A Filipina's calvary/Fr. Carroll on RH bill

I cannot imagine myself being in the place of Aling Gloria, who lives in a nook of a forlorn barangay in San Roque, San Pablo City in nearby Laguna. Her 23-year-old daughter, Angelica, has been incarcerated since December last year in a jail in Almur Quebat in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

She had the misfortune of being held up on Dec. 6, 2010 by an Iranian who took her money and cell phone. Her ultimate fault is that she decided to report the crime to the authorities. But in their twisted sense of right and wrong, and for reasons completely incomprehensible to Angelica, the authorities decided to throw her in jail.

It turned out that being jailed was the least of her miseries. Her greater tragedy was being turned into a virtual sex slave by the Pakistani and Iranian jail guards who take Angelica out of her cell in the evening and take turns raping her.

As if that were not suffering enough, she is reportedly also being sold to lustful men who feast on her young and supple body. I suppose being treated as a commodity is standard practice in a society that still treats women as chattels.

Had she been born to a rich or even middle class family, perhaps she would not have suffered such a dreadful fate. But Angelica belongs to an impoverished clan. Which is why she decided to barter her scholarship at the City College of Manila as a first year nursing student, for what she must have thought was a singular opportunity to provide a brighter future for her family, by working abroad.

Using a visitor’s visa, Angelica first worked in Dubai as a domestic help from 2008 to 2009 but was able to buy a working visa in Iran for P70,000. Like any caring daughter, she went back to the Philippines in the later part of 2009 to have her mother operated on for a lung tumor, spending the money she saved.

She returned to Dubai in July last year, this time as an entertainer. She was doing well in her new job, until tragedy struck. Her fate became known to her family only after her jailers (mercifully?) allowed her to call her aunt in Manila for no longer than a minute, using a card.

Angelica’s plight was made known by Ike Gutierrez, who is also from San Pablo City. Ike was press undersecretary to former President Joseph Estrada. He went back home to San Pablo last April 15 and personally interviewed Aling Gloria, Angelica’s mother. He reports that the family is dirt-poor, with Aling Gloria surviving by doing laundry work and peddling bread among her neighbors.

She earns barely enough for their daily sustenance, pay the P1,000 monthly electric bill and the P500 monthly rent for a miserable hovel that passes for a home. Aling Gloria also takes care of Angelica’s four-year-old son after the boy’s father abandoned the family for another woman.

Ike says that armed with referral letters from columnist Mon Tulfo, Aling Gloria had gone to Manila to plead her daughter’s case with the Office of Vice President Jojo Binay, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) and Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA). But she reports that Angelica’s case is yet to receive the hoped-for concrete action.

Actually, broadcast journalist Sol Aragones of ABS-CBN, who also comes from San Pablo City, had featured this case in the station’s TV Patrol program and provided Aling Gloria with other forms of assistance. That report prompted people from the Philippine Consulate in Dubai to visit Angelica. Since then however, Aling Gloria has not heard of any development regarding her daughter.

In the Roman Empire of old, sinners and serious public offenders are punished by crucifixion. Angelica is neither a criminal nor a sinner against public morals. Yet her fate is much worse than those of the transgressors of the laws of ancient Rome. It is tantamount to being nailed to a cross, again and again and again.

When will her ordeal end? Who will bring about her deliverance from the lechers in that Dubai jail? It is hoped that the people from the Department of Labor and Employment, the DFA, OWWA and POEA will be moved by her suffering, enough to take action and put an end to her calvary.

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I have personally heard some Roman Catholic priests express their appreciation of the intent of the Reproductive Health bill, but unfortunately request that their names be withheld — obviously for fear of being defrocked. So it was a joy to read the column of John J. Carroll, S.J. in the Inquirer (May 4, 2011 issue), which presented a rational view of the RH controversy. Let me quote portions of Fr. Carroll’s column.

“With all due respect for the position of the Philippine bishops, I do not see that total opposition to the bill necessary, once one gets past the polemics. First of all, the bill does not legalize contraceptives; they are already legal and may be purchased in any drugstore. What the bill proposes to do — rightly or wrongly — is to subsidize the cost of contraception as well as natural family planning to the poor. Neither does the bill legalize abortion; on the contrary it reaffirms the constitutional prohibition. It is highly probable in fact that if contraceptives become more available to the poor, the scandalous number of illegal abortions performed annually will be dramatically reduced.

“On the tricky scientific question whether the IUD and some contraceptive pills may prevent the implantation of a fertilized ovum in the mother’s womb and so destroy a human life, the current draft of the bill passes the responsibility to the Food and Drug Administration, which should ban any such ‘contraceptives’ from drugstores throughout the country.

“… (It) would seem more consistent for the Church to initiate a vigorous program of family life and natural family planning education for its people, helping them to form their consciences and make responsible decisions on this matter, rather than trying by political means to keep them away from ‘temptation.’

“The charge is made that the RH bill will destroy the Filipino family. On the basis of more than 25 years of pastoral and social work in Payatas, and some seven years sponsoring natural family planning programs, I can say that the family is already at great risk — and not because of contraceptives.

“Our family-life seminars seem to be much appreciated. If only the effort and resources being now invested in opposition to the RH bill were being used for serious family-life education and family support services, there might be little reason to oppose the bill.”

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