What the RH Bill is not

Manila Bulletin

MANILA, Philippines - The Reproductive Health Bill is not what it purports to be. It is not about reproductive health rights. It is not about women's maternal health. It is not about preventing infant mortality. It is not about responsible parenthood. Nor is it about poverty alleviation.

The RH Bill is in fact a tyranny of half-truths. This Bill, which has gone through so many permutations and attempts to be passed, is a melange of obfuscations and inadequate information.

Efforts to ram it down our throats through apparently tainted media coverage, through surveys that ask leading questions, and through taking advantage of general ignorance of the substance of the bill, not to mention apathy of fence-sitters, is perhaps the reason why it is vaunted that the RH Bill is the best thing that could ever happen to the Filipino family and nation.

Let's start by considering the premise on which this bill rests. An early title of the bill said "Reproductive Health and Population Development Act," which in its present "consolidated form" now has been revised to include "Responsible Parenthood" in the title, hijacking this very proper term to dissimulate and thus appear to indeed be for everyone's good! Its view of development is very narrow, averring that the Philippines is overpopulated, and only by lowering the birth and fertility rates will this country finally burst out of its mire, and alleluia! We become a first world country!

In the first place, the Malthusian (and its other manifestations) population argument has already been shot to pieces, with most of the developed world in fact facing a demographic winter, threatening the prospects of these economies over the long term. Picking up a quotation from an article by former Secretary of Finance Roberto de Ocampo, he said that according to some researches, "in order for a culture to maintain itself for more than 25 years, there must be a fertility rate of 2.11 children per family. With anything less, the culture will decline. Historically, no culture has ever reversed a 1.9 fertility rate." Is this what we want for the Philippines?

Regarding its claim to provide the "right to complete information" particularly about contraceptive options: the advocates completely forget to inform women about the health risks of hormonal contraceptives. The World Health Organization itself has classified these as bringing about the risks of cancer, particularly breast cancer, in their WHO/IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) Report wherein it was found that hormonal contraceptives do cause cancer. At least, let the women know the risks!

It's the same with other contraceptive devices, such as the condom. It has been found that these do not prevent pregnancy from occurring, nor has it been proven that it protects against AIDS. Moreover, failure of contraception eventually leads to abortion, which while it is claimed that the bill has taken note of the fact that abortion is illegal, the effect of failed contraceptions is an implicit support of abortion.

Another obfuscatory provision hidden in the bill are the punitive sanctions that are, if truth be told, attempts to curtail the Filipino's civil liberties: obligatory requirements for medical health practitioners to actively promote artificial birth control without regard for their consciential rights, for example, if they in conscience cannot do it themselves, they are obliged to refer to someone else who don't have the same misgivings. And hey, there are even sanctions for "criticizing" the bill (if passed).

The bill, while pretending to be for the benefit of the Filipino and the family, overreaches itself. Why is it taking over areas best left to the decision of the Filipino married couple, such as whether they want to have children or not, such as their right to educate their children on matters related to sex and morality. The State should govern, and not meddle in the Filipino individual's decision.

A key principle in corporate governance is that the Board should govern, and let Management take care of the micro aspects of business.

Another hidden provision is to consider contraceptives as "essential medicines," which effectively means that there is no need for bidding nor for COA restrictions. As far as I know, no other medicine has been declared "essential"...(and I do have a quarrel with calling contraceptives as "medicine" because pregnancy is not a disease!) This provision thus leads to the use of tax money on what many citizens consider offensive to their beliefs - is this not a devious way of allocating money which have been paid into the government's coffers by a majority of Christian taxpayers?

Let me repeat. The RH bill is not about reproductive health. It is not about giving women a choice. It is not about poverty alleviation. It is not about the Filipino and his family. It is about state control.

merci.suleik@gmail.com

Damaso, at the end of the day

Damaso, at the end of the day
By Antonio J. Montalvan II
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:52:00 10/11/2010

“AS CHINA’S population ages and the wages slowly rise, the government is becoming more concerned about who will take care of the elderly than about a destabilizing surge of young people unable to find jobs . . . . Experts worry that Beijing is unprepared for the sheer speed at which China will age. The United Nations predicts China’s working-age population will peak in 2015 and plunge by 23 percent by 2050.”

That was a Reuters report, datelined Beijing, in the Inquirer issue of Sept. 27, just about the same time that the Philippines went delirious over a Carlos Celdran in a bowler hat, he who could have demonstrated his wrath against the Chinese authorities for imposing a one-child policy. Except that Celdran was “demonstrating” against “overpopulation” in the Philippines which, if we heed his call, will very surely follow the path of China some years from now—remorseful for controlling population gone hopelessly geriatric.

Watching Celdran’s chutzpah acting on television screens and listening to the hosannas heaped upon him only convinced me that indeed, we have forgotten what Padre Damaso represented. Celdran was clever but his interpretation was, sadly, very literal. It is as if the world has not post-modernized after more than a hundred years of the “Noli.” Filipinos do not take their history too well.

Damaso was the quintessential schemer, a liar who was corrupt and adulterous, abusing his self-imposed, enlarged clerical power to exact vendetta. What he represented is very much real and existent in the flesh today, but not necessarily among the clerics. There are Damasos in media, and there truly are Damasos in government. The Damasos constitute a legion among our politicians. Celdran certainly missed the metaphor of Rizal’s parody.

One hardly finds the Damaso memory alive in Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, the father of Pondong Pinoy, the low-key archbishop of Manila who is painfully aloof with the cameras. Celdran could have searched elsewhere. The script’s setting and dramatis personae were certainly skewed right from the start.

Post-Celdran theatrics, the debate has now shifted to the question of when life begins, as if this has not been answered by science yet. Of course, that is part of the script. And part of the script is the lie that many artificial contraceptives are not abortifacient. It is incredible that one does not know this in this wired age when a wealth of information can be accessed at the flick of a finger. May I invite readers to www.epm.org/articles/bcp3300.html.

Damaso’s expertise was deception. It should not be hard then to find where the Damasos are in this debate.

Surveys are part of the ruse. Majority of Filipinos are in favor of legislating the use of artificial contraception. Right. But the Church is not in this for popularity reasons. Little support or otherwise, it is the role of the Church to point out the moral moorings of public policy, no matter if that is not what the majority says. If the majority says we shall legalize jueteng, do we expect the Church to follow suit? We might as well ask the Church to support drug abuse and women trafficking if and when the majority says these are okay. Never has the Church been daunted by a rampaging mob in its 2,000 years of existence, or it could not have survived this long. And survive it will, with due respect to Amando Doronila.

The Church should not meddle in government? Damaso was hardly the yardstick for that. He lost his moral ascendancy as a perpetrator of colonial abuses, among which were deception and hypocrisy. As pro-life and anti-death advocate, the Church has the responsibility to safeguard the tenets of the faith, which politicians should not leave at the doorstep of their houses when they go to Congress or Malacañang. The Church as a domain of faith is not limited to territorial boundaries. Faith is a sea without shores. The bedroom is part of the Church. Which the hypocrite Damaso denied, hence his dalliances that brought forth the tragic Maria Clara.

Media was in a frenzy over the Celdran performance. “Strictly Politics” of Pia Hontiveros at ANC joined the “fray of friars”—unfortunate for an intelligently straightforward talk show that had once outwitted an unguarded Erap Estrada into admitting that he indeed had signed the bank transfer for Jose Velarde a foot away from Clarissa Ocampo. That was a feat for the probing Hontiveros. That was history at its best.

In the merriment anti-life advocates went into to celebrate Celdran, a hapless John Carlos de los Reyes, the pro-life presidential contender in the May 2010 elections, was ganged up on by a cabal of known pro-death advocates—Beth Angsioco, Krip Yuson, Ricky Carandang and a revealing pro-contraceptive Pia Hontiveros—who only revealed their ignorance of “Humanae Vitae.” Balanced media reporting? Ricky Carandang, now a Cabinet secretary, has been a known anti-life advocate from way, way back. Now a public servant, Carandang remains anti-Church and anti-life. Call that democracy. Damaso would have relished that.

At the end of the show, Hontiveros unfolds a Damaso T-shirt. Everybody giggles and finds it cute, never mind if Delos Reyes is flabbergasted. At the end of the day, who is the real Damaso?

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Comments to montalvan_antonio@g.cu.edu.ph

source: 

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20101011-297078/Damaso-at-the-end-of-the-day