House scraps P20-million budget to buy condoms, contraceptives

Advocates of the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill in the House of Representatives yesterday suffered a big setback even as the P200-million budget for the purchase of condoms and contraceptives was removed from the budget.

Parañaque Rep. Roilo Golez said that the pro-RH groups suffered a devastating defeat following the decision of the bicameral conference committee to scrap the budget for contraceptives.

“The pro-RH group was defeated in the first encounter on contraceptives and condoms. The House ratified yesterday the bicam report on the budget where theP200-million budget for condoms and contraceptives was removed on the initiative of the pro-Life group in Congress and the ‘noisy’ pro-RH group could not do anything about it,” Golez said yesterday.

Golez said that the removal of the budget for contraceptives shows that the bill does not have the support of a majority of the members of the panel which is composed of members of both Houses of Congress.

“Pro-RH groups in Congress do not have the numbers,” he said.

While pro-RH lawmakers said that nobody can determine where life of the fetus starts, Golez countered with a statement from the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) saying that life begins at fertilization.

“They also lost a big battle when the Philippine Medical Association officially adopted the pro-Life position that ‘life begins at fertilization’ and not implantation,” the Parañaque lawmaker said.

“That means many types of contraceptives and the IUD shall be considered abortifacient,” he said.

Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin, in a hearing conducted by the House committee on population and family relations, said that the start of life differs from one mother to another.

She said that there are mothers who get impregnated but cannot actually proceed to have a full-term pregnancy because it could be fatal for the mother and the baby in the womb.

She also cited the case of a pregnant mother having a blighted ovum or a fertilized egg implanted in the mother’s womb but failed to develop for some reason, or a fetus inside the womb of mother who has heartbeat but also eventually fail to fully develop.

“Determining it (start of life) is complicated. In the case of the blighted ovum, the OB has to ease that out. Otherwise it will be very fatal for the mother,” Garin said.

“God made life so unique so that we cannot just meddle on life. Nobody can actually define the start of life,” she added.

Defining the start of life, Garin said, would also automatically disallow invitro fertilization for that matter.

“God made life so unique so that we cannot just meddle on life. There are lots of things in this world that we cannot explain, and life is one of those things. We are just humans. We are not like God. We cannot pretend to be God that we know the start of life,” Garin stressed.

Garcia, a staunch critic of the RH bill, was unfazed by Garin’s claims.

“Regardless of what would the doctors say, the RH bill should not be passed because its provisions contravene the constitutional provision which states that the state should equally protect the life of the mother and the unborn child from the moment of conception,” Garcia pointed out.

Bacolod City lone District Rep. Anthony Golez Jr. earlier had said that half of the artificial family planning methods in the RH bill could be illegal if the state will decide to adopt the idea that life begins at fertilization, not at implantation.

The oral contraceptive pills, Golez disclosed, has three effects which are preventing ovulation (releasing the unfertilized egg 14 days before women’s monthly menstruation), thickens women’s mucus discharge or secretion and alters uterine lining also through thickening. The second and third effect, Golez said, block the implantation of the fertilized egg in uterus in the process.

“If it really prevents ovulation, why the need for two other effects? This is because the success rate of oral contraceptive pills is only 97 percent,” Golez said in an interview.

Dr. Rodrigo Alenton, president of the Philippine Heart Association in Northwestern Mindanao, said that the passage of RH bill is risky because pills could result in a number of health hazards for mothers such as cancer, heart disease and birth defects on their children as proven by various medical journals and the World Health Organization reports. –Gerry Baldo, Daily Tribune