HUNDREDS of pregnant women pass through Philippine prisons and jails every year, many of them held in facilities so overcrowded that basic prenatal care is all but impossible. A policy brief published in February by the UP Center for Women’s and Gender Studies is now pushing the government to stop treating imprisonment as the default for pregnant women and to embrace alternatives already available under Philippine and international law.

The brief, titled Should We Imprison Pregnant Women? and authored by five researchers from UP Manila and UP Diliman, documents a detention system in crisis. 

Philippine facilities regularly operate at 300 to 400 percent of their intended capacity. Women made up 9.8 percent of the total prison population in 2021 — more than 16,000 individuals — a share that exceeds the global average. Between 300 and 600 of those women are pregnant at any given time, according to government data cited in the brief.

Read more: https://rightsreport.org/2026/03/18/mothers-in-prison-why-is-the-philippines-detaining-pregnant-women-in-congested-poorly-run-jails/?fbclid=IwY2xjawQnM6xleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFBNkRiSnRmYnVHTXZQODRvc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHqA5OO7998961CD29NqvygDu5ddIN5SzigPcnJK4RrhoODVnIdTPv0V3uw2T_aem_L-LPxfR6VnSQHrSKFRQWAw