Last year the Philippines passed a law to give poorer woman access to birth control measures, but the controversial law has hit a hurdle in the country's Supreme Court.

Vilma Lopez and her family live in Tondo, one of Manila's poorest neighbourhoods, sharing a cramped make-shift home with her husband and 13 children.

"If I'd had a choice I would have liked to have had five or six children but since they are there already I just take care of them and continue letting them grow as I should," she said.

Her youngest is still a newborn and the siblings take turns looking after her while their mother prepares breakfast in the mornings.

At 7am, their father is already out working, scavenging rubbish.

"It's very difficult because there's not enough food and it's difficult to earn money and it's difficult to keep up with the daily expenses," she said.

The Philippines has one of the highest birth rates in the world, in part because poorer women have little access to birth control.

Last year, after a 14-year fight that pitted the Catholic church against the state, the Philippines finally passed legislation that would have changed that.

But the Reproductive Health Bill has hit a new hurdle with the country's Supreme Court temporarily suspending its implementation after petitions were made questioning its constitutional validity.

Magdalena Bacalando, a local social worker, has been working with Ms Lopez's family for four years and says it's not uncommon to see families of this size in the poorer communities in Manila.

"I feel sad every time I visit Vilma considering she and her husband work as scavengers and they earn only 150 pesos a night and 200 pesos a day and they have to take care of the food, the medication and the children, for education and I think that is very difficult and very sad," she said.

The new law would allow poorer Filipinos to have access to free birth control options, information on family planning and compulsory sex education in state schools.

Ugochi Daniels from the United Nations Population Fund says nearly half of the three million plus pregnancies in the Philippines are unwanted.

"All of them, when I've spoken to them will say we wanted to have five we wanted to have six but we've ended up with nine, 10, 12, 13," she said.

"And often it might be 13 who are alive, often the mothers would have had miscarriages, they would have had still births so in many cases you're speaking to women who have gone through 15, 16 pregnancies no woman wants that life for herself.

"Implementation of this law is actually at the crux of development for the Philippines... just being able to have a women or a girl having control over her body, so there really is no way to overemphasise just how critical, crucial, important this law is for all Filipinos."

At the Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila, up to 130 babies are born every day.

Aid agencies say the law will go a long way towards stemming the country's rapid population growth, which they say is only adding to the chronic poverty in the country.

Ricky Carandang, Presidential Communications Secretary, says the reproductive health law is "all part and parcel" of the government's anti-poverty program.

"It's been a 14-year fight to get to this point - one that has pitted the Church against the state," he said.

National surveys show around 70% of Filipinos support the bill, but it has always faced fierce opposition by the Roman Catholic Church.

Bishop Gabriel Reyes and other church leaders have welcomed the recent Supreme Court decision to delay the law's implementation.

"It's against the moral law. For us, contraception is against the moral law of marriage," he said at the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines in October last year.

But Mr Carandang argues not everyone in the Church opposes the new family planning law.

"There are members of the church who quietly say they support the RH law and its just the hierarchy has an official position," he said.

He says the government has no doubt the law will eventually be upheld.

For Vilma Lopez and other Filipinos who have waited well over a decade for the reproductive legislation, sex education, family planning and free contraception can't come soon enough.

"It is important to me because I will not have to have a baby every year, I can take a rest from giving birth yearly and take care of my children," Ms Lopez said.