Senators push for debates on Reproductive Health bill

MANILA, Philippines – Three senators called yesterday for debates in Congress on the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said it’s time to open the debates, although the RH Bill requires further study and soul-searching.

“I guess it’s better that this matter will be brought out into the open and discussed publicly and openly without inordinate passion about it, it must be an open minded discussion by all sectors of society,” he said.

Enrile allayed fears that the RH bill would encourage women to resort to abortion.

“Whether the State or the Church is concerned the issue of abortion will not be allowed,” he said.

“I don’t think this will be allowed openly or publicly. It’s a fact prohibited by law so the state has a policy against destruction of life in whatever stages, that is a common ground between the church and the state. The problem arises when you cross over a deliberate policy to reduce population, what if it becomes a sensitive issue on both sides for those who are in favor and for those who are against.”

Sen. Edgardo Angara said the threat of excommunication against President Aquino was an attempt to stop the debates on the RH Bill.

The Church’s action was against Catholic teaching which encourages debate over its doctrines, Angara said.

He described as a “sign of intolerance” and anti-God the calls to excommunicate people who would like to express their views on the RH Bill.

Sen. Joker Arroyo warned Catholic bishops against pushing hard their campaign against the RH Bill.

“Their strategy might boomerang on them, supposing they will fight it tooth and nail, and this bill is passed,” he said. 

“This means that it will be known that their flock is no longer solid and not following them. Whether it’s worth the fight, because the very Catholic countries from Ireland, Spain, Italy to France, already have these kind of laws.”

Arroyo urged all sectors, especially the Catholic Church, to participate in public hearings in Congress on the RH Bill.

“The bill is pending in the House and the Senate, once the hearings start, they can lobby against it,” he said. 

“Should it be that they will go over the head of the Senate, they will go over the head of the House, and go directly to the President and hope that the President will tell the Senate and the House not to allow RH bills to pass. That’s off limits.”

Arroyo said the Catholic Church wants the easy way.

“Of course, the legislators do not want to be bypassed,” he said.

Arroyo said President Manuel L. Quezon also clashed with the Catholic Church in 1938 when he vetoed a bill seeking compulsory religious education in schools.

In the 1950s, the State and the Catholic Church were also on a collision course during the deliberations on the compulsory inclusion of the “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo” into the school curriculum, he added.   

War chest for contraceptives

President Aquino has a P1-billion war chest tucked in next year’s proposed P1.64-trillion national budget for the purchase of contraceptives and to implement the administration’s population management program without waiting for Congress to pass the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill, a lawmaker said yesterday.

Zambales Rep. Milagros Magsaysay urged Congress to attach strict controls on the 2011 General Appropriations Bill since Mr. Aquino can “ignore the RH Bill debates” and order public health facilities to dispense pills and condoms as early as January next year.

“Malacañang has a P1 billion war chest of transforming government clinics into groceries of pills and condoms,” she said.

Magsaysay said the Department of Health’s billion-peso budget for “family health and family planning” might be used solely for contraceptives through a presidential order.

“The belief that you need an RH law for government clinics to start giving out condoms and pills is a myth,” she said.

“It can be quietly done through appropriation. If Congress cannot give birth to an RH law, then Noynoy can father an illegitimate offspring through administrative conception.

“With money authorized by Congress in the national budget, Noynoy can just order the DOH to stock clinics with contraceptives and you have the de facto implementation of the RH law.”

Magsaysay said Aquino can order the mass purchase of pills and condoms because these are not banned, regulated or restricted in the proposed national budget.

“(The Aquino administration will) short-circuit the process and take the administrative route (because the RH bill) faces stiff resistance across party lines, and in both houses of Congress,” she said.

“Remember this is the most expensively lobbied bill in Congress and despite almost a billion pesos spent by its foreign backers in pushing for it, it never had a breakthrough in the past 23 years.”

Magsaysay said Catholic bishops might be lulled into thinking that the RH bill is the battleground.

“It (battleground) is actually the presidency,” she said.

“(Mr. Arroyo) can bypass Congress and the cottage industry around the RH bill and create an RH regime through a series of executive orders.

“The big question now is will he restrain himself from exercising his executive prerogatives and let Congress frame the policy?”

Aquino urged to visit poor communities in Tondo

A women’s rights group urged Mr. Aquino yesterday to visit poor communities in Tondo, Manila to see for himself mothers die due to closely spaced and multiple pregnancies.

Clara Rita Padilla, EnGenderRights executive director, said pregnancy-related deaths are due to lack of a government reproductive health program.

“Good governance dictates that P-Noy should not dialogue with the Catholic bishops on the government’s policy on reproductive health,” she said.

“The bishops are unjustifiably against modern contraceptives when it is the poor, the majority of the Philippine population, who would most benefit from the government’s support for increased access to modern contraceptive information, supplies, and services.”

Many children from big families in poor areas stopped schooling to earn money so they can help feed their siblings, Padilla said.

Mr. Aquino is seeking a dialogue with Catholic bishops and other religious leaders on the RH Bill.

Meanwhile, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines secretary-general Monsignor Juanito Figura said the CBCP has not received an invitation from the Office of the President as of yesterday. – With Paolo Romero, Helen Flores