Why the RH bill is controversial

A law is necessary and desirable if its purpose is to promote public welfare and advance the common good. And we can be sure that this is its purpose if it is based on the truth. This is the problem with the RH bill. It is based on grounds that are not true or accurate. Its proponents keep on advancing arguments that are misleading and deceptive.

Once again they are citing high population growth as the reason for enacting the bill into law. This time no less than the Finance Secretary is quoted as having admitted that economic benefits are not trickling down to the poor because “there are just too many people being added to the lower sector of society” so that they “will just have to make do with a smaller size of the economic pie”. This is misleading.

It is true that our population is growing. Population definitely grows in countries inhabited by men and women of reproductive age like the Philippines. The growth may still be comparatively high at this time, but statistics show that the growth rate is already on the decline. In the 60’s and the 70’s the average number of children per family was six (6). Now the average number is only three (3) per family. Hence there is no more need for population control being actually prescribed by the bill. The bill’s proponents fully realize this so they even changed “population control” to the more agreeable phrase “population management” in the bill’s title obviously to increase the chances of its passage.

Besides, if our economy is really managed properly there will be no unequal distribution of the  country’s economic wealth even if there is a growing population. Blaming population growth is just a convenient excuse for failure to properly and effectively manage our economy.

The RH bill is controversial precisely because its proponents and supporters single out our growing population as the main reason why there is unequal distribution of wealth in this country and why we are behind our Asian neighbors in terms of economic growth. They overlook or belittle the effects of the twin problems of rampant graft and corruption in government and the gargantuan amount allocated for our legislators’ pork barrel. These twin problems must be addressed first. If our economy still remains in the same state as it is now after these problems are eliminated or at least minimized, then blaming our growing population for our economic woes may not be as controversial.

But even granting that the Finance Secretary is correct in claiming that our growing population is the main cause of these economic problems, the proposed RH bill should nevertheless be junked. It is true that the bill “repeatedly underscores that abortion is illegal and criminal”. Yet in almost the same breath and under the guise of promoting “reproductive health” it has made available to women, a wide range of artificial contraceptive pills and devices including those that have been medically proven as causing abortion or creating “abortion mentality” because of unwanted pregnancies despite taking these contraceptives. Furthermore, as medically proven, these artificial contraceptives do not actually promote women’s reproductive health or reduce maternal and infant mortality. On the contrary some of them cause cancer and other illnesses to mothers and their children. And what about the deformed babies born of mothers known to have used these contraceptives we see all around?. The bill may be “pro quality of life” as its author claims, but that quality is really bad.

The bill allegedly give couples “informed choice” in planning the size of their family, but it does not require any warning at all that some of the contraceptives made available to them are harmful and/or causes abortion. It thus gives couples the option to end the life of an innocent and defenseless unborn human being in the mothers’ womb.

The bill indeed faces an uphill battle because it is contrary to law, morals, good customs and public policy. These are reasons enough not only for the “influential Catholic Church” but for people in other sectors of society to block its passage. Actually our legislators need not get experts to realize these flaws in the bill. Maybe they will be awakened by this piece written by a 22-year old student in Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan, Maria Lovella P. Naces, which I came across in the internet. She was talking about the baby girl of her sister who got pregnant unexpectedly at an early age, without planning for it. This is what she wrote about the RH bill:

“This is the trouble with the Reproductive Health Bill. Much as I try to understand, I am concerned over how the bill considers conception as a whole. I have read it for my school report and it disturbs me to think that society would be so reluctant to welcome human being who is about to be born. The drive to promote ‘informed choice’, proper birth spacing, etc. in order to avoid unplanned parenthood seems to have making a baby something scary.

The proponents of the bill say that contraception (which is actually contra conception) is the solution to our economic problems. Because the country is over populated, they say, therefore we should have fewer children.

I don’t agree with their solution. Why should people adjust to the economy? Let the economy adjust to the people.

I feel offended. As someone who loves her, I feel hurt for my niece. She is what they consider an ‘unplanned one’. The people promoting the bill look at my niece or all those born or about to be born like her as a burden to the country and a liability. They say we need this bill because it prevents people like her from being born.

Why would anybody prevent anyone as beautiful as a child to come into this world? Regardless of who the parents are or how the conception happened, a child is separate from the parents. Every child is beautiful.

The bill also wants to promote sex education to teach adolescents, mothers and fathers about ‘safe sex’. Safe from what? From conceiving a child? Why? But why give more importance to the pleasure of sex than the pleasure of becoming a parent? We are becoming more like the Westerners. We have forgotten that to Filipinos, a big family is a better family”.

As our National Hero, Jose Rizal says, “the youth is the hope of our motherland”. Let us listen to them and not to the foreign funded NGOs and multi-national pharmaceutical companies aggressively pushing for the passage of the bill to promote their own selfish interest and their own sinister hidden agenda of controlling the population growth of the “inferior race”. –Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star)

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