Reproductive health bill dead in Congress

MANILA, Philippines – With only one session left today, the House of Representatives has shelved the Church-opposed reproductive health bill.

The bill was supposed to be debated in the plenary, the closest it has ever gotten to being passed in its 23-year existence.

“We cannot accommodate that (House Bill 5043) in the last two session days. There are 20 congressmen who have lined up to interpellate (on the measure),” Speaker Prospero Nograles said in a press briefing yesterday.

Nograles said it would be a waste of time to deliberate on measures that the Senate will not pass.

“We will only take up measures that we can pass. Otherwise, we will be tied with debates on bills that we can’t produce anymore,” he said.

Nograles said a liaison officer between the House and the Senate was assigned to determine the bills that both chambers can pass.

“What is more important to us now is teamwork (between senators and members of the House of Representatives),” he said.

Nograles also dismissed proposals for a special session.

“The special session is a judgment call of the President, if she feels that some of her measures are not yet acted upon. But the problem is, can we have a quorum?” he said.

Reproductive health bill author Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman still hopes the bill would be passed in the next administration.

“This is not the end of the road for the RH bill. We still have the 15th Congress (July 2010-June 2013),” Lagman said.

The measure was filed during the 8th Congress (1987-1992), during the Aquino regime, and subsequently re-filed.

“I think even if the bill will not be passed, we have educated the Filipino people to accept the reality that there is a need to practice family planning according to their religious and personal beliefs,” Lagman said.

Citing a recent study done by the University of the Philippines, Lagman said Filipino Catholics support family planning and are open to the use of contraceptives, believing it is not immoral.

He said the Church’s strong opposition to the bill is an “erratic prescription.”

“A majority of Catholics will not abide by the guidelines (of the Catholic Church) because they have long accepted that family planning and even contraceptive use is acceptable and moral,” he said.

“You can be a good Catholic even if you use contraceptives… The overwhelming majority showed that the Filipino public would like to have the bill enacted into law,” he added.

Lagman said that the RH bill is “a quality measure which is definitely not inferior to other pending legislative proposals which have been given priority status.”

He said new tax laws will not prop up the economy if the country’s ballooning population, which is expected to reach 94 million this year, is not addressed. –Delon Porcalla (The Philippine Star)