Beyond all of Pride Month’s fun and festivities, Filipino advocates, artists, and leaders actively participate in the occasion’s initiatives to emphasize the LGBTQIA+ community’s rights to proper healthcare nationwide. While we celebrate freedom and pride all year round, constitutional rights among same-sex couples remain limited, posing obstacles to their shared goals and means of living.
Prejudice and stigmas are still evidently targeted towards queer identities, especially in a legal setting. These issues, which historically fueled social movements and protests like Pride Month, have consistently placed the queer community in vulnerable positions. As we continue to echo the notion that queer people deserve to be celebrated, accepted, and empowered, Quezon City’s Right to Care Card (RTC) does so through their inclusive and proactive healthcare resources for LGBTQIA+ Filipinos.
Photo: The Right to Care Card/X
Now a fully and lawfully recognized program, RTC is extending its care and accessibility to residents of San Juan City. As the project slowly but surely branches out to more queer individuals, couples, and healthcare workers across Metro Manila, here’s a helpful refresher on the RTC’s history, benefits, and requirements for registration.
The Origins of RTC
Photo: The Right to Care Card/X
Two years ago, the Quezon City government, together with the Gender and Development (GAD) Council Office, spearheaded the first Right to Care Card project in the country to lend a helping hand to the Filipino queer community. They quickly monitored its growth, from a simple plan to a legally approved city-wide initiative as per Quezon City Ordinance 3221. On June 23, 2023, they officially launched the RTC at the Quezon City Pride Festival in front of over 110,000 attendees. From that momentous day to the present, over 600 queer couples have applied for and partaken in RTC’s medical care benefits.
Her impact! Ordinance 3221 is a Quezon City ordinance that requires all hospitals to recognize the Right to Care card. pic.twitter.com/742qrJGEZV
— The Right to Care Card (@RightToCareCard) May 21, 2024
Through a Special Power of Attorney (SPOA), RTC upholds cardholders’ decisions to have their full say over any type of medical treatments, procedures, prescriptions, and tests their partners will undergo. The Quezon City General Hospital, Novaliches District Hospital, and Rosario Maclang Bautista General Hospital are the first three establishments that took part in RTC’s implementation. Since then, more city government hospitals have recognized and participated in the program’s growth and widespread reach.
The RTC card was designed not just to emphasize queer Filipinos’ healthcare rights, but also to grant them easy and seamless access to its legal paperwork. The front has a QR code that leads to a securely disclosed and notarized SPOA contract. On the back is concrete documentation of card holders’ authorization to provide care during hospitalization, sign medical waivers and forms, and make thorough medical decisions for their partners.
RTC Application and Registration
At the moment, RTC applications only cater to LGBTQIA+ couples where at least one of them resides in Quezon City (and eventually, San Juan City). Applicants outside Quezon City need three photocopies of their valid ID, while QC residents can present the same with their QC ID.
Couples have four options to register: personally consulting with the GAD Council Office, sending an email inquiry, signing up online for the Right to Care Card Orientation, and scanning the QR code on the Quezon City government’s official website. Pre-registration portals are available on the Right to Care Card’s social media pages, too. After their chosen RTC orientation date, couples will be requested to sign an SPOA contract with legal representation present.
Didn’t get a chance to register for your Right to Care card before? You can now! Scan the code to pre-register and choose the date that works best for you. See you! #RightToCareCard pic.twitter.com/tjpTZxRAiK
— The Right to Care Card (@RightToCareCard) October 24, 2024
Both parties will be notified on their digital notarized SPOA contracts and RTC cards within seven days. The physical copies’ availability will follow with an estimated four weeks’ waiting time.
Reaching New Heights and Opportunities
Photo: The Right to Care Card/X
Since its launch in 2023, RTC has solidified its status as a key asset to ongoing LGBTQIA+ advocacies, community projects, fundraisers, and government-led endeavors. The program and its team won nine accolades for public relations (PR) and advertising at the 59th Anvil Awards in 2024. Some of which include the Grand Anvil PR Program under the Government Relations Category, the Silver Anvil for Sustainability Communication, and the Gold Anvil for Best Use of Influencer Marketing.
Speaking of influence and impact, Quezon City mayor Joy Belmonte and “Drag Race Philippines” Season 2 Winner Captivating KatKat teamed up in October 2023 to celebrate her massive feat alongside the Right to Care Card’s success. They fully embraced and appreciated queer representation across the diverse fields of local media, politics, and healthcare.
Amid large-scale wins that queer Filipinos share in the spotlight, struggles still lie within the community in places of exclusion and scrutiny. That’s why the RTC program makes a conscious effort to never leave the community’s hardships unrecognized and unattended. In 2024, the RTC took to social media to amplify queer couples’ calls for fair and equal medical treatments. Stories and struggles of LGBTQIA+ partners in hospitals came to light with a renewed urgency for critical thought and action. Since then, the Right to Care Card has garnered 155 organic media pickups (and counting) and over 136.4 million social media impressions.
The numbers don’t lie—much less, the experiences. Such large-scale recognition for a city-wide program alone is living proof of the necessities for basic healthcare rights among queer Filipinos. If the Right to Care Card has already gotten this far in Quezon City, we can only hope that it goes above and beyond across the entire National Capital Region. And why stop there? Meeting and gaining RTC cardholders all over the country is the prime example of inclusivity, acceptance, and equality that LGBTQIA+ individuals and couples have always deserved.
ALSO READ: Quezon City LGBTQIA+ Couples “Prepose” to Each Other With Right to Care Card
Are you looking forward to the day the Right to Care Card reaches your city? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
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