SEN. Risa Hontiveros filed a measure legalizing 'absolute divorce' in the country.The senator on January 14 filed Senate Bill 2184, which allows divorce as she noted that the Philippines was the only country in the world, aside from the Vatican City, where divorce is not legal.'Studies show that it is not divorce that creates well-being issues for children, it is bearing witness to the troubled marriages of their parents,' Hontiveros said.'It is the duty of the State to save children for the pain, stress, and agony of witnessing regular marital clashes with no end in sight,' she said.She said that while the State continued to recognize the sanctity of family life and endeavors to protect and strengthen the family 'as a basic autonomous social institution, consistent eith Article 2, Section 12 of the 1987 Constitution, it is also dutybound to promote and protect the well-being of its citizens.''It is a duty that should extend to circumstances whereby this well-being compromised by the inability to break free from irremediably broken marriages and start anew in healthier family and living arrangements,' she added.Hontiveros, chairman of the Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations, and Gender Equality said that the number and proportion of Filipinos separated has been increasing over time.'This demonstrates that the denial of legal remedies to those seeking to dissolve their union has largely been ineffective way of upholding the policy of the State to keep families together,' she said.
