My Personal View on the RH Bill (May 31, 2011)

Before discussing more specifically the RH Bill, I would like to first voice out my opinion on the subject and my stand on it. It is very rare that I have this much opinion on a single bill being passed in the Congress, but there is something about the RH Bill that really struck me and made me support it. I know it is unusual for a teenager and a Catholic like me to support a bill like this that they say “opposes” the morals and teachings of the Church, but I do not think so. So here is my opinion, and I believe that I am not the only one who shares this belief.

When I first heard about the RH Bill, I immediately supported it for I believed it would help alleviate the ever-unsolvable problem of the Philippines, which is poverty. Over the years since overpopulation became a problem of the country, many have tried to create solutions that unfortunately failed or did not take flight. So years and years have passed that instead of it slowly being solved, it just actually gets worse as the day goes by. With the creation of the RH Bill, though it will not totally solve the problem of overpopulation, I believe that it will greatly help in lessening the growing number of Filipinos in the country.

Because of some of the provision in the bill, the Catholic Church is the number one sector in the country that greatly opposes it. According to them, the bill and everything stated within it defies the laws and morals of the Church. Since the vast majority of people living in the Philippines are Catholic, we should not support this kind of bill. So much so that the Church herself even threatened to excommunicate anyone who supports the RH Bill, which I personally think is absurd.

The Catholic Church is really against the RH Bill because they say it is not in line with their teachings. To give an example, they say that this bill will lead to Filipinos to committing abortion. From what I read and understood of the bill, it was never stated there that the methods they suggested can lead to abortion nor did the word abortion ever appear in the bill itself. The way I see it, the bishops representing the Catholic Church have never actually read the bill as a whole because they seem to accuse the bill of things that were clearly not mentioned in part of the bill. Like what I said in my previous post, I am a devout Catholic but the way these bishops are acting against the bill makes me embarrassed for them. Their actions and words make them seem like their desperate for this bill to not be passed and it is making them look foolish. My suggestion to them, read and understand fully first the provisions stated within the RH Bill before they make any comments against it that would make them seem idiotic.