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InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
MANILA, Philippines – Half of Filipino adults agree that married couples who have separated and can no longer reconcile should be allowed to divorce so they can wed again, results of a survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations showed.
The survey results, released Wednesday said 50 percent of those polled agreed with the statement: “Married couples who have already separated and cannot reconcile anymore should be allowed to divorce so that they can get legally married again.”
This was up from 43 percent in a 2005 survey on the same issue.
The results were released as the House of Representatives began hearing a bill that seeks to legalize divorce, triggering intense debate on the issue.
The Philippines is now the only predominantly Catholic country outside the Vatican where divorce remains illegal, after Malta voted in a referendum to legalize it.
On the other hand, 33 percent of the respondents disagreed with the statement and 16 percent were undecided. In the 2005 survey, 44 percent were against divorce.
The majority opinion for divorce held for all regions and social classes, according to the SWS survey, conducted March 4 to 7 among 1,200 respondents in Metro Manila, Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.
“Support for legal divorce rose among men and women, regardless of whether they are married or single (without a spouse or partner),” as well as among live-in couples, according to the SWS.
The survey used face-to-face interviews and had sampling error margins of ±3 percent for national percentages and ±6 percent for area percentages.
