ALBAY 1st District Rep. Edcel Lagman said the 1987 Constitution does not bar the enactment of a divorce bill.

"Nowhere in the present 1987 Constitution and the previous 1935 and 1972 Constitution, and even in the Malolos Constitution, is there a provision which prohibits the Congress from enacting an absolute divorce law," said Lagman, principal author of House Bill 9349, which hurdled the third and final reading at the House of Representatives on May 22.

"Despite the constitutional precepts on the sanctity and inviolability of marriage and protection for the family, the Constitution, by not prohibiting absolute divorce, recognizes that marriage is basically a social institution [that] is vulnerable to human frailties which destroy beyond repair marriages," he said.

Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman PHOTO BY RENE H. DILAN

"No less than the commissioners of the 1986 Constitutional Commission led by Fr. Joaquin Bernas had a unanimous consensus that Congress can enact an absolute divorce law," Lagman said.

The 1986 Constitutional Commission drafted the 1987 Constitution.

In the Philippines, divorce is not allowed except among Muslims — and this was cited by Lagman.

"Muslim Filipinos who are covered by the Constitution are granted the right to divorce and remarry," he said.

"Moreover, the Family Code itself provides for relative divorce by judicially recognizing the separation of spouses from bed and board without the right to remarry," he said. "Even the Catholic Church has its own canonical divorce, which is euphemistically called 'dissolution of marriage' based on psychological incapacity," he said.

Lagman said that divorce is not for everyone.

"The overwhelming majority of Filipino couples have happy and enduring marriages. They do not need a divorce law. Divorce is a new lifeline for unfortunate couples whose marriages have been irremediably destroyed, exposing their children to physical and psychological trauma. It is an option in addition to dissolution of marriage, legal separation and annulment of marriage under the Family Code, all of which are essentially different from the proposed absolute divorce law," he said.

"Divorce rescues unfortunate spouses and their suffering children from a house on fire by having their marriage dissolved under strict judicial scrutiny and awarding custody and support for their children's benefit," he said.

Lagman, an author of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Law, said, "The same worn-out argument on unconstitutionality was leveled against the Reproductive Health Law, and the Supreme Court debunked the argument and unanimously upheld the constitutionality on the whole of the Reproductive Health Law in Imbong v. Ochoa."