RH bill not a Senate priority — senator

Deliberations on the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill are still not among the priority agenda of the upper chamber next year, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said yesterday.

Enrile’s virtual declaration as to the “fate” of the said bill perceived to be being backed up by the executive came amid reports that leaders of the Catholic Church and Malacañang have agreed to hold a dialog with regard to their long-standing disputes on the issue of promoting reproductive health.

While emphasizing that the bill is not a priority in the Senate, Enrile said “it is something that we cannot avoid to confront.”

He warned that the matter, seen to be one of the most debatable and the most serious pieces of legislation that would confront both Houses of Congress, will likely divide country politically.

“Even our faith will be involved. The economic interest of the country will be a factor and the security of this nation for the next one 100 years will be on the balance. Mind you, this bill is not really that easy. It is a matter that will affect, will impinge on the faith of each one of us,” he told reporters during the weekly Kapihan sa Senado news forum.

What appears to be another major obstacle for those pushing the measure is the fact that one of the concepts of the bill is the notion that pregnancy is a disease to be cured, which Enrile himself shocked him.

“I was in a seminar or a conference of legislators and religious leader the other day. From what I was informed about in that conference one of the lecturers said, one of the very concepts that is going to be much discussed regarding this bill is the notion that pregnancy is a disease, to be cured. Because the thrust, I understand, of the bill, I’ve really not studied it well is that there’s an implicit assumption that pregnancy is a disease to be cured to be covered with health facilities. Of course you have to minister the birth of a child because that is also a matter of life and death.

“But to have a bill that assumes it is something to be cured, like a disease just like malaria, dysentery, typhoid or what not, I think, will carry a lot of disagreements and a lot of discussions.

“As far as my reading is concerned, it’s not a priority for us here. But we cannot skirt the issue if it will come to us. Or if it is reported out by the proper committee if there’s a bill. I’m not sure whether there’s a bill, a counterpart bill of the House bill filed in the Senate.

“There’s many aspects in this bill. We have to be very, very careful in approaching it because even many of the countries now that adopted a population control policy are now reversing themselves,” said Enrile.

“Many countries have adopted and what has happened is I think at this point (in Singapore is that) they realized that their young population contracted and ageing population has ballooned. So shape of their population, if you imagine, it is like a mushroom,” he added. –Angie M. Rosales, Daily Tribune