Wednesday, July 16, 2008 Pro-life advocates hit abortion rights
PRO-life advocates are girding for a long drawn struggle to stop any attempt to legalize abortion rights in Cagayan de Oro City.
Ching Calub, spokesperson for local pro-life groups, said they are planning to hold meetings and prayer rallies this month to stop any attempt to pass a local ordinance that would legalize abortion in the city.
"We heard that someone is pushing the City Council to pass a local ordinance that will legalize abortion," she said.
In Davao City, pro-life groups vowed to storm the City Council meeting this week to express their opposition against reproductive health programs implemented in some areas of the city.
"The pro-life advocates will prevent any moves that will further desecrate the sanctity of Christian family and human life," Gilda Cunanan del Mar, coordinator of the family and life apostolate of the Davao archdiocese, said in a statement posted Monday night on the website of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).
According to Del Mar, any form of reproductive program is considered abortion.
In Manila, CBCP president Archbishop Angel Lagdameo said the bishops will back action to deny Holy Communion to any politician who would support legalization of abortion.
Lagdameo said Archbishop Jesus Dosado was right to order priests in his diocese of Ozamiz City to deny communion to Catholic politicians who would "consistently campaign for permissive abortion measures," thus denying them full church rites.
The unprecedented step, which so far covers only Dosado's diocese, comes as bishops mobilize forces to campaign against birth control proposals pending in the Congress.
No major Catholic politicians openly back the legalization of abortion in this conservative Catholic country, but many support moves to increase sex education in schools and promote family planning methods that would include contraceptives -- which are forbidden by the church.
Calub said pro-life groups in Mindanao have plans to hold anti-abortion activities in the cities of Butuan, Malaybalay, and Ozamis this month.
"We are still planning what activity we will do here in Cagayan de Oro," she said.
Calub said a family planning bill pending in Congress contained provisions legalizing abortion.
"The bill looks very tempting but if you examined it carefully, it is rotten to the core," she said.
Abortion is illegal in the Philippines, where critics accuse President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of contributing to the burgeoning population in the country.
"It may sound very controversial, but I feel that the bishop (Dosado) is only acting according to canon law," Lagdameo said Tuesday, referring to the rules that govern Catholics worldwide on abortion.
Lagdameo said he would issue a similar statement to deny communion to abortion rights advocates in his central Jaro archdiocese.
House Representative Edcel Lagman, the main proponent of a family planning bill pending in Congress, said Dosado's move was "completely without basis" because no lawmaker has advocated the legalization of abortion.
His bill includes a provision for "mandatory reproductive health and sexuality education" in primary schools, which some of the bishops have frowned upon in the past.
Former President Fidel Ramos, the only Protestant elected to the highest office, chided Arroyo last week for not having a comprehensive family planning policy due to "unwarranted subservience to the Catholic church."
He said "mothers' lives and health, together with their babies, are now being put at risk for political expediency and religious narrow-mindedness."
About 473,000 abortions, or one third of the estimated 1.4 million unplanned pregnancies, still occur in the Philippines yearly, while two out of five women who want to use contraceptives don't have access to them, the UN Population Fund has said.
The country's population has been growing by more than two percent per year and is projected to reach 90 million this year.
Arroyo spokesman Anthony Golez said the government's population policy program is founded on four pillars of "responsible parenthood" -- respect for life, informed consent regarding family planning, responsible parenting and spacing out births in a family.
Fr. Henry Campeon, director of the family and life apostolate, said he will launch a "campaign in the pulpit" to "enlighten" parishioners on the evils of reproductive health and the local development plan for children.
"If we can't make it in the council then we will find our ways in the parishes and in the grassroots communities. We will make them understand fully the evils underlying reproductive programs," Campeon said.
Campeon said he will also mobilize the family and life workers in the parishes to intensify their campaigns against reproductive health and the local development for children.
He added that aside from educational campaigns, he will also offer prayers for guidance and enlightenment to those who are advocating reproductive health agenda.
"I will ask the help of our Catholic families who take the issues of morality seriously and my brother clergy to help in advocating against reproductive programs and the local development plan for children," he said.
Davao Archbishop Fernando Capalla criticized the City Government for allegedly implementing sex education in villages and for the mutilation of reproductive organs despite opposition from Church and other concerned groups.
Last Sunday, Capalla's message was read in all churches in the archdiocese asking the people not to support the reproductive health campaigns of the City Government.
The letter also called for "communal discernment" among parents to reflect on the evil effects of reproductive organs mutilation as well as sex education to children.
Capalla said the implementation of sex education in the barangay level poses serious threat in the already problematic morality of the people today.
He added that the sex education will further encourage promiscuity and free sex among young people as long as it is safe.
Also, he expressed fear that because of this reproductive health campaign, which includes free access to contraceptives, an increase in abortion cases will also be noted.
Capalla also condemned the "Ligtas Buntis" program of the City Government that provides pills and other contraceptives, including the mutilation of reproductive organs like vasectomy and tubal ligations.
"These are against life," Capalla said.
Capalla also noted with dismay the fact that the barangays, where the parishes and Gagmay'ng Kristohanong Katilingban (GKK) basic ecclesiastical communities are ministering, now becomes the principal venue of the City Government's promotion of the different birth control methods.
