Friday, September 26, 2008 Dossier: Bill promotes artificial birth control methods By Rep. Raul del Mar
(Interpellation and debate on the Reproductive Health Bill started last Monday at the House of Representatives. Deputy
Speaker Raul V. del Mar first took the floor.)
Allow me to make some preliminary statements before my questions.
Firstly, let me categorically state that I am pro-life, quality life especially, pro-family and pro-choice as well, informed already included in the word choice.
And yes, I am against the subject measure: House Bill No. 5043.
I got to hand it to the principal authors and sponsors for having neatly packaged this measure with a title that will gain the support of practically everybody.
For how can anybody argue against a measure strategically titled “An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development, and for Other Purposes.”
The strategy worked, soliciting the signatures of more than 90 of our colleagues to co-author the measure.
But if the focus of the proposed legislation, as its title suggests, is on “reproductive health,” “responsible parenthood” and “population development,” then the bill is totally unnecessary and deceptive, as these are already in place and pursued under existing programs, both by private and public initiatives.
Not new
Responsible Parenthood--This is certainly not something new.
This is essentially all about parents and children, about having a family and children.
It is our way of life.
All of us grew up in a family, we learned this at home, in school, in community gatherings, even in government seminars and NGO activities.
There is no need to legislate how to be a responsible parent.
On population development programs, we have had them since the ‘70s.
These programs, funded by our government and by international agencies and several donor countries, are very much in place.
Reproductive health care programs are ongoing.
We have family planning methods, health education, maternal and child health and nutrition, family planning services, breastfeeding programs, prevention of breast cancers, treatment of infertility.
It’s a question of giving them more focus.
Informed choice
Principal author Edcel Lagman stated in his sponsorship speech last Wednesday that “verily, the heart and soul of the bill is freedom of informed choice. Neither the state nor the church has the authority to impose its preference or will on the citizens or the faithful.”
But informed choice has long been the practice.
Access to contraceptives is free and unrestricted.
Despite the WHO cancer-research finding that oral contraceptives cause breast, liver and cervical cancer, none of these items have been banned by law.
None of these are even required to be labeled as “cancer-causing” or “hazardous to women’s health.”
Even abortifacients (drugs that induce abortion) are openly sold as plain contraceptives, without any warning whatsoever about their abortion-causing qualities.
Just as no one is prohibited by law from using contraceptives, no one is barred from getting sterilized if they want it.
In fact, health workers are the ones campaigning that men undergo vasectomy and women get ligated.
Neither is anyone restrained from making a fool of themselves and telling the Church to change its position on the subject because they will not stop defying it.
Indeed, the Church continues to teach that contraception and sterilization are intrinsically evil.
But the Church will not strong-arm anyone into following its teachings on reproductive health.
Thus, so many women will freely take contraceptives while imagining themselves to be still “good Catholics.”
This helps to explain the national contraception prevalence rate of 50 percent.
Deceptive
Now if Church law has not prevented “Catholic” women from “contracepting” and no civil statute prevents them from doing the same thing, what is the necessity of the proposed law, assuming such law could be moral and constitutional?
That would be clearly pushing an open door.
That is why the proposed law is deceptive.
So there’s really no problem – couples are absolutely free to choose which method of family planning they wish, natural or artificial.
If they want the natural method, nobody will stop and force them to instead use the artificial method nor can anybody force those who wish to use the artificial method to stop and instead use the natural method.
