Anti-RH forces losing numbers game, bishops warned

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines—A group supporting the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has warned bishops opposing six reproductive health (RH) bills being pushed in Congress that they face imminent defeat, urging them to work and pray to win more lawmakers to their side.

Maria Fenny Tatad, executive director of the Bishops-Legislators Caucus of the Philippines, urged the bishops to “take care of our legislators.”

She expressed alarm over research data showing that many members of the House committee handling the RH bill support the measure.

“Be that as it may, we cannot give up on any of these legislators. We need to pray for them, and talk to them. But we need to talk to them now,” Tatad said in a letter to CBCP members, a copy of which was sent to the Inquirer by Bishop Ramon Villena of Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino.

The Catholic Church in the Philippines, led by the CBCP, has opposed the passage of the RH bills, saying the provisions contained in the measures ran counter to the teachings of the Church because they promoted the open use of artificial methods of contraception.

Tatad said 19 of the 23 regular members of the House committee on population either supported or were believed to support the RH measures.

The committee also has 23 ex-officio members, including Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr., and most of them are “undeniably pro-RH,” according to Tatad. But there is still hope, she said.

“We have seen in the past that no matter how apparently intransigent some legislators were, they eventually softened upon the constant ministering to their sense of the common good by their pastors. It is not lightning or thunder that will crack the hardest rock but the constant flow of harmless and refreshing water,” she said.

“The warm and friendly word of the bishops, so full of affection always, has been that kind of water,” Tatad said.

She said six RH bills were pending in the House, four of them with the same title but separately filed by Minority Leader Edcel Lagman, Representatives Janette Garin, Kaka Bag-ao, Walden Bello and Rodolfo Biazon.

The two other bills were introduced by Representatives Augusto Syjuco and Luzviminda Ilagan and Emerenciana de Jesus.

Tatad said she hoped that the bishops could still reverse the positions of a number of House members, considering that there were 120 first-term lawmakers and “a good number of legislators” who co-authored the RH bills “without much reflection” but based on “the usual pakikisama (cooperation in loose translation).” –Melvin Gascon, Inquirer Northern Luzon