Feminism and the Women's Movement in the Philippines: Struggles, Advances, and Challenges framing their arguments using diverse discourses such as rights, needs, social justice and development, which were utilized alongside each other and substantiated by empirical data from research coming from a range of disciplines(Casal de Vela and Ofreneo, 2015). Aggressive lobbying by both pro-RH and anti-RH camps continued into the presidency of Benigno Simeon Aquino III, son of former president Corazon Aquino. Since assuming the presidency in 2010, Aquino consistently pushed for the RH Bill as an urgent priority measure(The Philippine Daily Inquirer, 2011 cited in Casal de Vela and Ofreneo, 2015). Among the legislators who championed the RH Law were Edcel Lagman and Risa Hontiveros from the House of Representatives, and Pia Cayetano and Miriam Defensor-Santiago from the Senate. The broader movement united on the RH Bill was composed of networks of activists from the non­government and government organizations, and civil society organizations were also instrumental in galvanizing public support for the passage of the bill. Ultimately, the driving force of the social movement for reproductive health were the women from the communities, who filled the plenary halls of Congress consistently for over 14 years(Casal de Vela and Ofreneo, 2015: 14). However, the divisiveness of the debate extended within the women's movement, as the prominent Gabriela Women's Party voted'Yes, with reservation' for the passage of the RH Bill because, they argued, a specific provision of the bill'smacks of population control'(GABRIELA, 2012). Signed into law on December 2012 as Republic Act No. 10354, An Act Providing for a National Policy on Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health, the law seeks to provide maternal care, family planning and adolescent sexuality education, including education on contraception. But opponents challenged the law's constitutionality before the Supreme Court, causing delay in the law's full implementation. When the Supreme Court eventually ruled that the RH law was constitutional except for eight provisions(which the Court struck down), another opponent successfully petitioned the Court to issue a temporary restraining order against the government's procurement, distribution and dispensation of contraceptive products and devices that are allegedly abortifacient. The latter case remains unresolved as of this writing. Besides the foregoing, implementation of the law is encountering obstacles at the local level. Results of a national inquiry conducted by the Commission on Human Rights in 2016 showed that local government units(LGUs) had varying responses to the RH Law, 'ranging from full support to outright refusal' (Commission on Human Rights Philippines, 2016: 37). The Commission report recommended a review of the 1991 Local Government Code, which provided loopholes for some LGUs to reject outright the RH Law in the name of local autonomy. Recently, President Rodrigo Duterte issued Executive Order(EO) No. 12 on January 11, 2017 directing concerned agencies to fully implement a national family planning program as part of the government's poverty-alleviation programs. However, the EO is still constrained by the Supreme Court's temporary restraining order. The fate of the RH Law remains a work in progress, both in terms of implementation and the existing gaps in the content of the law. Because lawmaking reflects the contending perceptions and politics around sexual and reproductive rights at a given time, all the current laws are flawed and should be considered as'works in progress' in the evolution of sexual and reproductive rights in the Philippines(Melgar et al, 2015: 2). Although the current RH Law accords many concessions to opponents, it brings to the forefront issues regarding reproductive health rights, mandates the government to provide reproductive health services, and exposes and contests the positions of the Catholic Church on the matter. As one advocate asserted when the constitutionality of the law was challenged:'If we lose at the Supreme Court, that's heartbreaking. But I don't think that it's crashing. I don't think that it's as if nothing happened or that we haven't won tremendous gains… We always have to look for the broader context... people are disagreeing with the Church in massive numbers on the issue of gender and sexuality. I think it's a victory that they can't take away'(Confidential Interviewee Identity 1, 2013 cited in Casal de Vela and Ofreneo, 2015:21). Violence Against Women Philippine society assumes that men have a natural right to control their women, and, consequently, socialization patterns and traditions encourage male violence against the disempowered, who are the women(Monares, 1996: 145). For a long time, the issues regarding Violence Against Women(VAW) was largely ignored until 12