By Fel V. Maragay

Senator Jamby Madrigal worked herself to death, staying late for several days to have the Magna Carta of Women completed and approved by Congress in time for the celebration of the International Women’s Day Sunday.

The Magna Carta was supposed to be the government’s gift to the Filipino women on that special day. But no such bill was signed into law by President Arroyo yesterday.

All because the House of Representatives failed to ratify the final version of the landmark bill before adjourning for the month-long Lenten break last Wednesday. Only the Senate was able to ratify the bill which was earlier finalized by the bicameral conference committee.

A Senate source said Madrigal, chairman of the committee on youth, women and family relations, was fuming mad upon learning that Speaker Prospero Nograles did not include the Magna Carta of Women among the bills to be ratified by the House on its last day of session.

Madrigal said the Filipino women have long been waiting for the Magna Carta which past three Congresses failed to pass for more than l0 years.

The bill, she said, seeks to fulfill the objective of full empowerment of women and elimination of all forms of discrimination against them, especially the marginalized.

The source disclosed that Madrigal learned that an unidentified Catholic bishop had called up the President to appeal to her to stop the approval of the bill due to certain purported flaws. The President, in turn, transmitted the bishop’s request to the House speaker.

Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said that during the bicameral conference discussion on the Magna Carta, the Senate and House panels accepted at least five amendments he had proposed to cure the infirmities in the bill.

Pimentel said the bill had already been sanitized of provisions related to birth control which more properly belong to the controversial health reproductive bill. He said the term “management of abortion” was deleted to erase any misinterpretation that the bill allows abortion as an option to reduce population growth.

But he said that when he proposed the insertion of the word “ethical” to the phrase “the use of legal, safe and effective family planning methods,” the committee members did not accept it.

Pimentel said he was surprised that after the Magna Carta was finalized and the bicameral panel had broken up, Mindoro Occidental Amelita Villarosa, also a member of the panel, called him up to say that the word “ethical” should have been inserted in the said phrase. The Mindoro lawmaker is know to be very close to Malacanang.

“I surprised to her that from Congresswoman Villarosa because that was what I fought for during our meeting,” he said.

Madrigal, according to the source, said that women ended up the biggest loser due to the the fiasco over the Magna Carta, which she desacribed as a “pro-life, pro-Filipino, pro-family and pro-women empowerment bill.”