Sunday, September 14, 2008 Repro bills 'not productive'
NOT only will the proposed reproductive health bill promote promiscuity among the youth, it could also result in more abortion and cancer cases, a legislator warned.
Rep. Raul del Mar (Cebu City, north district) said he will continue to oppose the consolidated bills on reproductive health pending before the House of Representatives because the country does not need them.
He said all the services and reproductive health commodities that the bill seeks to provide are already in place and form part of the national health policy.
The consolidated bills on the “Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development” have passed the House committee on health and the committee on rules, and will be sponsored for discussion in the plenary next week.
Del Mar said the bills are unnecessary and only promote the use of artificial birth control methods such as condoms, pills and other devices. He believes this violates the freedom of couples to plan a family according to their religious beliefs.
He expects the signature campaign against the bill to escalate into prayer rallies and mass protests, which would only “create divisiveness and unrest among the people.”
Beliefs
By legislating reproductive health, Congress will only “make a state policy that is violative of the religious belief of the majority of our people,” he said.
“Basically, my objection is that this bill is not necessary. For a very long time we’ve had reproductive health services available to the people. And there’s nothing that we don’t know about responsible parenthood. We already learned this from our parents and in school. We already have an informed choice,” del Mar told Sun.Star Cebu.
Among other provisions that he opposes is for sex education to be given beginning in the fifth grade, and the penalty of imprisonment to be imposed on health workers who knowingly withhold information on reproductive health services and artificial birth control methods to the public.
Risks
“There’s a provision on the orientation of children as early as grade five on safe sex, so you are actually teaching the people how to have sex without getting pregnant. You are just promoting promiscuity; and then there is more likelihood of abortion especially among unmarried couples,” del Mar said.
He cited research by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, which states that oral contraception is carcinogenic, while the intra-uterine device (IUD) cause perforations in the uterus and severe pelvic infection among women.
Birth control pill users also have higher risks of getting breast cancer, said del Mar, quoting the same study.
Del Mar warned that solving poverty will not be achieved by approving the consolidated bills.
“The lack of jobs and livelihood is more of a cause of poverty than overpopulation. You can look around and you will see that there are many childless people who are just as poor as couples with five children,” he added. (LCR)
