RP basically a ‘reorientation’ to RH bill, says Noynoy

President Aquino yesterday said his Responsible Parenthood (RP) bill is basically a “reorientation” of the current debates with respect to the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill that is currently pending at the 15th Congress.

Aquino told reporters that his five-pronged RP policy has “common grounds” with the conservative views of the Catholic Church since it does not target a specific population growth but is more focused on the idea of responsible parenting.

Aquino issued this statement in view of the challenge posed by thousand of RH bill adversaries for the President to make a categorical position on whether he is for or against the said measure. It is, however, understood from the beginning that the RP bill is just a sanitized version of the RH measure.

“There are a lot of common grounds with them (RH bill advocates) but also common grounds with the Catholic Church. We want to have a focus on the idea that bringing children into this world is really a responsibility of the parents who would know best as to their capabilities to nurture all of these children,” Aquino said in a chance interview at the East Avenue Medical Center where he attended the inauguration of the hospital’s upgraded facilities.

“So it’s a reorientation of what the RH debate has been. It’s really refocusing of the fact that we are focused on the quality of life afforded the children and also focus on the idea that responsibility has to be borne out by the parents together with the churches that they belong to and the state,” he added.

Aquino also echoed the position taken by Health Secretary Enrique Ona who claimed last week that an increase in the country’s population does not necessarily harm its chances of achieving a better and sustainable economic growth which is why the RP bill will not set a specific population growth target.

Aquino conveyed that more than the State’s policies, it should be the parents themselves who must decide on the size of their families because it is they who understand their capabilities and limitations when it comes to birthing and raising children.

“It (RP bill) is really an empowering of the parents themselves and even the unborn for that matter that we are striving to achieve. Not the absolute numbers.  We believe that is best left to the discretion and decision of the parents,” Aquino stressed.

Ona last Friday said the common problem of poor Filipino couples is that they were not being given the right information on how to plan their families hence they end up raising more children than they could ever afford which shove them further to poverty.

Among the provisions that was included in the five-pronged RP policy, as told by presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda previously, is the distribution of free contraceptives to poor couples that would go side by side with the government’s information drive about family planning in poverty-stricken communities.

Ona said they are still going to pursue such plans although he said the distribution of these contraceptives is no longer within the purview of his department but it would rather be devolved under the supervision of the local government units this time around.

He added he is still in the process of drafting the RP bill and it is unlikely that such measure can still make it to Aquino’s list of priority bills that he will present in the first Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council meeting on Feb. 28 since the dialogs with the representatives of the CBCP have not yet ended.

Ona was unable to provide an estimated timeframe as to when the details of the RP bill could be ironed out. In his words, he explained: “We still have a continuing dialog with the CBCP. As a matter of fact, we are supposed to meet sometime before the end of the month… We are still waiting for that to next dialog.” –Aytch S. de la Cruz, Daily Tribune