Biazon to sponsor Reproductive Health bill

MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Rodolfo Biazon said yesterday he would sponsor the Reproductive Health (RH) bill before Congress adjourns in March so that the country would have a law on population management.

Biazon said the bill has been pending in the last three Congresses and that it’s about time Filipino couples practice family planning.

The senator, however, explained that the Senate would consider the opinions of all sectors.

He said the Senate could not adopt all of the Catholic Church’s recommendations because these are at odds with other groups advocating artificial methods of family planning.

But he stressed that the Senate version of the RH bill would not legalize abortion and the choice whether to practice family planning remains with the couple.

On report that Catholic bishops walked out of a hearing last Thursday, Biazon said the Senate technical working group reported that Church representatives left when they did not get an assurance that their position would be adopted.

“I can understand their right, their duty to (defend the Church position), but we have to listen to the other stakeholders,” Biazon said.

He said representatives of other religious groups actually favored the bill.

“The most contentious are the artificial method and the education of family planning,” Biazon said.

“We cannot allow that the will of a group will be imposed upon the others because we need this. In the surveys it shows that more than 80 percent (of the Filipino families) are supporting the national policy on reproductive health, including family planning,” he said.

He said there was nothing wrong if the Catholic Church would come out with a position against the RH bill, but “this is an affair of the state, right?”

“And if they strongly believe that we should not have a national policy on reproductive health and family planning, they can do the teaching in the Church.”

This developed as Pampanga Archbishop Paciano Aniceto urged survey institutions to stop conducting polls on the RH bill because “these are misleading.”

Aniceto, chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, also warned legislators of more street protests if they continue to push for the measure.

The bishop hit the recent Social Weather Stations survey showing that Manilans favor the RH bill.

SWS president Mahar Mangahas could not be reached for comment. – With Helen Flores