P-Noy may offend God, but never his mom

I got this message from Ms. Fe M. Barino, chair of the Catholic Charismatic Communities in Cebu (Archdiocesan Services Committee) Task Force for Family and Life (TFFL) Council of Laity. “Come Saturday, August 4th, there will be a solidarity march and Mass for Life against the RH bill at 5:30 p.m., Walk with prayers and candles towards Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral for the 7 p.m. Mass.” This move is in response to President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) wherein he was now pushing for a Planned Parenthood bill and no longer the RH bill.

But is it really a Planned Parenthood that P-Noy is seeking? Or is this just a new collar for the same RH dog? In case you have forgotten the history of the RH bill, it dates as far back as 1994, the year that Reproductive Health was officially launched in Cairo, Egypt by the International Conference on Population & Development (ICPD). The RH Declaration was signed by 179 countries, including the Philippines, then represented by Department of Health (DoH) Secretary Juan Flavier and Sen. Letty Shahani with an agreement that it should be approved and implemented by the year 2004.

In light of this, the first RH House Bill (HB) no. 4110 was introduced in Congress; but it failed miserably to get to a vote. In the year 2001 it was re-introduced and became RH-HB no. 8110 and once again, it did not take root. By 2004, its target year to be implemented, it became RH-HB no. 3773, but it did not even pass the committee on first base.

In 2007, RH-HB was once more refiled under HB no. 5043 for the 4th time in the 14th Congress… but it did not take off. Finally in 2010, RH-HB no. 4244 was filed, but still it failed to even get a vote, even with the insistence of President Aquino, whom I reckoned promised the Americans that this would finally take off. It is now the 15th Congress and believing that RH is “malas” P-Noy suddenly changed its collar and renamed it Planned Parenthood bill.

Whatever its name, Congressmen who are supposed to be the representatives of the Filipino people in their respective districts, have tried and failed over and over again in pursuing an RH bill in this country. I’ll have you know that this is the only bill I know where the proponents who are in the minority never stopped pushing and pushing for it. When will they stop?

If there is anything that made me happy about P-Noy’s SONA, it is that he is no longer covering up the RH bill as a population control program. By changing its name as a Planned Parenthood, the Catholic Church has finally accepted the challenge (some clergy even say it is a declaration of war) but as good Catholics that we are… we are giving P-Noy “the other cheek” through prayer and having a Holy Mass. We pray for P-Noy that perhaps God himself might “melt” his heart much in the same way that God through his servant Moses… “melted” the heart of Pharaoh.

Indeed, this move in Cebu is in line with the plan by the Archbishop of Manila and the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) Episcopal Commission on Family and life to also hold a prayer rally against the RH bill also this coming Saturday at 1 p.m. at the EDSA Shrine and exhort all Catholics who love life and family to come and show their indignation to the President, especially that the Philippines is the only nation left in this world that still has no RH bill, no divorce bill and no same sex marriage. Therefore, let us be a unique Catholic nation instead of following the new world order where there is totally chaos and disarray.

Finally in another reminder to our readers, you should know that on Feb. 3, 1988, Presidential Proclamation no. 214 was signed and issued which declared, “Whereas, the UN Declaration on Rights of the Child provides that ‘the Child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth’; Whereas, Section 12 Article 2 of the Constitution provides that it is the policy of the State to ‘protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.’

‘Whereas, available statistics detail the frightening losses of innocent human lives by abortion; and Whereas, in pursuance of the above constitutional mandate and in support of the UN universal declaration and in order to instill the same, as well as the value and sacredness of human life, in the minds and hearts of the Filipino people and thereby help reverse the above statistical trend, it becomes imperative to set aside a period of time for them to ponder and focus attention on their moral and constitutional obligation to protect human life or one’s inherent right to life.’” President Corazon Aquino declaring February 1988 as “Respect and Care for Life Week” signed this. P-Noy may want to offend God, but never his mother. I hope he gets to read this.

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