Tea time

Ayala Alabang might be a posh area to live in. But, not necessarily to love in, as the wealthy community intends to ban the sale of condoms (and other abortifacients) without a doctor’s prescription.

If what is reported is true, drugstores within the area will be required to keep a register of residents who buy condoms, including which doctor issued the prescription. That means the good doctor is on record as having (in the minds of certain scary fanatics) sanctioned abortion, and he is now a target for extremists. The luckless pharmacist is meted a fine or even imprisonment for not observing this requirement.

 As if that’s not enough, it’s also been reported that if you happen to be a foreigner, you will get the privilege of being deported from the country. (As if a barangay, the lowliest among our political units, has the power to impose the penalty of deportation. All they can probably do, like what they’ve reportedly done, is pelt eggs and other refuse on houses of non-supporters of the ordinance. That might be one way of driving out foreign condomizers.)

The ordinance doesn’t stop there. There’s also a supposed ban on advertisements for condoms, as well as a requirement for parental consent for activities that may have sex education components. Natch, the ordinance is wrapped up in all these do-good intentions like it will stop promiscuity, enforce the law against abortion, avoid single motherhood (judgment!) and prevent fatherless children (more judgment!).

There are many objectionable points to this ordinance, and I could probably ruin an entire day just writing about them. But the immediate reaction I felt when I heard about this was, what a tempest in a teapot!

The ordinance is enforceable only over this tiny area, an exclusive enclave of rich residents and their live-in serfs. What’s to stop anyone from crossing over to another barangay and buying condoms there? Heck, they can walk (or ride a jeep) and ten minutes later, and they’ll be in another jurisdiction. Are they going to prohibit “importation” of condoms as well, and even “use” within a bedroom? Otherwise, it’s going to be a pretty useless ban.

 And how do they expect to enforce this ordinance? No national newspapers or international publications with ads for Frenzy can cross over into Alabang country? National drugstore chains have to make special rules for their products being shipped into (or even across) the area? 

 What about that register that’s required to be kept at the pharmacist’s? Does this mean that lowly village officials can now access confidential medical records? What gave them the power to look into personal ailments of their residents? 

 And who’s going to do the enforcing? Government-paid employees will spend government time and resources checking on drugstores? Trailing foreigners and making sure they don’t secretly slip condoms into their bags of chips and ice cream? Checking i.d.’s to see who’s a resident and who’s just passing through?

 The list of absurdities goes on and on, and it makes you wonder how intelligence (dare I call it common sense?) fell through the cracks on this one. What, these village officials had nothing else to do in their bored lives of ease that they just woke up one day and decided, hey, let’s take on rubbers?

 In fact, he even likens it to the Inquisition, yet that hasn’t deterred the barangay from continuing to threaten enforcement.

I’ll be the first one to call it unconstitutional (but as it so happens, I’m not – pretty much everyone beat me to it.) But that’s not going to stop me from railing against it. It takes a village indeed. (To show the rest of the world what not to do.)