Palace asked to comment on another anti-RH petition

MANILA -- Malacañang has been required by the Supreme Court to answer within 10 days the ninth petition against the implementation of the controversial Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012.

This was also the action taken by the Court in the eight other petitions when it refused to issue a temporary restraining order on the law seen by the Catholic Church and laymen as means of population control because of its provision on free access to contraceptives for poor households.

"The law is contrary to public morals and destructive of the harmony and peace of society," said former senator Francisco Tatad and lawyer Alan Paguia in the recently filed petition.

They said the practice of birth control should be left to the married couple "or in some exceptional cases perhaps to the woman alone, but under no circumstance is it to be imposed by any external entity or agent."

Republic Act 10354, whose implementing rules and regulations are yet to be promulgated, was a product of an uphill battle in Congress before President Benigno Aquino III pressed for its passage in December last year.

The resolution dated February 19 was released to the media on Wednesday. (Virgil Lopez/Sunnex)