Compelling evidence

Of great significance is the recent statement of US State Secretary Hillary Clinton during the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population Development categorically declaring that the “centerpiece” of the US Foreign policy is “Global Health Initiative.” She said that $63 billion will be spent by the US “to prevent pregnancies and to improve family planning services around the globe for the next six years.” According to the news report, the real purpose of the US in this regard is “population control and eugenics.” In fact the report says that the United Nations Population Fund mainly supported by the US “promotes abortion, forced sterilization and brutal eugenics program throughout the developing world” by keeping “all brown and black women in other countries from having babies” purportedly “to save the planet.”

Such foreign policy statement confirms without doubt that the brain behind the RH bill is the USA. Somehow there is a connection between this “Global Health Initiative” and this bill since both uses “health”, more specifically “reproductive health” to promote dangerous and harmful programs. As a lawyer, my assessment of the bill’s ill effects may not be credible enough to some readers. So let me just cite a more knowledgeable and reliable source coming from the medical profession. She is Dr. Christine E. Gonzales of Wellness Institute. This is what she says:

“The bill includes as its guiding principles “freedom of choice” (Sec. 3.1), “maternal health” (Sec. 3.3), “provision of medically safe, legal, accessible, affordable and effective reproductive health care services and supplies” (Sec. 3.4), and ideal “spacing of children” (Sec. 3.6.1). Portions of the bill outline measures providing emergency services, obstetric care, training of midwives and barangay health workers, and reproductive health education. However, the prime objective of the bill is clearly family planning and contraceptives as key solutions to complications and death during pregnancy and childbirth, illegal abortions, STDs and poverty. Statistics from all over the world prove that this approach actually accomplishes the opposite of what it claims to solve: aggressively promoted condoms continually fail to alleviate the AIDS epidemic in Africa, risky sexual behavior and STDs are rampant in spite of mandatory and comprehensive sex education in the United States, and European governments scramble for solutions to the social and economic issues arising from rapidly declining populations. Our answer to reproductive health problems in the Philippines cannot be for women to poison their bodies with pills and embracing a mindset that only leads to more dysfunction and disease, but instead, to provide families with adequate medical care and educating women on how to nourish and care for themselves and their children.

Although the prevailing ideology touts contraceptives as the solution to global epidemics of STDs, STIs and AIDS, this has been demonstrated in many countries as simply NOT TRUE. In the United States and Europe, contraceptives are readily available on school campuses, organizations like Planned Parenthood, local health departments and clinics, pharmacies and even bars and restaurants… “Morning-after” pills can be found in all first-aid kits at secondary schools in Sweden and France and are distributed free of charge in Great Britain before the Christmas holidays. The RH Bill seeks to employ such easy access to contraceptives to combat reproductive health issues in the Philippines, on the premise that they are effective solutions to unwanted pregnancies and diseases. Yet, the European Men’s Health Forum attests a “growing incidence of STDs throughout Europe,” and STDs have reached epidemic levels in the US especially among teenagers. The Guttmacher Institute published a study in 2003 on the relationship between contraceptives and abortion, which found that abortion rates rose simultaneously with contraceptive use in half the countries studied. These statistics would tell a different story if easy access to contraceptives effectively prevented the spread of diseases and unwanted pregnancies, as contraceptives have been increasingly widespread, promoted and distributed for decades. Furthermore, Dr. Edward Greene from the Harvard School of Public Health reported that the University of California “found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa” and “major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as The Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as a primary intervention.” (Washington Post, March 2009). These findings illustrate the insufficiency and in some cases inefficacy of the standard, contraceptive-based approach when tested in real life situations.

Birth control pills demand even greater attention and scrutiny, as they result in a plethora of serious health problems, chronic disease and cancer. The Journal of Sexual Medicine published a study that showed “women who used the oral contraceptive pill may be exposed to long-term problems… potentially leading to continuing sexual, metabolic, and mental health consequences.” (Medical News Today, 2006) Oral contraceptives are classified by the World Health Organization as Group 1 carcinogens, the most lethal class of cancer-causing substances, and have been linked specifically to “a deadly, treatment-resistant form of breast cancer called ‘triple-negative breast cancer.’” (Daily Herald, 2012) Dr. Rebecca Peck reports that oral contraceptives “increase cardiovascular events such as venous thromboembolism, pulmonary embolism, myocardial infarction, and stroke, increase the risk of the world’s most frequently occurring cancer, namely breast cancer, [and] leads to an increase in Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) infection and an increase in cervical cancer, which is the second most common worldwide cancer.” (Physicians for Life, 2010) Faced with such compelling evidence, we cannot conclude that providing contraceptives to Filipino women will promote health. Sexual, metabolic, mental and chronic diseases and cancer do not serve as suitable alternatives to reproductive health issues or unwanted pregnancies, especially considering the inadequate protectiveness of contraceptives. The RH bill will simply compound the current reproductive health challenges with the immense suffering of cancer and chronic disease.

Hopefully P-Noy and our legislators will finally see and accept all these damning facts about the RH bill and thus junk it once and for all. –Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star)