A thoughtful response to the RH bill

A wholesale, blanket rejection of any reproductive health bill sends a message of bigotry and insensitivity. It is not a thoughtful response. It is not a Christian response. The fact is that many population and poverty issues must be addressed, and House Bill 5043—and some of its predecessors—is meant to address these issues. There is no reason to suppose that the reproductive health bill was crafted to spite Church doctrine or to oppose Catholic teaching. Paranoid responses to such a proposal are therefore totally uncalled for and are in fact irrational.

Candour makes us admit that the present debate points to what we, in the Catholic Church, have failed to do. We fear, for one thing, that when our youth are given information on reproductive health issues, including the dangers and risks of pregnancy, promiscuity and sexual abandon follow, almost as a matter of course. Let us not blame what we rightly or wrongly fear to be the youth’s irresponsibility on the bill. Let’s ask ourselves where we as Catholic educators may have failed our youth. Let us ask the parents whether or not they have reared their children in fact in Catholic homes. We need a reproductive health bill because Philippine demography—and even more fundamentally, national experience—show us that it is folly to ignore the very real problem of an unsustainable population. The long lines of graduates are the long lines of the unemployed, and there is no sign that these lines are shortening any time soon. The slums that have polluted Manila’s waterways are not at all romantic—no matter that so many religious and priests may romanticize about them. They are places of human misery and squalor, and they are directly related to the problem of unsustainable family sizes.

We cannot demand laws that rest solely on Catholic dogma or Catholic morals. In a secular age, this is impossible. It is unconstitutional. It might feel good for a Catholic when Congress passes a law that prescribes only natural family planning, but how would we feel if Congress were to make it compulsory for all Filipinos to observe the holy month of Ramadan? It is then for Catholic theologians and philosophers to provide argument that will be recognized in a secular forum and that can count as valid even to a non-Church audience, because the legislative audience is definitely broader than the Church. The trouble is that when the spokespersons of the CBCP, for example, oppose artificial means of contraception, they do hardly anything more than repeat the well-worn theological arguments that are convincing only to Catholics but have absolutely no impact on those who do not share our creedal premises.

There is no doubt that the Constitution protects the life of the unborn from the moment of conception. Any direct assault therefore on unborn life in order to stem a burgeoning population would be irreconcilable with the Constitution. If, therefore, it can be proved with sufficient persuasive force, that the Intra-Uterine Device is an abortifacient and not a mere contraceptive, then for the government to propagate its use would raise the question of the consistency of such a practice with State policy and principle.

It is likewise clear from the Constitution that decisions about number of births and the spaces between them are ultimately decisions that only the spouses can make for themselves, taking full cognizance of their moral persuasions and their religious beliefs. In this respect, it is not the express provisions of the bill themselves that are worrisome, but the application of its rather expansive provisions in the hands of zealous health-care providers. When couples, to take a simple example, are immediately told by a health-care worker that NFP is unreliable, that unwanted pregnancies frequently occur in those couples that use it, or even when no one in the Barangay Health Center is capable of providing useful advice on NFP, then clearly, to my mind, the right of the parents to make decisions based on a holistic consideration of their capabilities, their health, their beliefs and convictions has been transgressed by omission.

Equally clear from the Constitution is that the matter of abortion cannot, as in Roe v. Wade, be an issue over women’s rights alone. Our Constitution points to the equal claims of unborn life to protection. In this respect, the Revised Penal Code remains unchanged in regard to abortion: the woman who procures it, the persons who bring it about—including doctors and nurses—render themselves criminally liable.

What worries me about the bill is its use of terms that excite but are many times ill-defined, if ever defined at all. These include words like “women empowerment”, “reproductive health rights”, “quality of life”, etc. The trouble with these terms is that they are typical entries in the thesaurus of a demagogue, but they are hardly helpful to a thoughtful reflection on the issues. Is it for example part of “women empowerment” to allow a woman to seek a slimmer physique by asking for liposuction even when pregnant? And would refusal constitute a dis-empowerment of a woman? How does one determine “quality of life”? Is that to be reckoned by the number of children one has? I always cast a suspicious eye on bills and papers and mottos and slogans that employ the favored terms of demagoguery but refuse to provide operational definitions.

Is it the right of the State to inform the population on the different means of contraception available? I submit without qualification that it is. That is the theory; but the practice is many times discriminatory against NFP. In many government facilities, there will be detailed information about tubal ligation, vasectomy, the blessings of the bill, and one or the other statement on NFP, many times disparaging it as unreliable and faulty. I must emphasize: No Catholic and no Catholic association has the right to require the State to be an agent of the Catholic Church, but we have a right to demand of government that it eschew the ways of deceit and duplicity. To make tons of condoms available and supplies of injectible contraceptives almost limitless with hardly any trained nurse or midwife to orient couples on NFP is a form of deceit.

Once more, however, I must point to our failings—we in the Catholic Church. We have several reputable universities and institutions of learning. Our religious corporations own and operate several health care facilities. But how earnestly is research on NFP done in these institutions, and how consistently is a sustained extension program making its way to the countryside? We condemn artificial means of contraception but can hardly offer a viable alternative to couples who would want to learn from us what method may be morally acceptable that can nevertheless be relied on.

The bias in the reproductive health bill for artificial means of contraception is deplorable. While it would require all public hospitals to make tubal ligation freely available to mothers upon request, there seems to be no identical provision for mothers who would want to be assisted in Natural Family Planning. Also while there is provision for the care of those suffering from post-abortion complications, why don’t I find a provision as express and as solicitous for mothers in danger of losing their pregnancies who would want so much to keep them?

The bill would have contraceptives classified as essential medicines—and therefore among the priority purchases and acquisitions of government hospitals. But are there not more “essential” concerns that cannot be attended to in several government hospitals? Sometimes, even oxygen tanks are in short supply. While the DoH is rabid about anti-rabies campaigns, anyone who has been bitten by a cantankerous animal—or his mother-in-law!—will attest to the difficulty of obtaining anti-rabies vaccines from our public hospitals. Why should we expend our precious and scarce resources on the purchase of contraceptives, when we cannot supply barangays with enough vaccines to protect children from virulent forms of children’s diseases? True these are matters of policy, and we have every reason to say that this is a law that does not seem to get priorities aright, at least in this respect.

The bill endeavours to provide women with recourse against “unwanted pregnancies”. What disturbs me about this concept is the irresponsibility that it may entail. When a couple engages in the conjugal act within a woman’s fertile periods, then it is irresponsible not to want the pregnancy. You cannot want to ride on a plane and consider being airborne unwanted! My fear is that by offering women—and couples—recourse against unwanted pregnancies, we are fostering conjugal irresponsibility. When to engage in the conjugal act should always be a matter of a personal decision motivated by love and adequately informed by one’s awareness of relevant economic, physical, social and familial considerations. More disturbingly, will a pregnancy that follows from a one-night stand be an “unwanted pregnancy”? It is the trivialization of sex by one night-stands that is unwanted, not the pregnancy that follows it, and so the intelligent response is not to prevent the so-called unwanted pregnancy but to address the irresponsible conduct that condones if not encourages one-night stands.

Whatever else might be the portions of the bill I find objectionable, I think that fairness dictates that I also point out its commendable provisions. For one, it commits the State to campaign for abstinence before marriage, which is obviously in conformity with Church teaching. For another, it respects the rights of conscientious objection on the part of health workers.

The task of forming consciences that guide the judgments of persons according to what the Church teaches is a function of all of God’s People. The task of nurturing a culture in which Church teaching is not only welcome but respected and heeded is not the task of the State that is constitutionally bound to be “neutral” in respect to sectarian differences. It is ours.

Let us therefore not blame the reproductive health bill for what we, as Catholics and Catholic leaders, have failed to do! –Ranhilio Callangan Aquino, Manila Standard Today

rannie_aquino@rannieaquino.com