The Stand of the Catholic Church on the RH Bill (June 08, 2011)

When the news broke out about the RH bill being passed in the Philippine senate and congress, one sector was the first to express their outcry against this. The Catholic Church is the biggest and most vocal opponent of the Reproductive Health Bill. The Catholic Church is against a lot of things in the government, but this one may possibly be the biggest issue they are against with. The Philippines being a country dominated by Catholics, the Church’s protest regarding the RH Bill is making headlines all over. In this post, I will try as hard as I can to enumerate and discuss some reasons why the Catholic Church is greatly against the turning of the Reproductive Health Bill into a law.

First of all, the main reason why the Catholic Church is against the RH Bill is because it is anti-life. The Catholic Church even dubbed the RH Bill as an Anti-life Bill. When the RH Bill was first introduced, one of their reasons for its creation is to help control and eventually alleviate the country’s problem of overpopulation. The Catholic Church, however, thinks that this reason is a complete and utter lie. According to them, the government should not use this, overpopulation, as an excuse to cover up for the fact that the reason why our country is actually poor is because of the government’s never ending corruption.

Another reason why the Catholic Church is against this bill is because it is trying to hide the fact that if this were passed into a law, it will attack the Filipinos’ religious beliefs, morals, and family values. When it was presented to the Philippine House of Representatives, it had the description of a health bill and at the same time an antipoverty bill. According to the Church it is neither. This is because the title of the bill has the word health on it. If the bill proposes the use of contraceptives, the Church argues then that it does not promote health in any way. The Church enumerated a number of side effects that will greatly affect a person’s health in a negative way when he or she uses a contraceptive.

The Church is also against the RH Bill because according to them, it promotes pre-marital sex among Filipinos, especially the youth. It is in the Catholic Church’s teachings that sexual intercourse should only be between to people bounded by the sanctity of marriage. If the RH Bill becomes a law, then a lot of Filipinos will go against this particular teaching of the Catholic Church.

There are a lot more other reasons why the Catholic Church is against the RH Bill but it will not fit in a single blog entry. I personally, support the RH Bill and though I agree with some of the points presented by the Church, I still think that some of their reasons are just absurd.  The RH Bill does not necessarily promote abortion but that is the way the Church is presenting it. 

Senators sign the RH Bill (June 07, 2011)

Last June 07, 2010, a group of Philippine Senators signed an approval regarding the Reproductive Health bill about properly informing Filipinos of the use of contraceptives and other methods in family planning. There were twenty senators, with two nonconforming opinions, who signed the said approval.

Among those who signed were Senators Pia Cayetano, Franklin Drilon, Edgardo Angara, Gregorio Honasan, Teofisto Guingonna III, Ferdinand Marcos, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr., Sonny Antonio Trillanes IV, and Serge Osmena, Francis “Chiz” Escudero, Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan, Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Lito Lapid, Vicente “Tito” Sotto III, Joker Arroyo, Ralph Recto, Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, Alan Cayetano, and Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada. The two nonconformists were Senators Tito Sotto and Alan Cayetano, who heads the Senate committees on health and youth. Though they signed the approval, eight of these Senators signed with hesitation. They were Franklin Drilon, Gringo Honasan, Antonio Trillanes, Lito Lapid, Chiz Escudero, Miguel Zubiri, Bong Revilla, and Ralph Recto. Only 12 signatures are needed for the bill to be passed on to the next reading.

For me personally, I am happy with the progress the RH Bill is making. The signing of these twenty senators is a next step for the RH Bill finally becoming a law. There is still quite a long process to go, but at least it is getting there. I really believe that if the RH Bill becomes a law, it will mean a great development for the Philippines. It might not completely resolve the problem of overpopulation in the country, but it will definitely help in slowly alleviating it that it will not totally be a problem for the country.

Even though twenty senators already signed an approval for the RH Bill, I just hope that more people outside the senate, in the government, the private sectors, and the rest of the country, could think the way these senators do and also be in support of the RH Bill. They should see this bill as, for now, the best way to solve or alleviate the problem of overpopulation in our country.

Besides signing the approval, I hope that these senators who I suppose support the RH Bill, should share to everyone their stand on this and why they support it. I think that a lot of Filipinos are undecided on this matter and are just waiting for someone who has a high authority to speak on the subject of the RH Bill because they would want to hear it from someone who has great knowledge on it. If they say their stand, then a lot of Filipinos around the country would probably gain more knowledge on the RH Bill and will be rational on their decision on whether to support it or not. These senators, if they believe that the RH Bill can help alleviate the problem of overpopulation in our country, should help convince more people that the passing of the RH Bill into the law is the right way to go. They are in a better position to convince those undecided Filipinos and if I were them, I would definitely help in making up their minds to support the RH Bill. 

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago and The Reproductive Health Act (June 06, 2011)

Currently in the Philippines, two reproductive health bills are being passed in the congress. One is by Hon. Edcel Lagman, House Bill No. 4244, An Act for Providing a Comprehensive Policy on Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health, and Population and Development, and for Other Purposes. The other is by the infamous Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, which is Senate Bill No. 2378, An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health and Population and Development. These two bills have the same goal and agenda but can be considered completely different from each other. In my opinion, these are bills that are worth passing into law.

Since I have previously discussed one of the proponents and avid supporter of RH Bill, let me talk about yet another proponent and supporter of another RH Bill, Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago. She is probably one of the most famous politicians in the history of the Philippines because of her wit, her conviction, and above all, her take no prisoner attitude in and out of the senate halls. Because of this, she is considered to be the greatest Philippine female senator of her time. With that, I would like to give a little background about her and how she ended up supporting and creating an RH Bill.

Miriam was born in 1945 in Iloilo City to Benjamin, a district trial judge, and Dimpna, who was a dean in college. Benjamin and Dimpna had 7 children together, with Miriam being the eldest. Because of her success as a politician, she helped most of her siblings go through college. Miriam graduated valedictorian both in grade school and high school. She received numerous awards in high school especially with her academics and extra-curricular activities. At a young age, she already proved to be one day imminent in her field. She then studied college at the University of the Philippines Diliman, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws, where she was cum laude. In all her years in UPD, she received a number of awards no female has ever done in that university. Her life after this was so festooned that it will not fit in a single blog entry. For the meantime, I will skip that and jump right into her creation of the RH Bill.

On August 11, 2010, Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago filed a Reproductive Health Act, also known as 15^th Congress-Senate Bill No. 2378. As previously mentioned, it is An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health and Population on Development. For it to be differentiated from the RH Bill, its shorter title is The Reproductive Health Act. This act also differs from the RH Bill for it focuses more on how to control the country’s population and how that will help in our country’s development since it is a known fact that overpopulation is one of the reasons why the Philippines is not fully developing. If given a chance in my future blog entries, I would like to take time to discuss the major similarities and differences of the RH Bill and the RH Act.

Sex Education (June 03, 2011)

Another provision written inside the RH Bill is to add another curriculum to grade 5 to high school students, which is sex education. They want for trained sex education teacher to teach these young people everything about sex. Though it should be taught in an age-appropriate manner that will be easily understood by these young students.

People who are pro RH Bill believe that by starting early to teach young people about the pros and cons of having sexual intercourse can open their eyes to the reality of it all. From their research, there is a growing number of young teenagers having unwanted pregnancies. The root cause of it all is that they are not fully informed of what having sexual intercourse may lead to. They are also uninformed that there are actually contraceptives out there that can prevent them from having unwanted pregnancies despite having sexual intercourse. The older women here in the Philippines are already having a hard time controlling their pregnancies and adding to the country’s overpopulation problem. Then here comes teenage girls adding more to that problem instead of being part of the solution that would help solve the problem of overpopulation in the Philippines.

On a more personal note, I personally know a lot of teenage girls my age who got pregnant this young. I never actually got a chance to talk to them but I believe that the reason they are in a position they are right now is because no one actually really taught them properly the results that may come about when they have sexual intercourse without the use of contraceptives. If they were taught starting at a young age then they would probably not get pregnant this young. I am not saying them having a baby is not a blessing, it is, it is just that having a baby while still in school is hard. Harder because they are still young. If the RH Bill is passed, then a lot of young teenagers all over the country will be properly informed of the pros and cons of having sexual intercourse with and without protection and that could probably prevent them from having unwanted pregnancies.

With what I just said, I am not implying that their parents have not taught them enough. But there are times and situations when whatever our parents taught us can fully help us. There are times when we need more than our parents’ teachings and guidance to help us get through whatever endeavor we are going through. I am guessing that for the parents, having sex education in their children’s schools can also greatly help them in teaching their child or children about sex. It would a child understand and learn more about something if their parents are not the only ones teaching them. Words of wisdom from another adult can help them have more views on something that will eventually help them in the future. With the passing of the RH Bill, the presence of sex education in schools will benefit the students in more ways than they ever anticipated.

The Contraceptives (June 02, 2011)

As we probably know by now, the main goal or aim of the RH Bill is to control the fast rising of population in the Philippines by means of family planning and the use of contraceptives in order to do so. When I first heard about this, the immediate thought that came to my mind was they will have a really hard time in informing the public about contraceptives because not a lot of people in the country, unfortunately, are familiar with these or worse never actually heard of it. They might just shrug off the idea because it is new to them instead of taking time to actually learn about it and how it will help them.

Besides the goal of controlling the population growth in the country, another reason why this bill is pushing for the use of contraceptives is to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as HIV and AIDS. These STDs are not yet very widespread in our country but it is a good idea to actually start preventing the spread of it already to lessen the number of people who will be affected by it. For other people, this may suggest that more people will go into premarital sex and go against the teaching of the Catholic Church. But this kind of situation has been happening for a long time and it is no secret to a lot of Filipinos, so the way I see it, it does not really change anything.

In this blog post, I would like to discuss and describe a couple of contraceptives suggested in the RH Bill. First off are birth control pills. By its basic definition, it is a set of pills needed to be taken at certain day and time. Its intake should always be on schedule for the pills to fully take effect. One slip off the schedule might actually cause unwanted pregnancy. This is probably one of the most popular birth control methods because it is easy to use but it can be quite expensive. Especially since you have to take it multiple times a week.

The second contraceptive is the intrauterine device, or IUD for short. It is an object places in the uterus of the woman to prevent pregnancy. One kind of IUD, the Copper IUD, is the one that prevents the travel of the sperm to an egg to join with them. The Copper IUD is designed to basically to stop any sperm inside the uterus into getting further inside the uterus and avoid joining with an egg that will eventually turn into an embryo, then into a baby.

These are just two contraceptives that are available in the country. There are others out there that can really help in controlling the pregnancy of a woman and avoiding unwanted pregnancies. It may go against a lot of morals in the Filipino culture, but we have to admit that by controlling pregnancies of a woman can greatly help in controlling the growing population of the country.

I Probably Not Have Said It (June 01, 2011)

I know I have already stated my personal view and opinion regarding the topic of RH Bill but I have a little more something to say before we move on. In the previous blog entry, I only mentioned why I am pro-RH Bill. In this entry however, I would like to state why I think more people should support the bill and why it should be passed as a law. From my perspective, a lot of people are either pro or against the RH Bill without actually fully understanding what it is really about. Some of them chose a side because that is what their friends or the people they know chose and some of them are truly siding with the Catholic Church. I hope that Filipinos, like me, would fully read and understand everything written in the RH Bill before they decide whether they are with it or against it.

From what you have probably gathered from my previous blog entry already, I am pro-RH Bill. I believe in the provisions written in it and I believe it will help alleviate overpopulation in the country. The many who are also pro-RH Bill believe in the same thing among others. As for those who are against it, they do not see this for they immediately think that by passing the RH Bill the people will commit abortion. That by using the contraceptives stated in the bill will mean and end to a life. My take on this is why will the use of contraceptive be an end to a life when the life of a child has not even started yet. I mean how can there be an end when there is no beginning to even begin with. This is what I mean when I said some people who are against the RH Bill are making these false accusations without even actually reading and understanding the RH Bill.

As everyone knows, the Catholic Church is the number one group that is against the RH Bill. The things I am about to say should not probably be out there but I felt a need to really say it. The Church is a very patriarchal community, with males obviously leading it. Males fill up all the top positions in this community and females are merely in the background. I know they are avid supporters of equality but where is equality in that? I guess what I am trying to say is by not passing the RH Bill, women do not actually have a choice to either bear a child or not.  No one wants abortion but by not using contraceptives to prevent the conception of a child mean that the woman will have no choice but to actually give birth to a child. From what I see, that is just all kinds of discrimination against women. Back to the Church being patriarchal, they [the male leaders of the church] will never experience child bearing like a woman does and so their decision is very biased and very one-sided. 

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.