MARILEN Dañguilan has been a warrior in a war of liberation, and this book is a chronicle of that war—the war for women’s bodies, women’s rights, and women’s choices.
The stories that Marilen tells may bear familiar outlines, especially for those who followed the back-and-forth between Church and State around the time of the Cairo and the Beijing women’s conference. But her accounts of these skirmishes acquire an entertaining edge by the deft way she sketches characters, her sense of irony and the telling detail, and the way she builds up suspense as the fraying edges of public opinion threaten to rip apart the social fabric.
This account of the struggles for the high ground of public opinion and policy on the issue of reproductive rights is not just informative and entertaining. It is important. And it is important because reproductive rights is a central issue for women. If we do not have the freedom to make basic decisions about whether, when, how often and by whom we will get pregnant, all our other liberties are imperilled as well.—Rina Jimenez-David
