Joy Villanueva dropped out of high school when she got pregnant at 14, in seventh grade. 'So the least we can do - the least I can do - is to keep fighting.' They won some, and they lost probably more, but they passed on to us better situations that they started out with.' The work of improving access to birth control, Hontiveros said, 'were passed on to us by those who came before us, they struggled, and they fought.

Risa Hontiveros knows the limits of the laws, the complexity of the issue and the danger of losing hope. And the people who suffer are the urban poor. Yet the reproductive health laws in the Philippines - aimed at stemming population growth - are yet to have that impact. If households have fewer children, Perez said, it will improve the family members' chances of getting out of the mire of poverty. So after decades of policies that limited access to contraception informed by a Catholic ethos to procreate, government agencies are now acting with a new urgency to bring the birthrate down. The government now believes that the country's birthrate of 2.92 births per woman - among the highest in Asia - is holding back economic development. 'We made a decision in this country that population is a problem,' said Perez. Yet the current government wants to see changes.

Joan can't imagine a different kind of life. The family is often hungry and thirsty, and survives by begging sailors for food and water.

Her father brings in some money doing odd jobs at the port. Her mother occasionally finds a day of work cleaning mussels on the concrete floor of the fish port. No woman close to her has ever had a good job. Like Joan, her older sisters had babies when they were young and left school before they graduated. Sisters Joan (left) and Jossa Garcia (right), both teen mothers, are seen in their home in the Navotas fish port with their children, Angela and JM, respectively.

Tina mom of two flickr naked