Surveys can’t decide

Anti-life advocates and lobbyists of Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman’s contraception bill, euphemistically called the Reproductive Health and Population Management Act of 2008 (an oxymoron and a proposed law which makes the state intrude into your bedroom and tells you what to do in your exercise of marital love, and makes a “national policy” in the name of family planning and responsible parenthood contraception), are making a big thing of the Pulse Asia survey that says six out of 10 Filipinos favor the passage of the Lagman bill in the name of free choice.

The survey, however, did not say how many Catholics favored the bill or not.

Santa Banana, when did surveys decide what’s right or what’s wrong? Yes, I agree as the Lagman bill says that people should be given the choice on family planning. After all, God gave us free will for us to decide on what’s right and wrong.

But to make the bill, which espouses contraception as a national policy makes the state the determining factor on what’s right or wrong.

This, to me, is what’s objectionable about the Lagman bill. It seems to assume that we are now a centrally planned economy or a totalitarian state. In other words, the Lagman bill, which ironically enough, is supported by many in Congress and, as surveys show, by six out of 10 Filipinos, leads us to socialism where the state is supreme over individual rights and freedom.

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Should the state control our private lives?

My gulay, I’ll never allow the state to tell me what to write or how to express my opinion in the exercise of press freedom, just as the state can’t tell a politician what to say, think or do in the exercise of free speech and expression.

My gulay, as a Catholic taxpayer, I will not go for a program which makes me fund a proposed law against my faith.

Would Lagman and his cohorts dare do the same thing for followers of Islam, the Protestants and Eddie Villanueva’s Jesus Is Lord Movement?

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The reliance of Lagman and his ilk on surveys to push a law that runs counter to what I believe in as a Catholic is, to me, a desperate attempt to show that right or wrong can now be reduced to what one likes or dislikes.

The truth and my exercise of free will to decide on what’s right or wrong based on my faith as a Catholic is never the results of poll surveys.

There are many provisions of the Lagman bill which violate my freedom of free choice and held sacrosant in the Constitution, like calling contraceptive as “essential medicines,” “mandatory age-appropriate reproductive health education” curriculum for public and private schools, and a mandate for all national and local government hospitals to provide services for tubal ligation, vasectomy, intra-uterine device insertion and the like. My gulay, why should I ask a Catholic taxpayer contribute to something against my will and faith?

It’s unconscionable for the state using taxpayers’ money to provide artificial contraceptive methods that violate the religious belief of the majority of its citizens.

There’s also this provision classifying as “prohibitive acts” the refusal of any health-care provider to perform voluntary ligation and vasectomy and other reproductive health care services, and also providing in all collective bargaining agreement free delivery by the employer of reproductive health services. This mocks the constitutional doctrine on religious freedom.

Santa Banana, the provision penalizing what it calls “malicious disinformation” takes the cake on the infringement of freedom or speech or expression. My gulay, under the Lagman bill I can go to jail just opposing the proposed law! –Emil Jurado, Manila Standard Today