8/11/2019 Law on Premature Marriage
1/2
Law on Premature Marriage, a discrimination against women
Frederick B. Nebaten
Marriage in Filipino culture is basically conservative and
monogamous in
nature since most of our law was based or adopted from the
Divine Law of
Christianism provided by the Holy Bible. As a result, we live by
the
commandments of God even in our marriage as written in the book
of Exodus
20:7, Thou shall not commit adulteryand Exodus 20:17, Thou shall
not covet
thy neighbors house, thou shall not covet thy neighbors wife,
nor his maid
servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy
neighbors.
Couples are bound by the Bible and the law to be faithful to
their life-
partner to the day of their death as cited on Mathew 19:5-6, For
the man shall
leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and
they twain shall be
one flesh. Wherefore they are no more twain but one flesh. What
therefore God
hath joined together, let not man put asunder.The law adopted
the Biblical
principle and stated in the Family Code under Article 1 marriage
is a special
contract of permanent union between a man and a woman entered
into in
accordance with law for the establishment of conjugal
family.Suggesting that
marriage is a lifetime contract and can never be dissolved as
any of the
contracting parties may wish. Thus marriage can only be
dissolved by death
nor legal annulment, however the dissolution of marriage does
not signal anabsolute freedom for a Filipina citizen to remarry for
the reason that Article 351
of the Revised Penal Code states that any widow who shall marry
within three
hundred and one day (301) from the death of her husband, or
before having
delivered if she shall have been pregnant at the time of his
death, shall be
punished by arresto mayor and a fine not exceeding 500 pesos.
The same
penalties shall be imposed upon any woman whose marriage shall
have been
annulled or dissolved, if she shall marry before her delivery or
before the
expiration of the period of three hundred and one day after the
legal
separation.
Such law was promulgated most importantly for women who are
not
pregnant or women who are not sure whether they are pregnant
from their
previous marriage to avoid confusion on the paternity or
filiation of any child
that may be born under such circumstances. The question is why
301 days or
ten (10) months when normal pregnancy lasts only nine (9)
months. It is
because the law accept possibility that a woman maybe in
pregnancy for more
