Crucial questions on the RH bill

House Bill 5043 or The Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development Act of 2008 (RH bill) is being propagated in mass media as promoting programs that will benefit women’s reproductive health by offering to millions of poor women the right to choose between natural and artificial birth control methods and by providing access to artificial contraceptives. According to the proponents and their mass media supporters, this a right choice offered by the bill to women who most need the information for family planning. In pushing for the bill they even attack the Catholic Church for blocking it by using religion to dictate national policy and for depriving the faithful of their free will.

The power to choose freely however must be exercised for the common good. It does not give man the right to choose and commit something wrong. In blocking the bill, the Church is just trying to point out what is wrong with it. Ironically, it is the bill itself that prevents the exercise of the free will by employing coercive methods in limiting the family size. It imposes imprisonment and or fine or both on those who would violate or refuse to carry out its program on providing access to the artificial methods of birth control.

Actually, it is not the lawmakers sponsoring the bill but an NGO called the Philippine Legislative Committee on Population and Development (PLCPD) that is responsible for drafting it. PLCPD is a foundation housed in Congress that lobbies and acts on behalf of, and enormously funded by foreign interest groups and foreign governments out to promote through coercion and deception a population control program that is anti-life and anti-family. From 1998, this kind of bills has been introduced in both Houses of Congress and lately has penetrated our legislative system down to the local level. Over the years because of objections, the versions have changed so that various provisions have been disguised under seemingly good intentions but ultimately have dire consequences on individuals, the family and society.

The bill uses such terms as “women’s rights”, “right to health”, reproductive rights”, “reproductive education”, “fertility regulation”, “family planning” “satisfying and safe sex” so that people may eventually accept these terms to mean something good. Its very title “Reproductive Health” is a misnomer because in the UN language the term is taken to mean universal access to abortion, while Population Development is a euphemism for Population Control. Its proponents and supporters have even redefined the word “conception” or the start of life in order to prove that some artificial contraceptives to be offered by the government are not abortifacients.

But whether abortifacients or not, the plain truth is that in every country where contraceptives became widely available, abortions increased because women still get pregnant unexpectedly. When they acquire the mentality that a new birth is unwanted, they turn to abortion as a back up for contraceptive failure. The best example here is USA where 54% of women who had an abortion were using contraceptives when they became pregnant and where one in three women has had at least one abortion in their lifetime. This unfortunate US situation is best described by its Supreme Court which said that: “In some critical respects abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception. For two decades of economic and social development, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail” (Planned Parenthood vs. Casey).

Contraceptives made available at the expense of the government and for the benefit of pharmaceutical companies are also the causes of many diseases and infirmities rather than reproductive health. Dr Carl Djerassi himself who developed the contraceptive pill in 1960 found its “adverse effect on virtually every organ system of the human body, interfering as it does with the normal functioning of the woman’s vitally important reproductive system”. It also results in lower bodily resistance to infection, hepatic adenoma that could cause death through abdominal bleeding, nervousness and excessive irritability. IUD causes leukemia, pelvic infection, uterine perforation and ectopic pregnancy. Depoprovera is already banned in the US because they cause bone cancer and congenital malformation of babies. Tubal ligation causes severe bleeding, pelvic infection and ectopic pregnancy. Vasectomy results in hemorrhage and infections, greater risks of thyroid disorders, diabetes and heart and circulatory disease. There are more AIDs cases in countries with greater availability of condoms.

The social consequences are direr. Due to pill use excessive irritability results, leading to child abuse and wife battery. Women’s status is lowered and couples split up due to women’s feeling of being used as sex objects to satisfy their husbands’ sex drives. In the US, more than 50% of marriages where couples use contraceptives end up in divorce.

The RH bill does not even spare our children. In the name of reproductive health, sex education is required to be given to children from Grade 5 to fourth year high school to insure “safe and satisfying sex”. It is contended that such kind of education is a legitimate interest of the State that should be balanced with the primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the children. But as shown again by experiences in other countries sex education in schools has only promoted promiscuity resulting in unwanted teenage pregnancies. This contention is thus erroneous. In Portland, Maine, USA where schools have adopted sex education in their curriculum, recent news came out reporting that the State School Board voted to provide birth control to their school children because several middle school girls (ages 11-13) have been found to be sexually active. Hence there is also a soaring incidence of STDs among the youth as found the World Health Organization.

The questions that every Filipino, Catholic or non-Catholic, particularly the 14 Ateneo Professors, should therefore ask in connection with this bill, are: Shall we allow our people to suffer all those physically, morally and socially harmful experiences of people in those countries that use artificial contraceptives? Is it ok to expose the life of helpless unborn to danger simply because men have redefined the meaning of the start of life? Is it ok to have a safe and satisfying sex life even outside of marriage for as long as we use artificial contraceptives to prevent the natural consequences of the act? Is it ok to disobey our parents provided we are within the bounds of human legislation?

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