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Monday, August 18, 2003
Time runs out for reproductive health bill
By Linette C. Ramos
With Lorenzo P. Niñal
CEBU -- Deliberations on the Reproductive Health Care Act, or House Bill (HB) 4110, will be delayed further in the House of Representatives because of lack of time, a co-author of the bill said.
As this developed, supporters of the bill assured the Catholic Church that HB 4110 does not legalize abortion.
Although there is nothing in HB 4110 that expressly legalizes abortion, the church questioned the term reproductive health care because this suggests access to artificial birth control methods using “abortifacients.”
In opposing HB 4110, the church is not blocking progress, but is making sure this progress will be enjoyed too by those yet to be born, the official newsletter of the Cebu Archdiocese said.
The church is not ignorant about statistics and scientific findings on population, it just wouldn’t subscribe to the belief that life has to be sacrificed in the name of progress, Sunday’s issue of Bag-ong Lungsoranon said.
“The population control issue is not about population, but about control. Here, the church is clear: there should be no tampering with life, from God’s will, to the mother’s womb, to the grave,” the newsletter’s editorial said in Cebuano.
Reconsider
Deliberations on HB 4110, however, are facing delays, as members of the Lower House may no longer be able to tackle the bill this year, Rep. Nerissa Soon-Ruiz (Cebu, 6th District) said.
Ruiz, co-author of HB 4110, said it can be taken up and approved in the House committee on rules next year and eventually, discussed in the plenary session, but only if a legislator files the bill again.
Ruiz refused to say if she will still co-author or support the bill but confirmed she will reconsider her stand on the matter.
“With the new dimensions I have of the bill as discussed to me by a priest, I am rethinking my stand because there are new things I learned that were not discussed in the public hearings,” she told Sun.Star.
Ruiz refused to comment on Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal’s statements, saying she would rather let the issue “die a natural death because I respect him.”
Cardinal Vidal earlier said he will work against Ruiz and other Cebu congressmen in the coming elections if they vote for the bill’s passage.
Agreement
For his part, Commission on Population (Popcom) Regional Director Nonito Quilang said the church is critical of HB 4110 because it focuses on the original version of the bill.
But HB 4110, he said, has been revised several times and its provisions have been clarified.
“The original version of the bill had statements that were not categorical but these were changed and others were omitted already. The government cannot make abortion a method of family planning and in that aspect, we agree with the church,” he said in a separate interview.
Popcom is among the agencies and groups actively supporting HB 4110.
The bill also mentions the reproductive rights of Filipinos. This means the right to have access to a full range of contraceptive choices, which the church opposes.
Contraceptive choices include pills, implants, injectables, IUD and emergency contraceptive or morning-after pills that the church considers as abortifacients.
Stalled
Despite similar assurances, the church describes the bill as man’s way of trying to have a say in God’s design.
And in tampering with God’s will, some sectors make it their excuse the need to improve the quality of life now, the newsletter lamented.
In Congress, Ruiz said the bill will no longer be passed in the plenary this year since up to this time, it has not yet been approved in the committee on rules.
If it is approved at the committee level in the executive session next month, it can no longer be taken up in the plenary since the legislators will be busy with the budget hearing starting next month until December.
By late January, sessions will no longer be held to allow legislators to prepare for their candidacy in the elections.
“Possibly, it will be read on the floor in the session next year but only if somebody re-files it. And then everything will have to start from the beginning because in Congress, we cannot continue with the bill where we left off in the previous year,” Ruiz added. Sun.Star Cebu
(August 18, 2003 issue)
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