Useless bill

As members of the Lower House of Congress continue to deliberate and discuss the proposed RH bill, they should not confine themselves within the legislative chambers and the many pro and con arguments being adduced therein. As representatives of the people, they should continue listening to the many voices still being articulated outside the Batasan Halls which were not heard during the public hearings of the committee that recommended its approval. They should not close their minds and hearts to the ominous warnings of our countrymen about the dire consequences if the bill is passed. Even Malacanang should listen to them.

These people are laymen and not members of the clergy or prelates of the Church although they are remarkably God loving and God fearing. One of them is Willy E. Arcilla (willyarcilla@yahoo.com) who is apparently a businessman introducing himself as president of Business Mentors Inc. In his article entitled “No to Reproductive Health, Yes to Reproductive Wealth”, Mr. Arcilla opened his piece with a statement that “God did not only give the 6th and 9th commandments which deal with sins against the virtues of purity and chastity, but God also provided the 7th and 10th commandments that denounce greed and selfishness. Above all, God’s 5th commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” does not only refer to taking the life of a living human being, but it also covers the willful prevention of the conception of life, and even in causing or tolerating subhuman conditions for the poor and hungry in our society”. The RH bill in effect flouts these commandments as it engenders “the capital sins of GREED, manifested in a contraceptive mentality (“More people leads to more poverty”) and LUST, manifested in a culture of “sex without consequence,” according to Mr. Arcilla.

In answering the question of whether the RH bill will help rather than hurt the country, the writer ask all of us to pause, reflect and “learn from the errors of western countries” (where this bill originated) which are now “saddled by ageing and shrinking population, and closer to home, even from Asian economic tigers that have regretted their aggressive population control policy, which are now scrambling to correct their impending crisis of depopulationJapan and Korea, China and Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore”.

Then he cited no less than US past president Bill Clinton who found himself an unlikely spokesman for the anti-RH bill advocates when he categorically admonished political and business leaders at a recent visit in Manila, ‘You have a large and young population that is a boon’ Indeed, Mr. Arcilla said that “a country’s people can be harnessed to become its strongest asset and greatest wealth  both as a market base and a labor force….as evident in Brazil, Russia, India and China, touted as emerging dynamos not only because of their high growth rates, but their absolute size and strength, in which population is a vital ingredient. Even the 10 member ASEAN’s attractiveness lies not just in being a low cost hub, but also in becoming a potentially lucrative market of over 600 million consumers,” Mr. Arcilla observed.

The same writer contends quite convincingly that “the Philippines is not a poor country. It is a rich country with many poor people. Using Purchasing Power Parity, the country ranked 13th among Asia’s 53 countries with US$320 billion in GDP as early as 2008. However, its GINI Coefficient, the measure of income inequality for economists, is among the highest in Asia at 0.44 indicating a wide chasm between the rich and the poor”. Thus, he proposed “profit sharing in all forms” which “is not just a better option to the RH bill” but the only real solution to accelerating economic growth and eliminating poverty in a sustainable way.

Explaining his proposal, Mr. Arcilla said: “When companies practice profit-sharing, the nation’s 38 million employees will feel more empowered by a real sense of ownership. Workers who are part-owners are more productive. They will drive revenues, cut costs and conserve cash without being told. Such companies will expand further, create more jobs, and collectively help the country achieve economic growth that will be faster, more inclusive and therefore sustainable”.

More compelling is his appeal to the authors and proponents of the bill: “If you cannot be stopped from doing wrong, do not drag others with you by legitimizing immorality in the RH bill. No law prevents the use of artificial contraception, nor is there lack of access to it. Why do we need to enact a law to enforce it and spend billions of taxpayer’s money to implement it?”

To be sure, the bill also has several “good provisions” addressing the rising incidence of infant mortality, maternal deaths and abortions like: the establishment and upgrading of hospitals with adequate and qualified personnel, equipment and supplies for emergency obstetric care (at 4 hospitals for every 500,000 population); the requirement that LGUs, national and local government hospitals and other health units conduct annual maternal death reviews; the requirement to give maximum benefits under the Philhealth programs to all serious and life threatening reproductive health conditions like HIV/AIDS, breast and reproductive tract cancers and obstetric complications; and the Mobile Health Care Service in the form of a van and other means of transportation to coastal and mountainous areas. But all these could be done even without enacting the RH bill that provides contraceptives or sterilization agents. As former Senator Tatad says in his article “The RH bill Revisited”, “They could be made part of the on-going health program, and adequately funded, just as the present DOH-Popcom RH program has been consistently funded over the years, even if it lacks any constitutional leg to stand on. These need not be legislated at all. That they are in the RH bill is probably simply to provide an ornamental function, some window dressing, to make it appear that the bill is not toxic altogether.”

Hence the RH bill is really useless and wasteful and should be dumped by Congress. –Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star)

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E-mail at:jcson@pldtdsl.net