Manila: A law that penalises (with imprisonment) widowed women who marry within 301 days after losing their husbands has been scrapped.

President Benigno Aquino III recently issued Republic Act No. 10655, an edict that repeals the crime of “premature marriage” under the country’s Revised Penal Code.

“Be it enacted … Without prejudice to the provisions of the Family Code on paternity and filiation, Article 351 of the Revised Penal Code, punishing the crime of premature marriage committed by a woman, is hereby repealed,” the edict, which was issued last March 13, 2015 but was made public only March 27, stated.

Before the repeal of the law, a women’s group had called for the removal of the ‘premature marriage’ provision on the Family Code.

Representatives Emmi De Jesus and Luzviminda Ilagan of the Gabriela Partylist had described the premature marriage law as “outdated and discriminatory,” hence they wrote a resolution in Congress that sought its repeal.

Article 351 prescribes said that: “Any widow who shall marry within 301 days 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 [one month and one day to six months imprisonment] and [be made to pay] a fine not exceeding P500 (Dh41).

“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,” Article 351 said.

Although the country does not permit divorce, it allows annulment of marriage under certain circumstances.

The lawmakers from Partylist said that the Article 351 was outdated because technologies, such as DNA testing, are now available that could determine who fathered a certain child.

Framers of the penal code had argued before that the marriage prohibition was to prevent confusion with regards to who had fathered the child as the infant might have been conceived during the previous marriage, but born during the subsequent marriage.

Partylist lawmakers have also argued that provisions of the Revised Penal Code concerning premature marriage is discriminatory to women.

“Not only is Art[icle] 351 outdated that needed to be erased from our statutes, but because it perpetuates discrimination against those women subjected to the prohibition by unduly curtailing their right to marry when no other legal barrier exists other than the declared prohibition,” Partylist lawmakers said.