which remains to outlaw absolute divorce even as the Catholic hierarchy grants canonical dissolution of marriage.
“All other Catholic countries recognize absolute divorce in varying degrees of liberality,” said Lagman, a member of the Liberal Party and an ally of former vice president Leni Robredo.
Lagman said the measure simply seeks to reinstate absolute divorce since it was previously practiced by pre-Spanish Filipinos and also during the American era and Japanese occupation.
Paraphrasing the decision on Te v. Te (GR No. 161793, Feb. 13, 2009), Lagman said no less than the Supreme Court had ruled that the severance of a marriage bond is a decent interment of a long dead marriage.
“Notwithstanding the adoption of the 1987 Constitution of the precepts that marriage is a social institution, the foundation of the family and is inviolable, the Commissioners of the 1986 Constitutional Commission were unanimous that the Congress is not prohibited or precluded from instituting absolute divorce and dissolution of marriage under the current Charter,” Lagman said.
