By Isabella Magno

Human rights lawyer and Albay 1st District Representative Edcel Lagman refiled a bill to make divorce in the Philippines “an alternative mode for the dissolution of marriage”. 

Lagman reintroduced House Bill No. 78 or the Absolute Divorce Bill to Congress on Sunday, July 3, intending to provide liberation to couples in dysfunctional or abusive marriages.

In this bill, both parties may formalize the termination of their conjugal partnership of gains and alimony through “affordable, expeditious, and inexpensive” court actions, while ensuring their children will get the care and interim custody throughout the six-month cooling-off period provided by the possible legalization of divorce.

Lagman stressed that even if marriage is the foundation of the family and a social institution based on the law, the Commissioners of the 1987 Constitution did not prohibit the Congress from establishing an absolute divorce and dissolution of marriage. 

He previously drafted two bills with the same intended objectives, but the one passed in the 17th Congress in March 2018 was not acted upon by the Senate, while the other presented in the 18th Congress remained in the Committee on Appropriations due to the pandemic. 

Moreover, he reiterated that the divorce bill, along with the Reproductive Health Act he also authored, would be an “apt sequel” for strengthening legislation directed toward women’s rights.