Undue interference

One of the topics reportedly taken up in the last “monumental” one on one meeting between PNoy and US President Obama at the Oval Office was the passage of the RH bill by the Philippine legislature. So its proponents and supporters are once more making a lot of noise about the eventual approval of the bill possibly within this year. On the contrary however, precisely because of such meeting where Obama got Aquino’s assurance to push for the passage of the bill, there is more reason now that the bill should be junked.

Our legislators should know that Obama is the staunchest pro-abortion advocate. In fact one of his first acts upon assumption of office is to issue an executive order overturning previous presidents’ policy that forbade the funding of abortion and abortion groups outside the US. Hence hundreds of millions of dollars were again made available to support abortions in poor countries especially in Asia, Africa and South America. Together with his statement announcing the end of such policy he also announced that he will work with Congress to restore US financial support for the UN Population Fund which supported China’s coercive one-child-per family policy through forced abortions and sterilizations. He also told the International Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF), the No. 1 promoter of abortion in the US that he regards the so called choice as a “fundamental issue” on which he will not yield. In 2002 he voted against the Infant Liability Act in the Illinois legislature that would have given legal protection and medical assistance to babies born from botched abortion. Then in 2007 he also voted against the banning of partial birth abortion in the Senate. Only last January 2009, Obama lifted the restriction barring the US Agency for International Development (USAID) from providing money to any international non-government organization that performs or actively promotes abortion as method of family planning in foreign countries including providing advice, counseling or information regarding abortion.

On the key issue of the integrity of the traditional family, Obama called the Defense of Marriage Act passed by US Congress an abhorrent law and added that the repeal of the Act which he opposed in 1996, is necessary. He said that it should be repealed and will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. He said he will also “oppose any proposal to amend the US Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying”.

Thus in an article on the US “Insight” Magazine giving a summary of Obama actions against life, family and faith during the first 56 days of his presidency, a noted historian Fr. Alphonse de Valk says that “on the most important cultural issue of all, the equality and dignity of all human beings before God, Obama represents the greatest threat today, even more so than the Marxist revolution of 1917 with its attack on the family”.

So the cat is finally out of the bag. It cannot be denied or concealed anymore that the RH bill which PNoy wants Congress to pass at the behest of Obama promotes abortion. Even if its title is changed to “Responsible Parenthood” or its language avoids any linkage to abortion, the bill still contains provisions on women’s freedom of choice, reproductive health, reproductive health services and reproductive health rights appropriating billions of pesos for contraception and artificial methods and devices for family planning. In this regard, the US Supreme Court itself has already admitted that contraception, sterilization and other artificial methods result in abortion, directly or indirectly. In fact, Obama’s own Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in response to a question of New Jersey Congressman Christopher Smith on whether her definition of the phrases “reproductive health”, “reproductive services” and “reproductive services” include abortion, stated that, “We (the current US administration) happen to think that family planning is an important part of women’s health and reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal and rare”.

If PNoy will thus push through with the passage of this bill and the legislators will support him, they will clearly be passing an Act contrary to our Constitution which protects the unborn life in the mother’s womb from the moment of conception. It will likewise expose women who use artificial contraceptive methods and abortifacient pills to liability for violation of the Revised Penal Code which considers abortion as a crime punishable with imprisonment. Hopefully, PNoy and our legislators realize the dire consequences of their moves.

But the more important reason for scrapping the bill now is that Obama’s act of intervening for its passage is clearly an undue intrusion into our sovereignty as a nation. Telling PNoy to work for the passage of the bill is definitely interfering in purely internal affairs of our country which is supposed to be an independent and sovereign nation. Indeed Obama’s undue intervention for the passage of the bill also confirms the existence of hundreds of millions of dollars released by the Obama government to support abortion and abortion groups in this country. There must really be big lobby money being spent for the bill’s passage. Passing the bill under the circumstances clearly looks like shamelessly selling our sovereignty as a nation for “thirty pieces of silver”.

To be sure this blatant disregard of our sovereignty as a nation has been going on for quite some time already. It is common knowledge that various UN and US supported agencies have introduced programs and conducted activities here without any official imprimatur from our policy making bodies. One glaring example here is the introduction of sex education modules now being used by some public schools. Then even before the passage of the RH bill, our DOH has been spending hundreds of millions or even billions in purchasing artificial family planning devices and contraceptive pills and distributing them for free.

Our legislators should therefore reject the RH bill to save face and regain our dignity and sovereignty as a nation. -Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star)

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