The Catholic Position on the RH Bill

Activities for Respect and Care for Life Month (February) 2012

2012-02-02T04:37:00.003+08:00

The poisoned roots of Kinseyan 'sex education' and its implications for the RH bill

2012-02-02T04:32:00.002+08:00

From CBCP for Life:

Comprehensive sex ed based on debunked studies by ‘psychopath’ scientist – media expert

MANILA, Jan. 31, 2012–The concept of comprehensive sex education, which has been carried out in many Western countries and is being proposed as part of the reproductive health (RH) bill — is based on the fraudulent claims of a psychopath scientist who, in turn, based his data on pedophiles and sex offenders in jail, divulged media forensics expert Judith Reisman, Ph.D.

Speaking to a crowd of hundreds at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) Forum Tent in Pasay City Saturday, the Jewish American researcher, 76, held the audience’s attention with slide upon slide of an entire timeline detailing the profound changes in society after the so-called “father of sexology,” American entomologist and zoologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey, released in 1948 and 1953 bogus scientific research studies on human sexuality.

That a pseudoscientific “psychopath” manipulated his findings by basing his data on pedophiles and sex offenders in jail is no longer news, Kinsey’s research having long been discredited. But the repercussions of this are hardly being talked about, particularly how governments and the media, scientific, and academic establishments have actually swallowed Kinsey’s ideas and continue to use them in public policy formulation. It is thus headline material when someone like Reisman would travel all the way to the Philippines to deliver a talk entitled “A History of How Judeo-Christian Nations Now Face Pandemic Sex Disease/Crime.”

Reisman’s talk was essentially about the destruction of lives, of souls, on a massive scale, no thanks to the “unleashing of toxic sexual promiscuity worldwide” via sex education, the mainstreaming of pornography and the relaxing of sexual mores, among other after-effects, the media expert said.

A visiting professor of law at Liberty University School of Law (Virginia, USA) and a Vatican consultant on legal matters, Reisman used her knowledge of law, scientific research, and Catholic Church declarations to trace “how we got to where we are” since Kinsey. There is a war we are hardly aware of, even as it infiltrates our personal lives, from our media consumption, to fashion, sexual norms, and trendy ideas through a rampant but subtle conditioning of the mind. It is a battle between life and death, good and evil, perdition and salvation, an inescapable battle with long tentacles drawing us all in, whether we like it or not, extending to how we craft our laws via proposed legislations inimical to the values that our modern civilization is founded on.

But anti-life legislation such as the ‘Reproductive Health’ bills and the Anti-Discrimination bills are merely an offshoot of the war that has long begun in the classroom, she said, via the kind of ‘sex education’ inspired by Kinsey that schoolchildren receive, specifically the pleasure principle, the belief that being human is all about the pursuit of pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure.

Kinsey’s belief that “children are sexual from birth,” Reisman pointed out, is behind the teaching of sex to children at inappropriate ages, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, just the beginning of a long complex chain of consequences, including pornography through constant media exposure, sexual promiscuity, the rise in sex crimes (rape, child abuse, child prostitution), sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, homosexuality, pedophilia, depopulation campaigns cloaked in ‘reproductive health,’ etc.

She rounded up the usual suspects in the espousal of the Kinsey-inspired lifestyle and outlook, naming the International Planned Parenthood (IPPF), academics with Ph.D’s., certain famous corporate funders, and even the United Nations.

“Baal worship has returned after 1948 in sex science robes,” she described. Understandably, she was aghast the most at the way pedophiles now want to be called “minor-attracted persons,” an otherwise minor note that left many in the audience gasping at the thought.

She called on all men to stand up in the fight against sexual maleducation and rally behind upholding life at all stages.

“It is a man’s office to defend and protect women and children!” she declared.

She especially did not hide her displeasure over the current proposals for the RH bill and the so-called Anti-Discrimination bill in the Philippine legislature. She called on the rest of society to rail against these bills and join the fight in seeking solutions to the problem of the “sexual and cultural contagion” by upholding fidelity and chastity and other traditional values that engender –instead of cheapen — sex and its sacred nature and purpose.

As a way of encouragement after the barrage of throught-provoking data, Reisman happily reported a past achievement in her long career of debunking fraudulent scientific claims: In 1994 she won a libel suit lodged by Playboy magazine against her in Holland, “the word’s (epi)center of pedophilia.”

With solid evidence, she accused the smut publication by saying their pornographic work abused children and had been abusing children since the 1950s.

“If we can win in Holland,” she said, “we can win anywhere.”

The former singer and songwriter has come a long way with this victory and with an advocacy she did not originally set out to pursue. Employed by the US Department of Justice, she only wanted to have an objective look at the Kinsey studies, until she wound up being among the top whistleblowers of our time against truth-benders and the conspiratorial politicking of truth.

At the end of the talk, Reisman roused the audience with exhortations delivered with apostolic zeal.

“Redeem the culture by following God’s commands,” she said. “Lobby against Kinsey’s Sexology field because it is the weakest link” (in our adversary’s counter-arguments)!

The talk was sponsored by the Alliance of Holy Family International. Spiritual director Fr. Edgardo ‘Bing’ Arellano gave some inspirational remarks that called the audience into action, after hearing what they heard. He underscored that “healing is possible” for the sexually addicted by devoting one’s life to God and seeking Christian — and not purely psychological — professionals for help, if needed.

Reisman will be speaking at St. Theresa’s College in Cebu on February 4.

More information about Dr. Judith Reisman can be found at her website. (Resty S. Odon)

Atty. Jose Sison reminds Congressmen why the RH bill should not be passed

2012-02-02T04:25:00.000+08:00

Equally important

By Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star)

January 27, 2012

The time, effort, and attention given, and public money used by both chambers of Congress to prosecute and try the impeachment charges against the Chief Justice of a co-equal branch of government are definitely taking its toll on their main job of legislation. Our Congressmen and Senators should be reminded that this impeachment business is just a special and extraordinary task imposed upon them by the Constitution and that their primary job is still the enactment of laws. Hence they should continue devoting the same kind if not more attention, deliberation and study, as they have been doing before, on pending bills. They should guard against reported moves to fast track some controversial legislation like the RH bill while public attention is focused on this impeachment thing.

Lest our legislators forget therefore it may be timely once more to refresh them on the controversial issues surrounding this bill which they should meticulously look into and prudently resolve always having the common good in mind. Specifically, these are:

First, is the RH bill necessary? The bill is supposedly necessary for the purpose of “managing” our population growth since it continues to increase and now numbers 95 million. Statistics however show that while our population is increasing, the population growth rate is steadily declining. In the ’60s the average number of children per couple was six, with a population growth rate of 3.01 percent. Now the average number of children per couple is only two with a population growth rate of 1.96 percent. Pretty soon our population growth rate will fall to zero level and below. With no more babies being born, the existing population will get older and older and fewer and fewer like what is happening now in Singapore and Japan which are encouraging couples to have more babies in a complete reversal of their previous population control policy. There is therefore no need to control our population so there is no need for the RH bill.

Almost 70 percent to 80 percent of our population is supposedly poor where most families have an average of 8-10 children. So the bill is necessary because it encourages and provides the poor some means and methods to limit the size of their family and thus reduce the mouths to feed into such number as the couple can afford. The bill obviously looks at the poor and not poverty as the problem. It is getting rid of the victims of poverty instead of reducing the incidence of poverty by improving educational and health services, eliminating graft and corruption, developing infrastructures and promoting more equitable distribution of the country’s wealth and resources where the P3 billion budget proposed in the said bill can be put to better use. Indeed, even now, the Department of Health is already implanting some of the health measures proposed in said bill with a budget allocation of almost P1billion that mainly benefits the multi-national pharmaceutical companies supplying drugs, medicines and devices supposedly for reproductive health. So the bill is not really necessary.

Second, is the bill lawful? While the bill expressly says that it is not legalizing abortion, it allocates billions of pesos to guarantee access to a full range of supposedly medically safe, legal, affordable and health care services, methods, supplies and devices including artificial contraceptives such as birth control pills already medically proven to cause abortion because they prevent the implantation of a fertilized ovum or a conceived child into the mother’s womb. Indeed the terms “reproductive health”, “reproductive health rights” and “reproductive services” which are repeatedly used in the bill “include abortion or access to abortion” as confirmed by US State Secretary Hillary Clinton of the Obama administration which is openly advocating abortion in imposing its population control policy over developing countries. So the bill is actually sanctioning a violation of the provisions of the Revised Penal Code (Articles 256 to 259) penalizing various acts of abortion or the killing of an innocent baby in the mother’s womb. It is also contrary to Article II Section 12 of the Constitution mandating the protection of the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.

Third, is the bill good for the health? One of the bill’s purposes is allegedly the promotion of women’s reproductive health to arrest the alarming increase in maternal deaths and infant mortality during childbirths. In achieving this purpose it is treating pregnancy as a disease that should be prevented by giving women the freedom to choose birth control methods including the artificial means like the use of contraceptives. But again it has already been medically proven that most if not all of these artificial contraceptives not only cause abortion but other serious ailments and illnesses on women and children including cancer, cardiovascular and liver diseases. In fact there are several recorded incidents of women using contraceptives who give birth to babies with all sorts of deformities and abnormalities. So the bill is not actually good for the health of women and children.

And fourth, does the bill protect marriage as an inviolable social institution, recognize the sanctity of family life and strengthen family solidarity? Undoubtedly by promoting the use of contraceptives the bill is actually promoting the contraceptive mentality which cheapens sex and leads to marital infidelity because couples may be lured into satisfying their sexual urge with anybody else in the belief that these contraceptives assure them of “safe” sex or sex that does not result in pregnancy. These consequences have already been shown in western countries which allow the use of contraceptives where there are rampant breakdown of marriages and family. Besides, requiring compulsory sex education to children from age 10 intrudes into the parents’ natural and inherent right in their rearing and education. This provision not only violates the sanctity of family life but also leads to many teenage pregnancies as again shown by the happenings in western countries. So the bill actually shakes the very foundation of the family which is marriage and as a result also shakes the foundation of the nation which is the family.

These are some of the basic issues that our legislators should properly consider in tackling the RH bill. And by doing so, they would certainly come to the conclusion that the bill should not be passed.

* * *

E-mail: jcson@pldtdsl.net

Our young population is our natural resource.

2012-01-27T05:00:00.000+08:00

Uneven world
Benjamin G. Defensor
November 06, 2011 01:41

THERE will be seven billion people in the world this year and the usual doomsday scenarios will abound. Mass Media are busy squeezing the last ounce of novelty from the 7th billionth baby and there is bound to be as many 7th million babies as there are countries counting.

In 1999, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Anan had his picture taken Bosnian baby, Adnan Mevic, said to be the Earth’s 6th billionth baby. For all the publicity that the Mevic family had, they continue to struggle in poverty. This time around, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-mon has refrained from naming a symbolic 7th billionth Earthling because of the cruel world the baby will face.

Expect those behind the campaign for the Reproductive Health (RH) bill to ride the doomsday scenario to get their pet piece through the legislative bill. As usual the proponents of the bill will be harping on the growing number of Filipinos, the Philippines is now 12th in the world in terms of population with 95 million people.

The fate of the Mevic family of Bosnia and the stance of the RH bill proponents may have something in common. Both are situations that arise from a strictly material, mathematical and scientific approach to the problem; the prevention of the entry of more people into the world. But let us take a look at the report of Time magazine on the “head count” of the people on Earth.

“The challenges of the expanding human population lie not so much in curbing growth as in addressing inequity around the globe: finding ways to promote sustainability; support aging generations and adapt to migration patterns all while keeping our footprint on the planet in check. ‘Generally speaking, countries do have enough food,’ says Carl Huth, senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. ‘It’s just that many people don’t have access to it because of poverty. That is something to work on in the 14 years between now and 8 billion.”

Several Philippine administrations back, we dramatized the plight of Mang Pandoy, a poor man trying to make his way through life. Despite the media hype he received, Mang Pandoy died a poor man.

And unless we learn to help those of us who have not enough in life, the RH bill or the philosophy behind it is not going to get us anywhere. So far, it is our “excess” population who have gone to greener pastures abroad that have helped keep out national heads above water. Today, their brothers are doing the same thing by manning the call centers of developed countries taking advantage of our young people’s skills and their lower wages. These are the people who escaped” the contraceptive and family planning campaigns of international aid agencies.

Our young population is our natural resource. That is granting poor families allowances if they keep their children in school is way by which the potentials of these human resource may be preserved and made productive.

Is the world over populated?

We consider New York City as one of the better places to live in. It is amply supported by food, transport and other amenities of life. Time says, “Now all together if you packed he world’s population in at New York City’s density, we would fit inside he state of Texas.” And we may assume that the other states surrounding it would be able to provide the needs that the population will need to survive. The world has enough resources to sustain a population of 7 billion. The crux of the problem is that the resources “aren’t always where the people are.”

Whatever may be the reason, generally people living in developed areas have lower fertility rates—their population do grow as fast those living in developing areas of the world. And it is an empirical fact that more developed societies have fertility rates lower than those of developing societies. Helping developing countries develop is the best way to moderate their population growth.

Low fertility rates among developed societies, sometimes referred to as the First World, has spawned an ancilliary problem. These societies are finding difficulty in getting the service labor force to help run their economic system. Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were some of the earliest of these. In Western Europe today, there is an influx of people from the developing areas of Africa. And this is a cause in some major race riots.

These riots can not all be blamed on the “foreign” workers. Some members of the home labor force resent the newcomers because, often they are more hard working and willing to accept lower pay and in some instances even displace home-grown workers.

There appears to be a similarity in the recent riots that have rocked Paris and London.

The Vice Rector of EDSA Shrine versus the RH Bill

2012-01-26T04:22:00.001+08:00

Fr. Gerard Reyes is the Vice-Rector of EDSA Shrine.

Rally against the RH Bill before the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC

2012-01-26T04:04:00.001+08:00

A rally against RH Bill was staged in front of the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC January 23, 2012 before the March for Life. It was apparently organized by members of CFC-FFL.

Inquirer's surprisingly positive editorial on the HSBC report

2012-01-23T19:21:00.000+08:00

(For the background to this editorial see this.)

From today's Philippine Daily Inquirer editorial:

Because it was released in the run-up to Monday’s Chinese Lunar New Year, the HSBC report, “The World in 2050,” has been met with incredulity, with critics attributing it to the geomancy typical of the season. But the report merely confirms, albeit in bolder terms, the rise of the Pacific Century, which has been heralded close to a generation ago. Most of the forecast largest economies and “star performers,” like the Philippines, Peru and Mexico, are in the Pacific Rim.

When he was president (1992-1998), Fidel V. Ramos made “Philippines 2000”—that is, the rise of the country as a dragon economy—his centerpiece. He could at least now take comfort in the fact that his vision has been more or less reaffirmed by the HSBC during, propitiously enough, the Year of the Dragon.

But even if the bank says that Philippine growth would be the most dramatic since it would leapfrog by 27 notches from its current status, Filipinos want more. Why wait for 38 years before the Philippines?

The answer is that all of the nation’s struggles are part of its learning curve. What the Philippines should do is to embrace the present with all its challenges. To be sure, the report does not consider how the communist and Muslim conflicts, both incidentally some 40 years old now, may dampen Philippine growth.

Still, the Philippines holds the biggest promise, according to HSBC, because of its robust population growth. In a rare moment of technocratic candor, HSBC virtually declares that high population is an economic plus, rather than a minus. “The losers are the small populations and aging economies of Europe,” the report says. Emerging economies of Eastern Europe would do well in the next decade “before demographics prove to be a drag.” Japan, predicted to slide down further behind China and India, would see its working population shrink by 37 percent because of demographic winter. Russia may have the world’s largest territory and is set to become the 15th biggest economy in 2050. But it would be just a step ahead of pygmy Philippines and its declining population would shrink its GDP by 31 percent.

The task now is to invest in human resources...

Does the RH bill defy God? An open letter

2012-01-16T21:31:00.000+08:00

This was published on page A-7 of the January 4, 2012 issue of Business Mirror.

Note: the paper "The Right to Life - The Greatest of All Rights" which is referred to at the beginning of this article can be found HERE.

Does the Rh Bill Defy God

(I haven't included this document's comprehensive list of references in this post.)

The right to life, the most basic right of all

2012-01-16T21:05:00.000+08:00

The Right to Life - The Greatest of All Human Rights

What's this "Natural Law" and why is it relevant to the debate over the RH bill?

2012-01-16T20:18:00.003+08:00

Here's the long answer to these questions: Jemy Gatdula's three-part series on the importance of natural law to legislation and to legal considerations regarding contraception in particular.

Returning to natural law
More on natural law
Contraception and natural law

Is the RH bill opposed to free speech and religious freedom? An Evangelical pro-lifer's view

2012-01-16T19:11:00.002+08:00

Coercion and the RH Bill :The State and RH Indoctrination

by Melissa A. Poblete

January 16, 2012

You have probably heard the RH supporters’ claims that the RH bill will give “informed choice” to the public, that it is for “women’s health” and for “obstetric care”. However behind this benign rhetoric is the heavy hand of the State in RH indoctrination. Section 16 is all about mandatory sex education for ALL students (both private or public schools, regardless of religious affiliation) – from grade 5 to 4th year high school. Section 24 ensures a nationwide RH “mass indoctrination” by “a heightened nationwide multi-media campaign to raise the level of public awareness of the protection and promotion of reproductive health and rights including family planning and population and development.” Far from offering the public informed choice, it actually sets up an RH indoctrination platform, where no one is allowed to express disagreement nor speak their opinions on the intent of the bill under pain of imprisonment.

You see, the RH bill is coercive. Why is it coercive? It punishes those who object to its provisions. It punishes those who will teach something different from its provisions.

How can it be coercive? Look at Section 28, “Prohibited Acts”

1. The RH bill punishes local government officials, regardless of their religious beliefs, budgets, and provinces’ health needs, if they do not implement the RH bill in their local government unit.

2. The RH bill punishes health professionals who withhold information on RH services, and it especially targets those who will do so because of religious convictions. If a pro-life, Catholic nurse or obstetrician chooses to only teach natural family planning to a patient, it is her right to do so and no law should force her to recommend artificial contraception.

3. The RH bill punishes health professionals who refuse to give RH services. And the religious objectors are required to refer. Why should someone who is objecting be forced to refer , against his own conscience, by a law?

4. The RH bill punishes anyone who “will engage in malicious disinformation” about the intents and provisions of the bill. The RH bill dissenters who have different opinions than those who crafted the RH bill are the targets here. Obviously, it will not apply to RH supporters and advocates.

Besides, who determines what it the “correct” information and what is “incorrect” (to determine what is“disinformation”)? The RH sponsors, lobbyists, advocates and their resource persons. YET, in the present RH bill debates in Congress and the social media, RH bill advocates, lobbyists, supporters are ALREADY denying RECENT(dated May 2011) unbiased evidence-based scientific information (from the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer , no less) that states that “combined oral contraceptives are group 1 CARCINOGENS” and that “there is SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE on the carcinogenicity of combined oral contraceptives”. If these people who wrote the RH bill and are lobbying for it are denying medical facts NOW, how can they be trusted to determine correct information? Medical science is ever-changing, and new researches reveal causes, effects and correlations that were not known before. In this example, carcinogenicity of combined oral contraceptives is established by new findings. How can a proposed law punish “disinformation”, in the ever-changing field of medical science?

Moreover, RH advocates are also denying basic scientific facts like the beginning of life. From high school we are taught that a new human life begins at fertilization, at the moment of zygote formation. We have RH advocates who call the unborn as “not human” or “not persons” and those who arbitrarily, but absurdly, move the beginning of life from the moment of fertilization to implantation. With these absurd unscientific assertions of RH advocates, how can the RH bill determine what is “incorrect” or what is “disinformation” when they themselves deny plain-as-day scientific facts and findings?

To be truly fair, RH advocates denying scientific facts and downplaying cancer risks from oral contraceptives must also be punished because these are all medical disinformation. But if it is ONLY these RH consultants/advocates who will determine what is “correct”, then ONLY pro-life advocates will be punished. This is highly discriminatory and truly biased.

The RH bill is like a giant indoctrination and coercion machine. It violates the principles of free speech, and the freedom to practice one’s religion. These are just more reasons to say NO to the RH bill.

What Responsible Parenthood should mean

2012-01-16T01:33:00.000+08:00

My two articles for Catholic World Report on the RH Bill

2012-01-14T04:05:00.001+08:00

The Tipping Point. An aggressive campaign to promote contraceptives picks up steam in the Philippines -- published in the November 2011 issue of Catholic World Report

A Two-Child Policy in the Catholic Philippines? That day approaches, as the legislative assault on the country’s moral traditions accelerates. -- published in the May 2009 issue of Catholic World Report

Two articles that touch on the relation between the Philippines' population growth and its economic future

2012-01-14T03:44:00.003+08:00

From Bernardo Villegas' January 12, 2012 column "What to expect in 2012":

I expect at least a 6% growth of GDP for the whole of 2012. Thanks to our not being too export dependent, we are partly insulated from the stagnation that the world economy will experience in 2012. Exports account for a little over 30% of our GDP in contrast with close to 200% in such tiger economies as Singapore and Hong Kong.

These rich countries will see their GDP suffering from either a decline or a significant slowdown. Not the Philippines nor Indonesia, nor China nor India. They can thank their large populations which guarantee a large domestic market for their local businesses. Although I do not accept at face value the prediction by some population commission officials that the Philippine population will reach 97 million by the end of 2012 (it will be closer to 95 million), I welcome the talk of a large population. A large population attracts investors, both domestic and foreign, because of the strong domestic market they see.

Even the lowest-income households (the so-called D and E markets) can offer attractive markets for the savvy business man who knows how to mine the "bottom of the pyramid." Ask Procter and Gamble, Unilever, Jollibee, McDonald's, Alaska Milk Corporation, Lucky Me, Nestle, etc. They are creative enough to design products that can be sold to the poorest of the poor.

***

Just to humor a geomancer I overheard in a New Year's television program, let me agree with his "prediction" that the "water" attached to the Dragon symbolizes a flood of investments and consumption expenditures in the Philippines for 2012. This "flood" is made possible by the significant increase in domestic savings over the last four to five years and the still healthy demographic profile of the country in which the young still outnumber significantly the senior citizens. To the RH Bill proponent, let me repeat: It's the large population, stupid!

What about "inclusive growth"? Will the growth lead to alleviating mass poverty? I am optimistic because I see the efforts of Vice President Binay complementing the excellent work of the economic team in controlling inflation and mobilizing funds for investments with pro-poor projects. I see the Vice President trying to replicate at the national level what he did when he was Mayor of Makati in ensuring that growth in one of the richest cities in the country would trickle down to the poor in terms of quality education in the public schools, health care, housing and welfare for the senior citizens.

It was a very wise move of the President to assign the Vice President to two of the most effective channels to uplift the conditions of the masses: social housing and OFW welfare. Another source of optimism is the work I see being done at the Department of Public Works and Highways whose leadership is addressing the decades-old problem of inadequate rural and agricultural infrastructures.

Next to providing their children with access to quality public education, the greatest service we can give to the poor, who are mostly in the rural areas, is to endow them with the infrastructures they need to make their small farms productive and to bring their produce to the markets cost effectively.

We may not achieve our targets for the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, but we are headed towards the right direction. We are applying emergency measures to alleviate the economic sufferings of the poorest of the poor through the Conditional Cash Transfer program.

But even more important for the medium-term reduction of poverty, we are creating the right environment for both public and private investments in the countryside, the only sustainable way of creating employment opportunities and thereby reducing mass poverty.

The following article has been doing the rounds among Filipino Facebook accounts:

PH could have 16th biggest economy in the world by 2050 - HSBC
12-Jan-12, Joseph Villanueva, InterAksyon.com

MANILA, Philippines - HSBC said the Philippine economy may become the 16th largest in the world by 2050, dwarfing neighbors Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

The British banking giant said the Philippines could even outgrow oil-producing Saudi Arabia - host to the biggest concentration of overseas Filipino workers - or the Netherlands, which is home to a number of multinational companies.

The forecast is contained in a study projecting the size of a hundred economies 40 years hence. HSBC expanded the report from the original 30-country review published in 2011.

HSBC said the Philippine economy would likely expand 15 times from $112 billion today to $1.69 trillion in 2050. The forecast sends the Philippines 27 notches above its current ranking of 47 in the original group of 50 economies reviewed.

“Our ranking is based on an economy’s current level of development and the factors that will determine whether it has the potential to catch up with more developed nations. These fundamentals include current income per capita, rule of law, democracy, education levels and demographic change, allowing us to project forward the gross domestic product (GDP) forward,” HSBC said.

It said the Philippines' likely improvement would owe more to an expanding population than to any improvement in individual wealth.

The Philippines joins a group of 26 countries that are expected to register the fastest growth through 2050 at five percent a year on average.

Countries in this group “share a very low level of development but have made great progress in improving fundamentals. As they open themselves to the technology available elsewhere, they should enjoy many years of ‘copy and paste’ growth ahead,” HSBC said.

Other members of the group are China, India, Egypt, Malaysia, Peru, Bangladesh, Algeria, Ukraine, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Tanzania and Kazakhstan, among others.

A second group of countries whose growth would average from three to five percent includes Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Russia, Indonesia, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and New Zealand.

Cellar-dwellers include developed economies such as the US, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Italy, South Korea, Spain, Autralia, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, South Africa, Austria, Sweden, Belgium, Singapore, Israel, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, Norway, Portugal, Finland, Denmark, Cuba, Qatar, Uruguay, Luxemburg and Slovenia.

Not the kind of foreign aid we need

2012-01-13T15:49:00.002+08:00

From Bobit Avila's January 5, 2012 column entitled "Is the UN sneaking an RH program in Mindanao?"

If you lost family or children due to the flash floods that devastated Cagayan de Oro City, Iligan City and Dumaguete City and are still able to have children, chances are, you will have more children to replace the ones who perished in that flood. I’m writing this because of the thousands that perished in that flood, many of them small children. Of course, we know well enough that making babies is not a priority for the victims as of now.

This is why I was appalled by a report that came from another paper last Monday that the Manila office of the United Nations (UN) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) proposed an allocation of $1.76 million (P77 million) to address the “Reproductive health needs of displaced populations, as well as the monitoring, prevention and containment of possible outbreak of disease.” Say what?

This only proves to you that the UN attached agencies just want to pursue their own abortion agenda even if the Philippines has not yet approved the RH bill. This should trigger the question: can this UN agency pursue its own RH agenda whether the host country allows it or not?

Perhaps a bigger question we ought to ask is, “whether or not this program has the blessings of the Aquino regime.” Knowing how badly P-Noy wants to pass the RH bill, I wouldn’t be surprised if what Ocha is doing in Mindanao has the President’s imprimatur. Could this be the President’s way of shortcutting the Legislative process?

Perhaps the UN Ocha does not realize (but I think they know this too well) that the priority of the displaced people now living in evacuation centers is not to have sex with their partners and make babies... rather their priority is to put a roof on their heads. We already heard on TV many victims being interviewed that most of their basic needs have already been addressed by the tons of donations given by the Filipino people. Most complain about not having a house to return to. Many are asking if they can find work. The priorities of the calamity victims are very clear to us and we should help them get back on their feet as soon as possible.

But obviously the Manila office of Ocha has a hidden agenda when it launched the “Philippines (Mindanao) Humanitarian Action Plan 2012” purportedly to raise $28 million (P1.26 billion) to help the hundreds of thousands of victims of Sendong... supposedly to give them drinking water, food and an emergency shelter. But in truth, they are mere smokescreen for their real objective, and that is to distribute reproductive health kits and cull the population in Northern Mindanao.

I dare say that the UN Ocha office should back down with their sinister plans. They should use that money to help the victims get back on their feet. At this point, we ought to ask Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile (JPE) to conduct a Senate investigation as to whether or not this UN agency is implementing an RH program even if the Philippines has not yet approved the law on RH. What does the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) say about sneaking this RH program into the country?

Looking back at the struggle for life and against the RH bill in 2011

2012-01-07T19:31:00.001+08:00

I recommend the following articles:

Filipinos Close 2011 with Huge Pro-Life Caravan and Legislative Victories -- by Dr. Ligaya Acosta

Year-ender report. The crusade for a culture of life. Part 1. Part 2. -- CBCP for Life

Christmas Greetings

2011-12-25T22:22:00.009+08:00

A Blessed and Merry CHRISTmas to all of our readers!

Former Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban: the RH bill erodes the right to life

2011-12-20T11:34:00.002+08:00

From an article written by former Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban in honor of the enthronement of Msgr. Luis Antonio Tagle as Archbishop of Manila (emphases mine):

So, he (Tagle -- CAP) exclaimed, “…when we pray, we are transformed, we see differently. A child, especially the unborn, is no longer seen as a burden but a gift, the youth are not a problem but a promise, women are not objects but persons, laborers are not machines but partners, the poor, the differently abled are not nuisance but our jewels, and creation is not an object of manipulation but a sign of God’s sustaining love.”

Clarity of mission. How well indeed he articulates the theology of faith, life, marriage and social reforms; so simply worded, but so deeply meant; so humbly said, but so loftily aimed; so directed at old problems but so transforming with new solutions. I do not think he will be a fire and brimstone orator; he is more effective with his soft eloquence; he speaks from the heart.

I think he will be firm on social issues, like the right to life that is being eroded by the Reproductive Health bill; or the sanctity of marriage that is being vilified by a creeping divorce mentality.

A prolife nurse refutes a pro-RH nurse

2011-12-20T02:11:00.001+08:00

A Response To RN For RH Bill

Isahel N. Alfonso

A friend of mine a fellow nurse and a Pro-life pointed out to me the website entitled Filipino Nurses in which it has become a bastion and safe haven for Nurses who are in favor of the so called RH Bill. I am now writing not only as a Catholic apologist but also as a health professional. I am invoking my authority as a licensed nurse and an educator to correct the erring opinion of nurses who choose to betray their oath and support the RH Bill. It is my obligation both as a Catholic apologist and as a nurse to oppose error and to expose it because failure to do so would imply that we are tolerating erring opinions. As what St. Pope Felix III said,

Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend the truth is to suppress it; and indeed to neglect to confound evil men, when we can do it, is no less a sin than encourage them.

Continue reading HERE

The latest parody on "Downfall": Hitler's mad that the RH Bill won't be passed this year!

2011-12-19T15:54:00.001+08:00

Wikipedia notes regarding Der Untergang (Downfall) that One scene in the film, in which Hitler launches into a furious tirade upon finally realizing that the war is truly lost, has become a staple of internet videos. In these videos, the original audio of Ganz's voice is retained, but new subtitles are added so that he now seems to be reacting instead to some setback in present-day politics, sports, popular culture, or everyday life. Other scenes from various portions of the film have been parodied in the same manner, notably the scenes where Hitler orders Otto Günsche to find Gruppenfuhrer Hermann Fegelein, and where Hitler discusses a counterattack against advancing Soviet forces with his generals. By 2010, there were thousands of such parodies, including many in which a self-aware Hitler is incensed that people keep making Downfall parodies.

A group of young pro-lifers recently made the latest of these parodies. Enjoy!

For those who think that the claims made in this video are exaggerated, please read the following:

Fact References:

1. 350 pesos per hakot -- see Inquirer article: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/103857/no-delay-but-rh-bill-won%E2%80%99t-be-pas... -- The group scheduled the "peak" of its pro-RH rally for September and set aside P1,750,000 to organize a rally of "at least 5,000 people." Each participant was supposed to receive P350.

2. More Pro-life People than Anti-Life -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_Health_Bill#Rallies

3. RH Bill can be defeated at Senate: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/109363/hasty-vote-will-kill-rh-bill%E2%80%94enrile

4. Million of dollars of funding -- http://cbcpforlife.com/?p=5141

5. Pro-RH Groups back abortion -- http://cbcpforlife.com/?p=3477

6. Cabral admitted that pills cause breast cancer - http://opinion.inquirer.net/5067/chant-the-rh-mantras

7. TV Debates won by Pro-life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_Health_Bill#Opinion_polls_and_TV_debates

8. Pro RH stats are wrong (maternal death, abortion) -http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/49029/studies-show-maternal-deaths-in-philippines-in-decline / http://cbcpforlife.com/?p=3512

9. Non-existent lobby groups (not registered or revoked) getting massive funding -- http://cbcpforlife.com/?p=5178

10. Pro-Life Victory of 2011 - http://www.sunstar.com.ph/manila/local-news/2011/12/11/anti-rh-groups-declare-victory-over-lobby-money-195246

11. Population Control connection with Hitler- http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleid=399988 / http://newworldorderuniversity.com/?p=3930

Why the hurry to pass the RH Bill?

2011-12-14T00:42:00.000+08:00

From Bobit Avila's latest column entitled Foreign agents funding the RH bill? Hmmmm (December 13, 2011)

A very impatient Pres. Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III has tasked House Speaker Feliciano “Sonny” Belmonte Jr. to push harder for the passage of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill, but the House Speaker pointed out that there are still a lot of people who want to interpellate this in the plenary hall.

Now why is the President so much in a hurry to push the RH bill? Is he under some kind of outside pressure? If so, who is pressuring him? Surely, it is not the Americans pressuring him because last week I met with US Ambassador Harry Thomas at the Cebu Country Club and he told me in no uncertain terms, “The United States does not have a policy regarding the RH bill in the Philippines.” With that statement, then there must be others who are pressuring the President to speed up the passage of this bill.

P-Noy should also show some kind of respect to House Speaker Belmonte; after all, he is also the head of a co-equal branch of the government, which should not be subservient with the Executive Branch. Having said that, I can understand why Speaker Belmonte told the President that there are still many Congressmen who have questions in their minds to ask especially who are the foreign backers of the RH bill?

Does the President even know that there is a law dubbed Batas Pambansa Bilang 39, An Act Regulating the Activities and Requiring the Registration of Foreign Agents in the Philippines” or the Foreign Agents Act of 1979? Why am I mentioning this? Well, I gathered that there’s a group called the Forum for Family Planning Development who I heard was trying to recruit prominent or celebrity Catholics to back the RH bill.

Just a week ago, I saw a vehicle with a loudspeaker going around the streets of Cebu espousing the need for an RH bill. Where did this people get the funding for this? Come on guys, we were not born yesterday, someone is paying the tab for this and it surely isn’t the Catholic Church! So could they very well be funded by those so-called “foreign agents?”

In section 3 of BP No. 39, a “foreign agent” refers to any person who acts or agrees to act as political consultant, public relations counsel, publicity agent, information representative, or as agent, servant, representative, or attorney for a foreign principal or for any domestic organization subsidized directly or indirectly in whole or in part by a foreign principal. The term “foreign agent” shall not include a duly accredited diplomatic or consular officer of a foreign country or officials of the United Nations and its agencies and of other international organizations recognized by the Republic of the Philippines. Ask where is the headquarters of the Forum for Family Planning Development and you will know if they are foreign agents or not.

So now that we are clear on this, we should allow our Congressmen and Women to interpellate in the plenary session as to who are the principal backers of the RH bill and why there’s so much money being poured into this controversy and this country, Gads, even ABS-CBN came up with its own RH promo. So now let’s ask them who paid the bill for that promo?

There’s also a group called the Wallace Global Fund or the Catholics For Choice that gave $75,000 in the year 2009 for a pilot program dubbed “Translating Research into Action” in support of the advocacy for Reproductive Health Rights in the Philippines. Is this group registered under BP No. 39 or the Foreign Agents Act? There are many other such organizations that have apparently targeted the Philippines for funding in support of the RH bill and I shudder to think that some members of the House of Representatives could have gotten a piece of this fund, which is why they are so rabidly promoting the passage of the RH bill.

(UPDATED) IMPORTANT, HOT OFF THE PRESS! Congressman Pablo Garcia claims existence of massive lobby fund for the RH Bill

2011-12-12T11:59:00.000+08:00

(The original post was published on December 5, 2011)

UPDATE AS OF DECEMBER 10, 2011:

Rep. Garcia says he can prove US lobby claims
Cebu Daily News
Friday, December 9th, 2011

AFTER claiming that some United States firms are lobbying for the passage of the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill in Congress, Rep. Pablo Garcia (Cebu 2nd district) said he could prove his claims.
He cited the National Security Study Memorandum-200 as his basis.

Garcia said that under that study, it was the interest- strategic and economic factors that the population growth of certain countries in the world was controlled.

It included the Philippines as one of the 13 countries with which their population growth must be controlled.
Garcia said that this was a top-secret document but was declassified in 1989 and published in 1990.

“Aid or any assistance to these countries are subject to a condition that they will institute some population control measures,” he said.

He also named Nigeria, Brazil, India and Bangladesh included in the 13 countries.

Garcia noted that these 13 countries belonged to the less developed ones.

He named USAID (United States Agency for International Development), World Bank and United Nations Population Fund Activities as some of the firms who have been implementing these measures.

“I have the records. I was waiting for them to ask me questions,” he said.

“I preferred to have their questions because actually there are countries and foreign institutions interested in the population control of other countries,” he added.

Garcia earlier accused his colleagues of being bankrolled by a US lobby and cited the P20-million lobby fund for the passage of the RH bill.

He named Minority Leader Edcel Lagman’s committee on population and development as the main vehicle of the US lobby.

Lagman, however, said that Garcia’s allegation was an old yarn and that it was an allegation with no proof. Correspondent Carmel Loise Matus

**************

From today's Philippine Daily Inquirer:

US bankrolling RH bill with up to P50M, says lawmaker

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Monday, December 5th, 2011

The oldest lawmaker in Congress has accused his colleagues of being bankrolled by a huge United States lobby in pushing for the adoption of a population control measure in Congress.

The privilege speech of Cebu Representative Pablo Garcia, 86, in which he claimed the existence of a P20 million to P50 million lobby fund for the passage of the reproductive health (RH) bill had prompted one of its proponents, Bayan Muna party-list Representative Teodoro Casiño, to ask whether the US government was indeed meddling in Philippine affairs.

“I think Congressman Garcia’s accusations are too serious to be ignored and we should look at this closely,” said Casiño in a phone interview.

Garcia said the US lobby’s main vehicle in Congress was the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development led by Minority Leader Edcel Lagman.

“This committee is funded and maintained by foreign agencies and institutions in the service of a foreign power. This committee receives P20 million to P50 million a year from its foreign benefactors such as Usaid, Ford Foundation, Packard Foundation, United Nations Fund on Population and other institutions engaged in world population control.

“For several years and until 2009, this committee held office in the Batasan complex, whether in the north wing or south wing. Now it is holding office somewhere else after its presence in the Batasan complex was denounced by a member of the House on the floor,” said Garcia.

Garcia described the panel as the “unelected de facto committee on population.”

Some of the efforts of the US lobby to rush passage of the RH bill, he said, included referring the measure to the House committee on population and family relations instead of the committee on health (Garcia said the bill was not primarily about population); letting Lagman instead of the committee chairman, Biliran Representative Rogelio Espina sponsor the bill, and allowing the sponsors to take first crack at the floor debates on the bill.

Lagman did not return the Inquirer’s calls or text messages.

In his privilege speech last week, Garcia said he wanted to speak out against the “conduct of some of our colleagues that in my judgment raises questions of potential conflict of interest or the possible transgression of the boundaries of appropriate ethical conduct.”

Garcia said the United States was working to “seduce, manipulate or coerce” the state into passing the RH bill, or House Bill No. 4244, so that not even leftist and hyper-nationalist groups know that they had aligned themselves to the interest of a foreign power.

Garcia said the Philippines was only one of 13 countries that the US had targeted for “aggressive and coercive population control” using millions of dollars “ostensibly as benevolent funding assistance but actually in pursuit of its own global population-control strategy.”

Pro-Life Caravan Convergence in Lipa and National Marian Rally on December 11 at Luneta

2011-12-09T23:59:00.000+08:00

This article will stay on top of the blog until the end of December 11, 2011. Newer posts below -- CAP

From the CBCP for Life article, Nationwide Caravan for Life to culminate in Dec. 11 Luneta rally (emphases mine):

The nationwide pilgrimage and caravan will culminate in Manila on Sunday, December 11, in what is expected to be a grand prayer rally with thousands – faith-based and civic groups, the youth, family and life advocates, laity and clergy – participating and uniting in prayer.

“This is meant to ask for God’s mercy to spare the Philippines from the onslaught of the culture of d.e.a.t.h. (which stands for divorce, euthanasia, abortion, total population control, and homosexuality), particularly the reproductive health bill,” Acosta said.

“At the same time, the caravan aims to bring a strong message to the whole country – especially our legislators, that we say no to the culture of death, and rally the Filipino people to unite with the Catholic Church in actively opposing the reproductive health bill and other death bills, now threatening to pass in the Congress of the Philippines,” she explained.

The reproductive health (RH) bill has been the subject of public debates, both in and out of the halls of Congress, with House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte expressing his desire to put the measure to a vote before the end of the year.

Over a dozen more solons are on the list of those scheduled to interpellate the bill’s sponsors at the House of Representatives. At the Senate, on the other hand, debates continue, with the most recent session zeroing in on documentation that revealed massive funding of RH lobby groups by foreign agencies, including pro-abortion and population control groups.

Acosta pointed out that the pilgrimage and Sunday’s prayer rally are meant to draw attention to another legislative measure that stands to ruin the fabric of Philippine society.

“This pilgrimage also comes providentially at a time when same-sex union is on the verge of legalization, with the approval on third reading on November 21 by the Senate, through Senate Bill 2814, titled “An Act Prohibiting Discrimination, Profiling, Violence and All Forms of Intolerance Against Persons Based on Ethnicity, Race, Religion or Belief, Sex, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Language, Disability, or Other Status,” which provides on Section 7 among others that “All persons shall have equal rights in matters related to marriage, adoption……” the HLI official said.

“The same bill’s house version, House Bill No. 4807, has also been passed on third reading, and both houses will have a bicameral session on December 13! Thus, people of God need to unite and storm the heavens with prayers.”

Ongoing pilgrimage

The lead vehicle of the Caravan will carry a 7-foot statue of Our Lady Mary Mediatrix of All Grace, as well as a big image of the Divine Mercy, “to hopefully bless the whole country as the caravan travels through the different provinces and cities,” Acosta said.

Following the images are vehicles of the different contingents from the participating dioceses, parishes, lay groups and individuals, who pray the rosary, the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, and Prayer of Reparation during the travel.

After passing through identified convergence points in Mindanao and the Visayas such as Butuan, Surigao, Tacloban, Catbalogan, Calbayog City, and Matnog in Sorsogon, the Caravan will move to Lipa City on Saturday, December 10 for another day of intense prayers and reflections at the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church.

Participants from Northern and Central Luzon, as well as from Central Visayas, are requested to converge in Lipa City on this day as Lipa is the main convergence point for participants from these regions.

Among the day’s activities at the church will be a talk by Acosta at 10:45 a.m.- 12:00 noon.

The Caravan will leave Lipa City at 8:30 a.m. on December 11 and proceed to the Quirino Grandstand, Manila, for the culmination of the week-long pilgrimage.

Manila details

Participants who wish to enjoy the decorated floats that are part of the Caravan are advised to be at the Quirino Grandstand at 1:00 p.m. for the parade and judging of these floats. Program featuring pro-life speakers including legislators will start at 4:30, followed by a concelebrated Mass at 6:00 with Bishop Teodoro Bacani as main celebrant.

For more information about the “National Marian Pilgrimage for Life: No to RH bill, no to same-sex union,” please contact Lorna at the Pro-Life Office at tel. nos. 733-7027 or 734-9425 or mobile no. 09192337783. You may tune in to Radio Veritas for updates on the ongoing pilgrimage. (CBCP for Life)

The line-up of activities for the National Marian Rally that has been received by this blog is as follows:

PROGRAM

1:00 PM - Arrival of Delegates/ Floats of Mama Mary
3:00 PM - Divine Mercy Chaplet
Rosary
3:20 PM - Bible Enthronement
3:25 PM - Joyful Songs

4:00 PM - Speeches
Speakers:
• Senator Vicente “ Tito” Sotto III
• Sis. Francisca Regancia (Soldiers of Christ)
• Sis. Lydia Salazar (Soldiers of Christ)
• Cong. Dax Cua (Lone District, Quirino)
• Cong. Michael Velarde (Buhay Party List)
• Cong. Amado Bagatsing (Manila, 5th District)
• Cong. Bingbong Crisologo (Quezon City, 1st District)
• Cong. Mitos Magsaysay (Zambales, 1st District)

6:00 PM - Celebration of the Holy Eucharist

Soldiers of Christ
7:30 PM - Sharing of Testimony
9:00 PM - God’s Healing Message by
Bro. Ting Arcadio

Cebu Daily News comes out swinging versus the RH Bill

2011-12-09T23:58:00.000+08:00

A real surprise, given its affiliation with the Philippine Daily Inquirer, which tends to support the RH bill.

Editorial
Arguing for life
Cebu Daily News
8:31 am | Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Debate on the Reproductive Health bill continues to rage in Congress.

Rep. Pablo Garcia of Cebu’s 2nd district dropped a bombshell earlier this week, charging that the non-government organization that includes members of the Lower House called the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development receives funds from foreign organizations based in the United States who deliberately want to put the number of Filipinos under control.

Let us for a moment leave Garcia to spar with staunch RH bill advocate Edcel Lagman and visit related realities on the ground.

Like that other bombshell, celebrity DJ Mo Twister’s allegation that his ex-girlfriend actress Rhian Ramos, under pressure to stay relevant—read: single—in the domestic entertainment industry, had an abortion, and that he was father of the unborn child.

Or the fact that an Internet search of key words “Cebu,” “fetus,” “found” and “2011” will return links to a long series of news items about aborted fetuses found in Cebu this year.

Last Nov. 25, a fetus was found in a vacant lot behind the Cebu International Convention Center in Mandaue City.

Last Oct. 11, a fetus was almost put through a shredder in the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill in Cebu City.

Last September, one fetus each was found in barangay Apas and barangay Sambag II, Cebu City. Twin fetuses were found floating in the Butuanon River last August.

The world celebrates Human Rights Day on December 10. The United Nations states that “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” (Article III, Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Our country’s Bill of Rights states that the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from the moment of conception.

This makes us wonder why so much energy is being spent on the Reproductive Health bill, several times resurrected in Congress, while nearly nothing has been said about Senate Bill No. 2635 or the Protection of the Unborn Child Act of 2011 that Sen. Ramon Revilla Jr. authored.

There’s to much fudging among those who say that the Reproductive Health bill will promote the well-being of women. (Any doctor will acknowledge that chemical contraceptives increase a woman’s risk of contracting cancer, intra-uterine devices tear wombs and that condoms don’t remove the risk of the spread of sexually transmitted infections; and there are “contraceptives that actually induce abortions.)

The Protection of the Unborn Child Act of 2011 is a direct way to stem the rising tide of abortions and consequently reproductively compromised women (which RH bill advocates point to as justifications for passing that bill).

Come to think of it, we rarely hear or read reports about the arrest of abortionists. Could this be because among the abortionists are doctors and compliant pharmacists who lead women to use abortion-inducing drugs or abortive procedures?

"The bill was not written by Filipinos for Filipinos, but by international population control groups in secret"

2011-12-09T23:11:00.002+08:00

From LifeNews:

RH Bill a Threat to Life and Family in the Philippines

by Fr. Peter West

People of good will throughout the world should be aware of a great threat to the children and families of the Philippines. Filipinos are overwhelmingly Catholic (81%) and pro-life. Because of this fact, and because they are still having children, they have become a target of international population control organizations and pro-abortion groups. According to the UNFPA, outside organizations based in the United States and Europe have spent $962 million dollars to promote population control in the Philippines from 1991 to 2010.

Since 1998, Filipinos have been fighting the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill, which mandates, among other things, comprehensive sex education, government funded contraceptives and aboritfacients and forced participation for doctors regardless of conscientious objection. The bill also labels contraceptives as “essential medicines.” With limitless funds aiding in its promotion, an increasing number of individuals and groups have fallen into the trap of thinking that the RH Bill is necessary for economic development. Many of them have also been convinced by the propaganda that paints the Catholic Church as the enemy of progress. With the unyielding support of the “Catholic” current president of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino, there is great danger that the bill could pass soon. So far, the Filipino people are holding strong. HLI has been part of a successful effort to educate the public about the dangers of this bill, including the production of a documentary that is being distributed throughout the Philippines, including to all of the Filipino Bishops.

It is crucial to note that neither the enormous amount of money nor the language in the RH Bill comes from the Philippines. The bill was not written by Filipinos for Filipinos, but by international population control groups in secret. For a poor country, offers of enormous amounts of money are difficult to refuse unless people are well-grounded morally, and aware of the devastating effects that contraception and other anti-life practices can have on a country. For the time being, the RH Bill is not written to legalize abortion, which is still highly restricted in the Philippines; but it is widely understood that legalized abortion will follow soon after the RH Bill is passed – if it is passed. Fr. Paul Marx, OSB, founder of HLI, often said that in all his travels he had not seen one country where the widespread use of contraception did not quickly lead to widespread abortion.

Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, the principal author of the bill, has claimed that opposing the RH Bill is tantamount to opposing religious freedom. However, contraceptives are legal and widely available in the Philippines, despite their harmful effects. The Church’s opposition to the RH Bill is based on natural law which is accessible to reason, no matter what faith one holds.

Rather, it is the RH Bill which is a threat to religious liberty. It forces medical professionals and businesses to promote and perform a full range of “reproductive health services,” against their consciences. It also mandates immoral Planned Parenthood-style sex education courses starting in the fifth grade, establishes population officers to pressure poor women to have fewer children and requires couples to undergo RH training with certification before they can obtain marriage license. Perhaps most onerously, the bill threatens imprisonment and fines for anyone who spreads “malicious disinformation” (a term that is ambiguous at best), and thus threatens to muzzle free speech and the freedom of choice that RH promoters claim to support.

While the bill does not make abortion legal, the phrase a “full range of reproductive health services” is found throughout the bill, which is understood internationally as services including abortion. For example, during a 2010 visit to Canada, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health, and reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortions.” The elites have made a temporary concession to staunchly pro-life Filipinos by not pushing for abortion to be included in the bill, but the history of other countries show that they will be back to press for repeal of laws which ban abortion and protect unborn children. Once a contraceptive mentality has taken hold, it is always easier to promote abortion.

The bill is officially entitled “The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act of 2011.” Despite its title, the bill does not promote responsible parenthood. The experience of many other countries shows that widespread contraceptive use leads to rampant promiscuity, higher teen pregnancy rates, more STDs and more abortion. Contraceptives provide a false sense of security that erodes natural moral inclinations to restrict sexual activity to situations where people are open to children.

Further, contrary to one of the most common taglines used to promote the RH Bill, it is not “pro-woman.” Overwhelming evidence show the link between hormonal contraceptives and various cancers. Manufacturers even concede that it can cause potentially fatal blood clots and strokes.

Economic problems in the Philippines are not caused by over-population, but by high levels of poverty, mostly in urban centers. Many of their economic problems could be solved by eliminating rampant corruption, which is estimated to cost Filipinos 400 billion pesos annually. Unless the real causes of poverty are addressed, poor Filipinos will remain poor.

Those of us who are concerned with the sanctity of life cannot afford to be indifferent to the situation in the Philippines – it would be a terrible blow if this very pro-life and pro-family nation were to fall. We need to influence government leaders in our countries to offer real assistance to our brothers and sisters in need, and not false solutions and aggressively imperialistic threats, like those posed by the RH Bill.

LifeNews.com Note: Reprinted with permission from Human Life International’s World Watch forum.

What RH promoters don't want you to know - an infographic

2011-12-09T22:50:00.000+08:00

The facts about the RH bill that our citizens need to know

2011-12-09T22:04:00.000+08:00

Truths and beliefs

A LAW EACH DAY (Keeps Trouble Away)

Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star)

November 07, 2011

Every time I express my stand against the RH bill I only state the established facts and the laws applicable to those sets of facts.

For instance, as I have repeatedly stressed, the most basic established facts proven by science are: (1) that life begins from the moment of conception or the fertilization of the ovum by the sperm to form a new, unborn baby; and (2) that there are certain chemical products or the so called birth control pills like “morning after pill” and RU 486, and vaccines like “depoprovera” and “norplant”, as well as the intrauterine device (IUD) which impede the implantation of the unborn baby in the uterine wall thus causing abortion or the expulsion and death of the baby.

Based on these established facts, I have likewise pointed out time and again that the laws applicable to these facts clearly provide that the State “shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception (Section 12, Article II, Constitution) and that therefore abortion is a crime punishable by law (Articles 256 and 257 Revised Penal Code).

In view of these established facts and applicable laws, I have thus repeatedly contended that the RH bill violates our Constitution and the Revised Penal Code because it appropriates 3 billion pesos simply to afford women another choice aside from the natural family planning method which cost nothing, by making available to them the entire range of artificial contraceptives including the above mentioned pills, vaccines and IUD that cause abortion.

I have likewise stressed that even if the purpose of the bill is to enable couples especially the poor ones to plan the size of their family so that they can properly raise their children within their means purportedly in the exercise of “responsible parenthood”, such purpose cannot justify or be used as a disguise to hide the unconstitutionality and illegality of the bill.

Unfortunately however, despite sticking only to those facts and applicable laws, supporters of the bill resort to personal attacks against me and my Catholic faith. They always drag the Catholic Church into the controversy to refute my stand. They insist that I am just expressing my belief in the teachings of the Church against contraceptives, which, they say, no person or institution can impose on others with different beliefs especially in a pluralistic society such as ours.

This stance implies that truth depends on the beliefs of particular sects or religions rather than on established facts and applicable laws; and that there are as many truths as there are religions. Apparently this is a dangerous stance that has rendered the bill as controversial as to cause a deep division in the nation; why the bill divides rather than unites us.

Now that the debate on the RH bill has resumed, all sides to the controversy should see to it that they stick to the real issues, meet them squarely and refrain from using diversionary tactics. This is the only way that the people can be properly informed of the true nature and purpose of the bill and why it should or should not be passed. This is the only way to remove the harmful discord besetting the nation because of this bill.

The citizenry will therefore be better informed and united in their search for answers to the issues surrounding the RH bill if:

First, they are not repeatedly told that the bill does not legalize abortion when it has provision appropriating billions of pesos for the acquisition of contraceptives including those already proven to cause abortion, just to give women an alternative choice in the exercise of their reproductive health rights and in planning the size of their family;

Second, they are not misled into believing that contraceptives in general have no harmful effects on the overall health of the women and children when there are already many incidents of serious ailments including cancer arising out of their use.

Third, they are adequately informed that based on what is happening in other countries which allows the use of contraceptives, the contraceptive lifestyle necessarily ensuing with the passage of the bill, weakens marriages and destroys families;

Third, they are not continuously intimidated to favor the bill because of the alleged world population that has reportedly reached 7 billion already. Instead they should be properly advised that the country’s poverty problem is not due to our growing population but mainly to the inequitable distribution of the country’s wealth and resources because of poor governance, graft, greed and lack of adequate education especially of the poor families;

Fourth, it is sufficiently explained to them that while our population is still growing our population growth rate is already declining as will eventually bring us to the same situation of countries that adopted population control where the population is aging and dwindling prompting a complete reversal of their population policy from population control to population promotion; and

Fifth, it is fully disclosed to them that the RH bill is really backed up and supported by foreign countries and international organizations to control the population of developing countries like the Philippines even to the extent of promoting abortion under the guise of reproductive health, for their own economic interest and security; that lobby money in millions of dollars have been put up to pressure our Congress into passing this bill.

As Congress therefore resumes debate on the RH bill, Filipinos should know more about this incontrovertible information which can be considered more as “truths” than mere “beliefs”.

Teddy Locsin: Politics without religion is just power

2011-12-09T20:28:00.000+08:00

It is about believing
SATURDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2011
TEODORO L. LOCSIN JR.

CONGRESS ended its session with birth control hanging fire, or rather hanging high and dry. It won’t be taken up until next year.

That is a pity. In my last term, when the bill was introduced, I wanted the bill brought to the floor where it could be saved or slain. The sooner dealt with the better. The House leadership thought it was best to give it the Mona Lisa treatment, and just let it lie there, and die there.

It did not. It slept like a snake. Now it is awake, dragging irreligion in its wake.

Advocates of birth control say the issue is politics and not religion, a private and not a public affair.

Why, that’s just like sex and government have no more place in a bedroom than in a chapel.

Advocates insist that religion has no place in politics, especially democratic politics, which mandates the separation of church and state. It does that, indeed, but so as to keep the state away from religion and a life informed by religion, as much religion from the way the state is run. The separation was meant, in the first place, to keep the state out of a man’s conscience, though never human conscience out of matters of state.

That was the soul of the highly religious New England polity that became the United States. Protestants fled old for New England to establish theocracies, where men were free to live strictly Protestants—or flee deeper into the wilderness to live as they pleased.

The intensely religious character of the American republic explains why it is so natural for Americans to argue so intensely about schoolroom prayer and why, despite their bias for the 1 percent who own 95 percent of the country’s wealth, conservatives win election after election in a country of mostly poor Americans.

Indeed, no religion may use the state to impose its beliefs but neither may the state impose a notion of progress—such as that the fewer Filipinos the better all around; the less life is born, the better the life of those already around—on those who do not believe it. Some things cannot be legislated, even by a Congress representing the vast majority of citizens. In the Bill of Rights, paramount is freedom of religious conscience.

Politics without religion is just power. Government without conscience is just organized crime. Public administration without morals is stealing. And politics without faith will use people for politics, like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

Religion is the core of the person. It tells her what she is, alive, and alive is better than not.

Religion tells him where he stands in this life; political geography just tells him where he can vote.

Religion tells people where they are going. If religion did not step into the anti-Marcos struggle and the Snap Election campaign, no case could be made for the importance of that struggle, for its merit as a subject of international interest and diplomatic action, and we would still be marching around in circles against the same government. Marcos would have been buried in state and his widow or a crony or the Army would be ruling us today. The Arab Spring in Egypt has returned the military nakedly to the helm of state.

Religion stepped into Edsa because our religion, in particular, dictates that the kind of society we live in shapes the kind of person we become, whether deserving of salvation or not. It is a Catholic as much as Muslim imperative to demand a society that respects the tenets of the dominant faith even if it should tolerate a diversity of other beliefs. For religion is the road we take through this life to the bridge that crosses over to the next—which may be hot or heavenly, depending on how seriously we lived our faith. Even secularism has its roots in religion, sprouting from the Reformation, which was not a revolution but its founders claimed a restoration of the original Christian faith.

The debates in the House missed this key point. Birth control is a thing of religious conscience and not of naked choice.

The issue is freedom, not of choice, but of belief.

The inviolable belief that the government cannot increase or reduce life, propagate or eradicate it, even if ardently held by just one citizen, should be enough, by itself, to stop the government, which may not violate her religious conscience by stepping across the line between what the government can do and what the people believe.

The debates also miss the point that belief is nothing if it does not go along with action because even just to think is already to act. Ours is a government of limited powers delegated by the people, who may not themselves venture into matters of faith, not just doctrine but ways of life informed by particular religions.

This is why we are enjoined to oppose eugenics, which is the state policy of propagating the smart and eradicating the stupid, even if we need such a policy desperately right now.

A policy that imposes condom or pill as the only alternatives is not choice but dictation. It is mental dishonesty to say a third choice is provided, for which nothing shall be paid: the nonpractice of birth control by conservative Catholics through the rhythm method or the morally superior route of sexual restraint. Not choosing one or the other, condom or pill, is not itself a choice if that choice costs nothing to the government.

It is wrong to think that the Catholic Church has never seriously thought about or practiced birth control. As early as the 10th century, churchmen worried over the souls of children born into poverty who will not get the religious instruction to be saved. Celibacy was one answer, which kept down the birthrate while achieving, through the monastic life of prayer and study, the ideal outcome of a proliferating race without increasing its numbers: The preservation of the best of what human mind has thought and human hands have wrought so that further advances in thinking and doing might be built on them. (The uniqueness of individual DNA may have eroded this argument; every child not born is another potentially new and freshly creative permutation destroyed.)

If the government believes in choice, it should hand out pesos not pills. Let people decide what to do with the money.

Only the ignorant still think that population control will be achieved by covering one organ rather than by opening another, the eyes. It was telenovelas showing small families in a flattering light that dropped the birthrate radically in Brazil, which never adopted birth control in deference to the Catholic Church, say the authors of Poor Economics.

Seeing is believing and Brazilians in the favelas watched television and believed what they saw: Life is easier, not to say elegant, when there are fewer in a family. The stylish have one child, the others have hordes of children.

You see, it is not about rubbers but rumination, which is to say thinking. It is not about choosing but believing.

Believe it is better to be fewer, and a man and a woman will find, on their own, a way to keep their family small.

Which may be a catastrophe for the few children born because statistics show that after China successfully adopted the One-Child Policy, Chinese couples spent less on their child or children than on saving up for their retirement when they would, most likely, be left to themselves in their vulnerable old age.

The Philippines and the realiites of depopulation

2011-12-09T20:22:00.000+08:00

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

THE RH BILL

Why an aging population is not good for economy

By: Ma. Esther Salcedo - Posadas

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Saturday, November 19th, 2011

Imagine this scenario: The only child of two aging and sickly parents faces deep pressure to provide for all their needs since there are no siblings to help carry the burden.

The same thing happens in an aging economy where few workers support a bigger number of dependent retirees.

Demographers call it an inverted pyramid. It’s an economy that has declining population growth, where there are more old people than younger ones.

It is the situation currently faced by many European nations plus a few Asian examples such as Japan amd Singapore.

This scenario causes a strain on businesses and their workforce because it also means fewer people to join the action, especially as seniors start to retire.

According to one population study posted on a United Nations website: “Fertility in the Philippines has experienced continuous decline from the 1950s to the present.”

From total fertility rates (TFR) of more than six births per woman in the 60s, the TFR has declined to excess of 3.5 births in the mid-nineties. The CIA Factbook estimates more than three births per woman in 2011.

The above data points to the fact that the country is actually already approaching the replacement fertility rate of more than two births that is essential to ensure the survival of the race.

In certain developed economies, births have fallen below the replacement ratio and certain so-called developed nations are now trying to reverse the population trend. If the Philippines will follow their lead, the consequences can also happen here.

An aging economy is a problem for government because it usually means that there are lesser workers earning a living to support or take care of older people.

In a 2004 discussion paper entitled “Australia’s Demographic Challenges,” the Australian Government’s Treasurer released the following information: “In 2002 there were more than five people of working age to support every person aged over 65. By 2042, there will only be 2.5 people of working age supporting each person aged over 65.”

An economy starts to age when there are fewer people capable of replacing those who are getting older, also in consideration of present health trends that have allowed more people to live longer. Usually, there is also reference to people who still have the capacity to work vs those who are retired and are in need of care. Government pensions systems are usually based on worker contributions that are later redeemed upon retirement.

So if there are fewer people and lesser monetary contributions to the fund, it means that there will be a smaller pot to divide when the retired seniors start claiming their pensions. It could lead to fund bankruptcy if the claims are not met.

Demographers calculate what is known as the “replacement fertility rate” to estimate how many daughters it would take to replace the previous generation of women.

A 1998 paper written by John Bongaarts of the Population Council in New York explains, “Currently, replacement fertility equals 2.36 births per woman (bpw) in the developing world. This level exceeds two because children who die before reaching the reproductive ages have to be replaced with additional births, and because the sex ratio at birth slightly exceeds one (typically 1.05 male for every female birth).”

For economies like the Philippines who still have a positive (albeit declining) fertility ratio, it is important to learn from the experience of developed economies with shrinking populations.

A 2007 study entitled “Global Aging: The New New Thing” by Dr. Adele Hayutin of Stanford Center on Longevity projected that by the year 2030-50 both Japan and Italy will have negative working age population growth rates at -16.9 percent and -5.4 percent, respectively. The data suggests that in order to regain more workers, the economy would need to rely on immigration or other corrective measures to encourage more births. While negative growth may be hard to imagine, the frail figure of aging populations already haunts many economies today.

Ed’s note: Currently on Congress’ drawing board is the passage of the RH bill which aims to promote women health care and teach contrapection to students. The pro-RH bill advocates believe that the Philippines is over populated and the growth of babies should be limited. The anti-RH contends on the other hand that the growth of PH population is already declining and what is needed is better education for Filipinos.

A bill we can't afford - literally

2011-12-09T19:58:00.000+08:00

RH is unreasonably expensive!

By Fr. ROY CIMAGALA

October 6, 2011

NOW it can be told. And it needed Senator Lito Lapid who is supposed to be not known for his speaking prowess to get this data. The budget for the implementation of RH for the year 2012 alone is – hold your breath – P13.7B!

According to experts, that figure is even higher than the individual budgets of the departments of energy, finance, foreign affairs, justice, labor, science, tourism and trade. It’s even bigger than those proposed for the Office of the President and Congress, and the entire Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

OMG! What a waste of tax money that would be! What distorted sense of priority! And to think that the RH Bill does not even pass the preliminary smell test of morality, and the fact that many of its provisions are redundant since they are already covered in many other laws of the land!

We cannot help but suspect there’s something serious that is hidden under the beautiful features with which the RH is marketed to the public. We have to look more closely at this initiative now forcefully pushed by women senators with radical feminist agendas.

We already know that US Secretary Hillary Clinton admitted that RH by definition includes abortion. So even if our version does not include abortion yet, we can suspect that it would just be a matter of time before this evil gets legalized under RH. In fact, there are now many people in the country openly voicing their support for abortion.

We also know from some declassified document that the US has been eyeing the Philippines for quite sometime now for birth control. It’s part of the geo-political game that the US is playing.

That’s why our Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile is suspicious about the RH Bill as being not so much for reproductive health as a tool to effect birth and population control.

And under the current American leadership, there is also a strong lobby for RH not only in the US but also all over the world. In the US alone, part of the Obamacare program forces everyone to get medical insurance that includes paying for sterilization, contraception and even abortion – all against Catholic moral teaching.

This has led American bishops to call this Obamacare provision as an “unprecedented attack on religious liberty.” It is forcing Catholics to support something that is against their religion. It is not anymore tolerating people to do what they like, even if it is against religion. It is forcing them to support what is against their religion.

The current American scene seems to be drifting toward creating a welfare state, with the government taking a bigger role in people’s lives, clearly going against the social principles of common good, solidarity and subsidiarity. It is not only spoiling people. It is forcing people to get spoiled.

And to think that the American political leaders pride themselves of being the first promoters of democracy and religious freedom and teach other countries to follow them! They have to be clear about these in their own country first.

The Philippines would be in a funny situation if it would just blindly follow the American model of RH. That is why, we need to closely monitor the proceedings of the proposed legalization of the RH Bill. This issue has gone beyond the field of group advocacy. It has become a concern for all of us.

I would suggest that the true picture of the RH Bill be shown, discussed and, if need be, debated upon in schools, parishes, offices and even in families. We have to be warned about a subtle but persistent campaign to change the concept of morality itself and to recast the social principles that should govern our national life.

We are now entering a stage of world history where the issues that we need to resolve are not anymore strictly social, economic or political in nature. They now have a fundamentally moral character and they call for a fundamentally moral resolution.

We need to stop and reverse this slippery slope to a deeper secularized world culture that tackles human affairs from a restrictive frame of economics and politics alone, and ignoring the most basic aspect of religion and our inner beliefs.

I must say that we have been had for a long time by this questionable kind of culture that tends to separate reason from faith, science from religion, our human affairs from God. The state is made to conflict with the Church.

While there is distinction, there is also inherent connection between them!

The duty of women senators to fight the RH Bill

2011-12-09T19:46:00.000+08:00

A letter to the editor published by Philippine Daily Inquirer on October 12, 2011:

Safest place for babies to become most dangerous

This refers to the news item titled “RH backers warn of Senate plot to derail bill” (Inquirer, 9/25/11), which reported on the views of RH supporters, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, author and principal sponsor of the RH bill, and Sen. Pia Cayetano, co-sponsor and chair of the Senate committee on women, children and the family.

It is sad to note that these women-senators themselves are rooting for the bill. They are mothers themselves who know the uncontainable joy of bringing forth a baby into the world! And yet now they want to disregard this and deprive others of the wonderful experience of beholding and cuddling a baby in their arms?

The mother’s womb is the safest place for a baby to live but now, with the women senators and congresswomen eagerly working to pass the RH bill, alas, it will become the most dangerous place for a baby. This is a gross disservice to women, children and the family whom these women-senators and congresswomen have vowed to protect.

These recent findings should be wake-up calls for Filipinos: A recent study of the University of Washington in 181 countries disclosed that maternal mortality rate in the Philippines had dropped by 81 percent from 1980 to 2008. Moreover, the World Health Organization has confirmed anew that oral contraceptives can directly cause cancer.

Our women senators and congresswomen are duty-bound to take the lead in protecting women, children and the family.

—CHING D. AUNARIO

MA. CIEFREL TUBALE, LICHELLE SALENDREZ, MARIA ANA PAULE, CAROL DAVID, MICHELLE EVANGELISTA, JESS HUTALLA, JOYCE DOFELIZ, ELENA MAULLON

The Varsitarian Editorial on the misunderstood PMA position paper

2011-12-09T18:13:00.000+08:00

For more information on the PMA position that is referenced here, please read this post:

Setting the record straight on the Philippine Medical Association's stance on the RH Bill

RH bill medically fallacious, dangerous, unconscionable

The Varsitarian, October 4, 2011

WHILE staunch supporters of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill naively rejoice over the Philippine Medical Association’s (PMA) position paper that they seem to have misunderstood, they have been overwhelmed with the first clause of the first sentence without reading the entire passage.

The PMA expressed its support in the RH bill, but only because “it is founded strongly on the principle that ‘life begins at fertilization’”—a pro-life stance. Furthermore, the group of doctors said it “abhors any procedure, machination or scheme or medication that will interrupt any stage of fertilization and prevents its normal growth to adulthood until the stage of natural death.”

Dr. Bu Castro, chairman of the PMA Commission on Legislation and a signatory of the statement, confirmed the pro-life position himself, and said that the problem arises with the inclusion of contraceptives in the bill.

RH bill supporters have always said that contraceptives—particularly morning-after pill, IUD, and the like—are not abortifacients, and that this matter should be left to health experts. Castro himself confirmed that these contraceptives may indeed cause early abortion.

There are three things why the argument on abortion in contraception continues up to date: Either people do not know that life begins at fertilization, they don’t know what fertilization is, or they pretend to be health experts that they create their own definition of fertilization.

Of course, who would not want to support a health or family planning program? Every family desires a particular family size, but what pro-life groups say is that family planning could be achieved within moral grounds.

Like the PMA, we will support the RH bill if and only if its authors will remove its immoral, inhumane, and unjust ideas.

Immoral, in a sense that, as mentioned in previous Varsitarian editorials, RH bill makes us look like sex-starved rabbits; inhumane that it kills human life, and unjust that it is highly against other people’s rights.

It is not enough that provisions be altered. As long as the core principle of the RH bill is anti-life, it will never get any support from us.

In fact, the PMA fights for the rights of doctors because the RH bill impinges on physicians’ conscience and professional and ethical practice.

Doctors do what they think is best for their patients, but the RH bill dictates that if a doctor refuses to give RH services to his patients, he will be penalized.

It is even more stupid for the RH bill, which we may now call an “anti-doctor bill,” to say that in such case a physician cannot give RH services, he must refer his patients to another physician. Conscience-wise, asking someone to do it is like taking part of the action yourself as the mastermind.

This reminds us of a related issue in the Senate, wherein Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago lectured about conscience alongside with her efforts to promote the RH bill last August 1. Not only that, she also lectured on Theology.

The senator, who discussed as if she is an expert in Theology, said one could follow his conscience even if it is against the moral teachings of the Church.

If that is so, then where would someone base his conscience? In pop culture? In fascist ideologies? What is wrong remains wrong even if everybody does it.

Santiago also classified Theology into two: “traditional,” which sees the Church as a superstate governed by the Pope, and “progressive,” which looks at the Church as a fellowship of spiritual communities who recognize Papal primacy.

With these naïve ideas that she has, no doubt that she presents misinformation. “A little learning is dangerous,” poet Alexander Pope said.

Former senator Francisco Tatad, on the other hand, said Santiago’s classification is political.

“Theology is either good or bad, [or] sound or unsound,” Tatad said in an open letter to Santiago.

We see the words “traditional” and “progressive” in a different perspective. Traditional as being timeless and timely in keeping the values the Church has, while progressive as a state of development. In this sense, the pro-life position against the RH bill is founded on traditional values, but the intention of the opposition is progressive.

For the record, contradictory to Santiago’s claim that the Catholic Church is not the only religion opposing the bill, Muslim and Evangelical groups were also present at the State of the Soul of the Nation Address last July 25 to show their opposition to the said bill.

Also, non-Catholic religions acknowledge the fact that contraceptives being promoted by the RH bill kill life and violate their religious convictions.

Last Sept. 26, nine young congressmen expressed their opposition to the RH bill in a statement, saying that the proposed P3-billion fund for contraceptives could be better used for education, livelihood, and healthcare services. One of the young congressmen is Lanao del Norte, second district Rep. Fatima Aliah Dimaporo, a Muslim who stands firm against the RH bill.

It is odd that the national government underspends on more important services, but is willing to spend billions in buying contraceptives. The PMA statement says that “providing adequate facilities and qualified staff for maternity and pediatric cases” is needed to address the problem of maternal and child deaths in the country.

Being pro-life is not only a Catholic belief, but a Filipino value as well. Blessed John Paul II himself had said without specifying it to Catholics alone: “The Filipino family is pro-life.”

Says a lot.

2011-12-08T23:27:00.001+08:00

WET AND HORNY FOR THE RH BILL! That was the code name for a pa-cute protest action held for the RH Bill by a bunch of Student Councils in front of the Ateneo De Manila University sometime in November of this year.

Promoters of the RH Bill are forever telling us that the RH Bill is not about promoting sexual promiscuity. That it is not about encouraging the young to act on their incipient lusts. That it is not about importing into this country the culture of mindless sexual hedonism that has ravaged the moral fiber of the much of what was Western Christendom. Oh, no, it's not about these!

AND YET, they just HAD to call this action, this single-mindedly and intentionally pro-RH action, WET AND HORNY FOR THE RH BILL.

Really.

Emil Jurado on why the RH bill is unnecessary

2011-12-07T22:52:00.000+08:00

From Emil Jurado's November 22, 2011 column, What scares me most:

There’s a lot of truth in the position of Senate Majority Leader Tito Sotto that there may be no longer any need for Congress to pass the controversial reproductive health bill in the wake of the fact that the Aquino administration has already earmarked P7.7 billion for reproductive health programs in the 2012 national budget.

The P7.7 billion appropriated for reproductive health programs for next year could well be implemented without Congress enacting the controversial RH bill that has divided the country.

Logically, as Senator Loren Legarda asked: “If the resources are available anyway to fund the RH bill, why would we need to enact a bill? This was in answer to Senator Franklin Drilon’s comment that the allocation for reproductive health in 2012 would only benefit 50 percent of the women belonging to the lowest quintile of our economic strata.

What is important to consider is that if the budget for 2012 already included reproductive health programs contained in the controversial RH bill, it would be foolish to enact the latter, isn’t it?

Note that the allocation of P7.7 billion for reproductive health programs would include the DoH giving away condoms and intrauterine devices, which the RH bill intends to do.

See as well the following news article: RH bill duplicates health program

Tidbits from Bobit Avila

2011-12-07T20:50:00.000+08:00

From his October 6, 2011 column entitled, Now it can be told: Contraceptives kill!

Finally, despite his problem in communicating in the English language, Sen. Lito Lapid entered the controversial debate in the Senate on the controversial issue of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill, coming up with a stinging question directed to its principal sponsor Sen. Pia Cayetano about the possible side effects of contraceptives. Sen. Lapid apparently revealed that his wife took such pills after she gave birth to their second child. Yet she still got pregnant and bore a baby with a heart disease who later died at the tender age of nine years old. What a tragedy for Sen. Lapid.

Speaking in the Tagalog (they sometimes call this Filipino) language, Sen. Lapid asked his wife if she was taking birth control pills and she answered him with a “yes.” By some divine revelation, suddenly, the pro-RH Senators were faced with someone among their peers who took contraceptives in the hope that it can stop pregnancy. But this totally failed and worse of all, the baby was born with a birth defect, thanks to that contraceptive.

When she was asked by Sen. Lapid whether contraceptives can cause physical deformities, Sen. Pia Cayetano dismissed them, saying that no research shows that contraceptives can cause birth defects. Come now Sen. Cayetano, there are countless research studies that prove that contraceptives do not only kill (as in the case of the baby of Sen. Lapid), it also causes birth defects, and yes for mothers they cause breast cancer.

Incidentally, the month of October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. If Sen. Pia Cayetano truly wants to help our womenfolk, she must instead warn them of the dangers of the use of contraceptives as they are not a guarantee that it prevents pregnancy, but also maim babies if they get born. Worse of all, they can cause breast cancer to women or mothers who use them. If Sen. Pia Cayetano truly cares for our womenfolk, she should instead warn them of the dangers in the use of abortifacient contraceptives.

From his October 25, 2011 column, Coming soon: A city region called Mega Cebu

While the Senate already decided to move the debate on the Reproductive Health (RH) bill to next year in January, this elicited a reaction from Sen. Pia Cayetano who wanted to close the period of interpellation and proceed to the period of amendments and the eventual passage of the bill. But like it or not, there are still a lot of Senators who wanted to interpolate this on the session floor after they resume their session. As Senate Majority Leader Sen. Vicente “Tito” Sotto pointed out, “Anyone who wishes to interpolate this bill can do so; hence we cannot close the period of interpellation.”

As expected, Sen. Pia Cayetano wants the debate closed because the truth about the RH bill is just coming out of the woodwork and the public needs to know whether this bill should be passed or junked on the Senate floor. The RH bill entails the use of billions of pesos to dole out contraceptives to the poor, when this same money could very well be used for other more important issues like poverty alleviation or the like.

The Senate also needs to unmask the international groups strongly lobbying for the RH bill, which seek funding from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Little do Filipinos know that this is the group behind China’s “One Child” Policy? How many times do we have to remind those pushing for the RH bill that they are proposing something against the 1987 Constitution that protects the unborn. If on a worse case scenario this bill gets passed into a law, I guarantee you that cases will be filed for its unconstitutionality. In short, this money-making venture (after all, this law benefits foreign pharmaceuticals) is a waste of our time and resources and worse it is divisive.

A former Filipino anti-Catholic on young Filipino anti-Catholic netizens

2011-12-05T00:52:00.002+08:00

From Pepe Alas' article on the appointment of Msgr. Luis Antonio Tagle as the Archbishop-elect of Manila: A famous theologian will be Manila's next Archbishop:

Catholic theologians such as the new Manila Archbishop should deftly explain that the Church’s stand against the RH Bill is not solely rooted in faith and morals alone. In the end, it all boils down to logic. And this is one of the first challenges that the latest Prince-Cardinal should tackle.

Speaking of logic…

Many young Filipino “intellectuals” today who love to make a punching bag out of the local Catholic Church claim to be “lovers” of ideologies and “champions” of liberalism. And that the Church is “out of logic”. They love to “philosophize” and display the many witty quips that they learn from tomes of books they claim to have read. They proclaim themselves as “the new Rizals”. They claim a hatred for mediocrity and “religious superstition”, clamoring for a more intelligent and “freethinking” Filipino. But many of them do all this for the mere heck of it, and not for the purpose of a better society. And now we have social networking. Through these new media they rant and multiply and increase, and they spend hours upon hours in front of their PCs than they do with their pet lizards because they could not get a real job nor could they maintain contact with physical friends (but to them, the words “contact” and “physical” could mean something else). Unfortunately, these kids, for all their intellectual hogwash, have already revealed their characters and self-worth by the choice of words that they use in various online forums. Wittingly or unwittingly, what these bunch of “sucks-to-be-you” kids are doing will only lead this country to anarchy. If they ever win, within a decade or two we will certainly have a transsexual president who will legitimize pole dancing as a school subject. I dare say all of this because I used to think like them — been there, done that. I’ve mingled with so many of these book-toting crybabies back in the 90s. And just thinking about it makes me supersick.

What these “lemme-give-y’all-an-iota-of-my-superb-brain” jactanciosos claim to know about the Catholic Church is so superficial to say the least. All I can say is this: looking back at my brief anti-Catholic self, I just couldn’t believe how stupid I was (a long story that I’ll share one day).

I’m glad that I dealt a lot with logic whenever I flip a page out of a dusty book. Gracias a Dios por este regalo de sabiduría.

So here’s hoping that Manila’s new archbishop will also tackle the increasing number of “pseudo intellectuals” from elsewhere. Not for the Church’s sake actually, but for these proud but hapless kids’.

Remarkably enough, the author of these lines began his return to Catholicism from agnosticism as he struggled against the temptation of aborting his second child. As he relates in a blog post he made more than two years ago:

I was brought back to the Catholic fold last 2003 due mainly to personal researches about my country’s Spanish past. Along the way, I was able to discover and realize the leyenda negra (black legend) being hurled against the Spanish clergy. Ironically, I ended up defending the Spanish friars against everyone attacking them although I was still an atheist! Little by little, my “reconversion” was on its way. I soon became an agnostic. And one September night of that year, as I was pondering whether to have my wife abort our second child or not, God gave me a sign.

You see, 2003 was the worst and arguably one of the best and memorable years of my life. I was jobless, disowned by my folks and various relatives, living in a decrepit bodega, penniless, you name it. It was during this year when I did nothing but read, write, ponder, steal books, ponder some more, dream. And since I was (surprisingly) having difficulty in getting employed, I thought that having another baby was too much (I was already then an agnostic during this time). I was goading my wife for days to give up the baby. I was giving her horrible scenarios of what might happen to us if she doesn’t accept abortion as a solution: poverty, poverty, and lotsa poverty. Finally, I was able to make her say yes. We planned of going to Quiapò to buy an infamous pill (Cytotec) to kill the fetus.

I admit, however, that I felt uncertain and very afraid of doing it. So before committing the crime, I prayed to God for the very first time in years. While walking desolately along Chino Roces Avenue one night on my way home, I muttered, “Lord, if you are indeed real, show me a sign —any sign— that you disapprove of this abortion”.

The sign came that very night. Upon arriving home, I talked again to my wife (without telling her that I prayed). I told her that we have to abort the fetus soon, the next day, while the it is not yet in human form (an infamous argument by “pro-choice” advocates). Quietly, she agreed. And as we slept together, I thought of my prayer – I had no idea what kind of sign I would receive… if God were ever real. After a few minutes, we drifted to sleep.

But moments later, my wife woke me up. I was surprised — she was crying! In between sobs, she said she’d rather not have an abortion. She said she’s willing to face anything —EVERYTHING— just to keep the baby. I embraced her, and broke into tears as well.

It was no coincidence or anything like that. It couldn’t have been any clearer: that was the sign I’ve been waiting for…

GOD IS REAL.

And so a few months later, a very handsome José Mario Guillermo II P. Alas —Momay— was born. And my stupid fear of poverty-ridden-days-ahead was just that: plain stupid. Because now our kids are four, and we’ve never been better than before!

The urgency of pro-life advocacy

2011-12-04T01:40:00.001+08:00

Bishop Gabriel Reyes gave this talk during the second day of the National "Philippines for Life" Congress in Cebu held from November 16 to 18 of this year. CBCP for Life has a news article summarizing the talk: Choices must be based on correct conscience, bishop reminds faithful.

The full text is taken from the website of the Diocese of Antipolo:

Pro-Life Advocacy: Its Urgency in Our Present Society

Msgr. Gabriel Reyes DD, Bishop of Antipolo

My talk will not be long. In this talk I will focus on why it is urgent that we work hard so that the House Bill 4244 or the so called Reproductive Health Bill will not be passed by Congress and the Senate. I will also explain and refute the ideas on which those who are in favor of the HB 4244 base themselves.

Before anything else I would like to remind ourselves of the broader or complete meaning of pro-life advocacy. We should defend and promote life from the womb to the tomb in all stages of life. Here I would like to quote lengthily from the encyclical letter of Blessed John Paul II, “Evangelium Vitae, the Gospel of Life, No. 3”

“Every individual, precisely by reason of the mystery of the Word of God who was made flesh (cf. Jn 1:14), is entrusted to the maternal care of the Church. Therefore every threat to human dignity and life must necessarily be felt in the Church's very heart; it cannot but affect her at the core of her faith in the Redemptive Incarnation of the Son of God, and engage her in her mission of proclaiming the Gospel of life in all the world and to every creature (cf. Mk 16:15).

Today this proclamation is especially pressing because of the extraordinary increase and gravity of threats to the life of individuals and peoples, especially where life is weak and defenseless. In addition to the ancient scourges of poverty, hunger, endemic diseases, violence and war, new threats are emerging on an alarmingly vast scale.

The Second Vatican Council, in a passage which retains all its relevance today, forcefully condemned a number of crimes and attacks against human life. Thirty years later, taking up the words of the Council and with the same forcefulness I repeat that condemnation in the name of the whole Church, certain that I am interpreting the genuine sentiment of every upright conscience: "Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practice them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator".

The paragraphs that follow in the same encyclical letter are concerned with the pro-life advocacy in its narrower sense. And this is the meaning that we give to Pro-life advocacy in our fight against contraception, abortion, euthanasia, etc. Pardon me for again quoting lengthily from Evangelium Vitae, No. 4

“Unfortunately, this disturbing state of affairs, far from decreasing, is expanding: with the new prospects opened up by scientific and technological progress there arise new forms of attacks on the dignity of the human being. At the same time a new cultural climate is developing and taking hold, which gives crimes against life a new and-if possible-even more sinister character, giving rise to further grave concern: broad sectors of public opinion justify certain crimes against life in the name of the rights of individual freedom, and on this basis they claim not only exemption from punishment but even authorization by the State, so that these things can be done with total freedom and indeed with the free assistance of health-care systems.

All this is causing a profound change in the way in which life and relationships between people are considered. The fact that legislation in many countries, perhaps even departing from basic principles of their Constitutions, has determined not to punish these practices against life, and even to make them altogether legal, is both a disturbing symptom and a significant cause of grave moral decline. Choices once unanimously considered criminal and rejected by the common moral sense are gradually becoming socially acceptable. Even certain sectors of the medical profession, which by its calling is directed to the defense and care of human life, are increasingly willing to carry out these acts against the person. In this way the very nature of the medical profession is distorted and contradicted, and the dignity of those who practice it is degraded. In such a cultural and legislative situation, the serious demographic, social and family problems which weigh upon many of the world's peoples and which require responsible and effective attention from national and international bodies, are left open to false and deceptive solutions, opposed to the truth and the good of persons and nations.

The end result of this is tragic: not only is the fact of the destruction of so many human lives still to be born or in their final stage extremely grave and disturbing, but no less grave and disturbing is the fact that conscience itself, darkened as it were by such widespread conditioning, is finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between good and evil in what concerns the basic value of human life.”

The main reason why the Catholic Church is against the HB 4244 is the fact that it will compel the Government to promote contraception and use public money (billions of pesos) to do so. Aside from the harmful medical effects of contraceptives, the use of contraceptives is immoral, that is, against the law of God. I will not anymore elaborate why contraception is immoral. It is important and urgent that we stop the passage of HB 4244 because, from the experience of other countries, once contraception is promoted by a government, approval of abortion, euthanasia, divorce, same sex marriage follows. Approval of HB 4244 is like opening the floodgate to these other immoral practices.

In this talk, I would like to point out that those who are moving that these immoral practices be approved by law are imbued by more or less the same wrong ideas and principles. They use these wrong principles to promote and justify these anti-life practices.

1. Relativism: According to Benedict XVI, “A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the “I” and its whims as the ultimate measure.” Relativism says that there are no universal truths, which are true always and everywhere. Everything is relative. Truth depends on your situation, on the way you see things. Ultimately it means truth is what I think is true. I have “my own truth.” You have “your own truth.” There is no truth that all must accept.

If everyone has his own truth, then this will lead to chaos. When there is a conflict of truths (my truth, your truth, his truth) what usually happens is that one imposes his own truth on others. Finally, this will lead to the rule of the most powerful.

But there is only one truth that is based on reality, which we arrived at by right reason. This truth which is objective, that is, conforming to reality, is the criterion we should use to settle our differences when our truths are in conflict.

People who subscribe to relativism say that contraception is not always evil. Whether it is moral or immoral depends on the situation or motive of the person doing it. This is against the teaching of the Church which says that contraception is intrinsically evil, that is, it is evil in itself, or evil by its nature. No circumstance or motive can make it good. It is always evil. “Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature "incapable of being ordered" to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church's moral tradition, have been termed "intrinsically evil" (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that "there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object." (Veritatis Splendor, No. 80)

With regard to contraception, the Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say: “…..every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible is intrinsically evil.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2370)

2. Wrong Notion of Freedom of Conscience:

Those who support HB 4244 say something like this: I have freedom of conscience. I have a right to follow my conscience. If I think that a teaching of the Church is wrong, then I have not to follow it.

Conscience is defined as the practical judgment of reason upon an individual act as good and to be performed or as evil and to be avoided.

There are two levels of conscience, that is,

a) Synderesis: This is the knowledge of the first general principles of morality, like “Do good and avoid evil,” “Do not kill,” etc. on which we base our judgment on the goodness or “evilness” of individual. According to St. Paul (Romans, 2:14-15) and St. Basil, these first principles of morality have been implanted by God on our hearts.

b) Conscience in the strict sense:

As already expressed above, this is the practical judgment of reason upon an individual act as good and to be performed or as evil and to be avoided. Conscience in the strict sense applies our basic knowledge of the general moral principles (synderesis) to a particular situation, to an individual act.

Freedom of conscience does not mean that we have the right to decide on the goodness or “evilness” of an act in any way we like. Freedom is not the right to do whatever we like. Freedom is the right to do what we ought. What we ought to do is linked to what is true and what is good. So, freedom of conscience is the right to decide in accordance to what is true and what is good. Freedom of conscience includes the obligation to do our best to have a correct conscience, that is, a conscience that is conforming to the truth, a conscience that does not run counter to what is good.

It is true that we have the obligation to follow what our conscience tells us before we act. Conscience is the proximate norm of morality. But we also have the obligation to try our best to have a correct conscience. For us Catholics, as members of the Catholic Church, we believe that a correct conscience is one that is in conformity with the teaching of the Church, with the moral teaching of the magisterium. “As members of the Church, all Catholics are obliged to shape our consciences in accord with the moral teaching of the Church.” (On Responsibilities of the Catholics in Public Life, statement issued by the U.S. bishops’ conference.)

The magisterium is the teaching authority of the Church. It is composed of the Pope and the bishops. We believe what Our Lord Jesus Christ told Peter and the apostles: “Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” (Luke 10:16) or “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20). The Pope and the bishops are the successors of Peter and the apostles. “…the Church puts herself always and only at the service of conscience, helping it to avoid being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine proposed by human deceit (cf. Eph 4:14), and helping it not to swerve from the truth about the good of man, but rather, especially in more difficult questions, to attain the truth with certainty and to abide in it. (Veritatis Splendor, No. 64)

3. Secularism: In simple words, it means that religion (God) or the Church has no place in public life, in government, in laws, in public education, in public debates, etc. Religion is a private affair. It should limit itself to the sacristy.

Many of those who support the HB 4244 are basing themselves on this intolerant secularism. They say that the Church has no right to participate in the making of laws of government because of the principle of the separation of Church and State. This principle means that the state has no right to intervene into the beliefs and doctrines of any religious denomination and that the state should not have an official religion (state religion). It also means that the state should not favor one religion over another. The Philippine Constitution does not prohibit any group of citizens, civic or religious, to express, promote, or campaign so that their views on what is good for the country and for the individual person be accepted by society and have an influence on the laws of the country. If atheists can, why not those who believe in God? The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in its “Doctrinal Note regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life” tells us that all citizens, including Catholics, have the right “to base their contribution to society and political life – through the legitimate means available to everyone in a democracy – on their particular understanding of the human person and the common good.” It says further; “It is not the task of Church’s task to set forth specific political solutions – and even less to propose a single solution as the acceptable one – to temporal questions that God has left to the free and responsible judgment of each person. It is, however, the Church’s right and duty to provide a moral judgment on temporal matters when this is required by faith or the moral law.”

Man cannot be separated from God, nor politics from morality. Our Christian Faith gives us the true meaning of man and our world. It provides a firm foundation for the duty to respect the dignity of man and his basic rights and the duty to contribute to the common good. For us, Christians, every man has to be respected and loved because he was created in the image of God and called to be a child of God, participating in God’s own life. In history, many regimes or governments that rejected God in their laws and policies ended disastrously. We can cite the regime of Hitler and the Nazis (totalitarianism and racism) and that of Stalin (atheistic communism, Marxism) that ended up in the murder of millions due to their lack of respect for the dignity of the human person. Their rejection of God, the Creator and Lawgiver, led to their rejection of the dignity of every human person. Senator Adlai Stevenson, a former candidate for president in the United States, said: “Communism is a corruption of a dream of justice.”

Here it is good to quote Benedict XVI in his book, Jesus of Nazareth: “The German Jesuit Alfred Delp, who was executed by the Nazis, once wrote: “Bread is important, freedom is more important, but most important of all is unbroken fidelity and faithful adoration.” When this ordering of goods is no longer respected, but turned on its head, the result is not justice or concern for human suffering. The result is rather ruin and destruction even of material goods themselves. When God is regarded as a secondary matter that can be set aside temporarily or permanently on account of more important things, it is precisely these supposedly more important things that come to nothing. It is not just the negative outcome of the Maxist experiment that proves this…. The issue is the primacy of God. The issue is acknowledging that he is a reality, that he is the reality without which nothing else can be good. History cannot be detached from God and then run smoothly on purely material lines. If man’s heart is not good, then nothing else can turn out good, either. And the goodness of the human heart can ultimately come only from the One who is goodness, who is the Good itself.”

4. False notion of pluralism or religious freedom:

One of the main reasons, if not the main reason, why the Catholic Church is against the House Bill 4244 (Reproductive Health Bill or Responsible Parenthood Bill) is that the bill directs the government to promote contraception and to give free contraceptives to people. According to a columnist in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, this opposition of the Church is against religious freedom. He says that, because of religious freedom, “the state should not prevent people from practicing responsible parenthood according to their beliefs nor may churchmen compel President Aquino, by whatever means, to prevent people from acting according to their religious belief.”

First of all, by opposing the RH Bill, the Catholic Church is not moving for the ban of contraceptives (the non-abortifacient ones), although she would be happy if these contraceptives were banned. At present, in the Philippines, anyone can buy contraceptives from drugstores and even from some “convenience stores”. What the Church is against, I repeat, is that government should promote contraception and provide free contraceptives to people. Therefore it is wrong to say that the Church wants the government to “prevent people from practicing responsible parenthood according to their religious belief” and that the Catholic churchmen are compelling “President Aquino, by whatever means, to prevent people from acting according to their religious beliefs.” What the church does is to try to convince President Aquino and our senators and congressmen not to enact a law that directs the government to promote contraception and provide free contraceptives to people.

It is also good to point out that the church teaching regarding contraceptives is not based on Faith or revelation, although it is confirmed by our Faith. This church teaching is based on natural law, which we know through natural reason. By studying through correct reasoning the nature of the human person, we arrive at this teaching regarding contraception. All human beings, Catholic or not, are obliged to act according to right reason. By the efforts of the Church to go against the RH Bill, the Church is not imposing her religious beliefs on others. She is trying to stop a bill which is against natural law, a law which all human beings, Catholic or not, should follow. The RH Bill, judged from the principles of natural law, is against the good of the human person and the common good. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in its “Doctrinal Note regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life” tells us that all citizens, including Catholics, have the right “to base their contribution to society and political life – through the legitimate means available to everyone in a democracy – on their particular understanding of the human person and the common good.” In a democracy, any group of citizens has the right to campaign and lobby so that what they consider to be good for the country are enacted into law and what they deem to be harmful for the country are not enacted into law.

The columnist says further in his column that we live in a pluralist society. This is true and, therefore, we should respect the beliefs and opinions of others. But there is a limit to this pluralism. We cannot accept an “ethical pluralism “which ignores the principles of natural ethics and yield to ephemeral cultural and moral trends, as if every outlook on life were of equal value.” (Doctrinal Note on the Participation of Catholics in Political Life)

The columnist also quotes the “Compendum on the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church: “Because of its historical and cultural ties to a nation, a religious community might be given special recognition on the part of the State. Such recognition must in no way create discrimination within the civil or social order for other religious groups” and “Those responsible for government are required to interpret the common good of their country not only according to the guidelines of the majority but also according to the effective good of all the members of the community, including the minority.” The Church, by opposing the HB 4244, is “interpreting the common good of the country not only according to the guidelines of the majority but also according to the effective good of all the members of the community, including the minority.” In opposing the bill the Church is interpreting the common good according to the guidelines of natural law, which is valid for all, the minority as well as the majority. Benedict XVI says that natural law must be the foundation of democracy, so that those in power are not given the chance to determine what is good or evil [Zenit.org. Vatican City, Oct. 5, 2007].

Regarding freedom, Benedict XVI said in his Address to the International Congress on Natural Law: “…yet taking into account that human freedom is always a freedom shared with others, it is clear that the harmony of freedom can be found only in what is common to all: the truth of the human being, the fundamental message of being itself, exactly the “lex naturalis.”

It is urgent that we fight against these false ideas and principles. They are used by people as a justification for their promotion of the anti-life bills. Because of these ideas, they exclude morality in the making of laws. They only consider what is utilitarian or convenient as their criterion in making laws. These ideas are already prevalent in Europe and in the United States. They are coming to the Philippines. Let us pray and work that these ideas will not be accepted by our people.

What we've been saying all along: foreign money funds pro-RH activities

2011-12-03T23:10:00.002+08:00

A pro-lifer's speculation on what the people in this anti-Catholic protest might actually have been thinking.

An article published on December 2 of this year by Philippine Daily Inquirer brought to a wider audience some of the details of a state of affairs that has been known for a long time to the pro-life movement, and which many activists of the "pro-RH camp" have been denying without success. I am, of course, referring to the continued infusion into our country of money from foreign countries and institutions, earmarked for the propagation of the RH Bill and of other similar bills that espouse the Culture of Death and the anti-values of sexual anarchy.

In particular, the Inquirer article "No delay but RH bill won't be passed this year - Enrile" showed that the pro-RH camp has been practicing the age-old tactic of corrupt politicians: the "hakot" (paid) crowd:

Early this year, the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN) received P4.4 million from the United Nations Population Fund to push for the passage of the RH bill before the end of 2011. Dr. Junice Melgar, RHAN secretary general, admitted that her group solicited the amount because it “has no ongoing funding.”

Based on RHAN’s budget proposal, the amount was to be spent on activities such as “education and mobilization” program. One item worth P2,837,500 was to go to organize “two nationally coordinated (and) high-profile mobs.”

The group scheduled the “peak” of its pro-RH rally for September and set aside P1,750,000 to organize a rally of “at least 5,000 people.” Each participant was supposed to receive P350

In response to this report, Filipinos for Life has published an official statement delving in greater detail and with many proofs into the foreign funding that has been propping up numerous anti-life initiatives in the Philippines:

Official Statement: Documents bare millions of dollars in funding for RH lobbyists

***

CBCP for Life also published the following article regarding the Filipinos for Life statement linked above:

Documents bare millions of dollars in funding for RH lobbyists

MANILA, Dec. 2, 2011–Pro-abortion groups have been showering “reproductive health” (RH) lobbyists with millions of dollars in funding for years to promote the Western agenda of contraception and population control, documents showed.

Funders include Planned Parenthood and its international arm, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Marie Stopes International, the Packard Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In a statement, the group Filipinos for Life (F4L) said the paper trail of multimillion-dollar lobby funds reveal the hand of foreign interest groups out to dictate what policy the Philippine government should follow.

“Nearly a decade ago, lawmakers condemned the presence of the American lobby group AGILE in Congress. This time, however, the RH lobby is apparently succeeding, thanks to a formidable war chest from pro-abortion groups,” it said.

Documents revealed the following financial grants for RH lobby groups:

* $90,000 to the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN) for promotion, from the UN Population Fund or UNFPA (2011);
* $6.6 million to Planned Parenthood arm Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP) from UNFPA (2009);
* $1.6 million to FPOP from IPPF for the years 2005, 2009, and 2010;
* $1.2 million to PSPI from Marie Stopes (2009);
* $39,000 to Likhaan from Planned Parenthood (2007);
* $88,000 to FPOP in 2009 from Marie Stopes for RH kits; and
* $75,000 to “Catholics” for Choice to promote RH, from the Wallace Global Fund (2009).

This was aside from $6.8 million from the Packard Foundation for the years 2006-2008; $18.4 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation from 1997 to 2008; $8.86 million from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2004 for a “social acceptance” project; and $239.5 million from the World Bank for 2010-2012.These amounts could have better been used for direct poverty alleviation programs, F4L said.

F4L said pro-RH lobbyists cannot deny the overt abortion agenda of most of their financial backers, notably Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest abortion provider, and UNFPA, which has been condemned for its coercive abortion programs.

“Abortion was not legalized in the US overnight. It started with the birth control movement founded by Margaret Sanger, which today is called Planned Parenthood,” F4L pointed out.

Where are the millions going?

Meanwhile, the Philippine Daily Inquirer today ran a story containing a more detailed breakdown of RHAN’s budget earmarked for a more aggressive push for RH. According to the article, the millions in pesos provided by the UNFPA were to be spent on “education and mobilization.” Based on the same document, nearly P3 million was allocated for “two nationally coordinated (and) high-profile mobs.”

“The group scheduled the ‘peak’ of its pro-RH rally for September and set aside P1,750,000 to organize a rally of ‘at least 5,000 people.’ Each participant was supposed to receive P350,” the article further stated.

F4L called on lawmakers to examine further the lobby groups behind the RH bill, saying interpellations should be exhausted to unmask the real intentions of those promoting it.

“Pro-RH groups and Malacañang spokesmen are being irresponsible by calling for a vote and an abrupt end to debates,” the group said. (CBCP for Life)

Filipinos have dignity and moral values!

2011-12-01T02:10:00.001+08:00

A letter to the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

Senator underestimates sensitivity of Filipinos

On TV news last Nov. 25, our very assertive senator dished out sex like she were giving out lollipops to little kids. In that one minute or so coverage, her message must have sunk deep into the nation’s viewing audience.

What was very alarming was her sweeping statement that if you do not like sex, you’ve got to see a doctor because you are abnormal. What for? Because of a brain damage or something? Isn’t she aware that there are many people who opt out of sex for higher dimensions of spirituality? Surely priests and nuns, bishops and cardinals and, above all, the pope are not abnormal people, considering the responsibilities they are holding.

By endorsing a piece of legislation like the RH bill, this senator was expected by the people to do a candid but dignified handling of the topic because controversy over this issue has been raging for months. But no, she seemed to be taking it lightly, somewhat jokingly without regard to the repercussions of her pronouncements.

And to think that it was a lady-senator who could have been our president telling university students to buy condoms if they could no longer suppress their sexual urges. It sounds like she was encouraging the indiscriminate use of condoms. No, madam senator, not that easy, not that fast. You have to be married first and, in a Christian society, we follow rules. Rules that preserve life, and rules that do not kill.

You have overlooked the fact that Filipinos have dignity and moral values. They don’t copulate like dogs by the roadside to satisfy a sexual urge. You underestimate the sensitivity of Filipino society. Please do not bark this way or the big bone will fall from your mouth.

—ESPERANZA M. SAGRA,

retired principal,

Surallah, South Cotabato

Apologies

2011-11-29T00:54:00.002+08:00

Sorry for not posting much. My health has not been good since the end of October. Hopefully I can return to the fray in the first days of December.

Bishop Leonardo Medroso: 7 billion people + Jesus Christ = still the best possible world

2011-11-28T23:12:00.009+08:00

Faith and the World of 7 Billion Humans

Msgr. Leonardo Medroso DD

October 29, 2011

Just some days ago the 'Philippine Daily Inquirer’ carried a banner article on its front page anent the world population which is to hit 7 billion anytime these days. Relative to this is the account that while the number of children in the family has been reduced to 2.5, the infant mortality has substantially dropped and life expectancy has soared to 68 years. Released by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the statistic was received with differing reactions. Some take it as an alarming news for it augurs the threat of overpopulation with its concomitant problems in the area of economy, such as the equitable distribution of wealth and services, the creation of new jobs , housing and other necessary facilities; of the environment, such as the rise of carbon emissions, garbage management and proper disposals; of social concerns as migration of rural folks to the cities, the rising gap between the haves and the have-nots. Others take the UN report with optimism and a bit of a swagger for it bespeaks of man’s triumph on this earth: human spirit over dense matter, science over superstitions, knowledge over darkness and ignorance, modern technology over man’s limitations, confidence over the forces that ever threaten man’s life.

The true Christian welcomes the United Nations statistical data regarding population, for he is convinced that the report is a statement of fact. After all, Christian faith is about reality, flesh and blood truths. It is not a religion of the imagination, but of facts; it does not teach man what is apparently good, but what is really good. Reality is the locus of Christian faith for it is in reality where the man of faith meets his God. The God of the Christian is the God who listens to the cries of the poor, the God who deigned to take up the human flesh, and lived out his story with us, giving it up as a ransom for all.

Hence, reality has to be faced squarely. That man has survived and increased to a staggering number of 7 billion in spite of the negative factors that have so often threatened his survival, that his life span has expanded to almost 70, and that mortality rate of his children has plunged, is a good news. He has faithfully responded to what God has enjoined him to do with this world when He said: “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the things that move on the earth” (Gn 1:28). The report on the reduction of the number of children in the family to 2.5 is objectively a good news. But it does not stop the man of faith to probe with the question: in what way was the number of children reduced?

The man of faith believes that the world and everything in it is a creation of God. He knows that the world did not just pop out from a big explosion, for he believes in the existence of a Transcendental One who created everything out of nothing and breathed into man’s nostril the breath of life. He knows too that this Creator of his is a personal God, a God of the living. He knows that God came into this earth and declared to His creation: “Do not be concerned for your life, what you are to eat, or for your body, what you are to wear. Consider the ravens: they do not sow, they do not reap, they have neither cellar nor barn – yet God feeds them. How much more important you are than the birds. Which of you by worrying can add a moment to his life span? … Stop worrying. The unbelievers of this world are always running after these things. Your Father knows that you need such things. Seek out instead his kingship over you, and the rest will follow in turn” (Lk 12:22-25; 29-31). The man of faith therefore walks this earth with confidence and poise no matter the forces that threaten him.

It is for this reason too that the Holy Father having perceived the many fears that have hounded modern man came out with a Letter “Porta Fidei” announcing a year long celebration of Faith by 2012. He knows that man has gone astray because of these fears that he has forgotten to hope and to love. He knows that left to himself man can easily be swamped by thousand and one existential problems and death threatening events. The proclamation of the content of Faith should bring man to a personal encounter with Christ, know His ways, understand a little his plans. Or it should bring God into the consciousness of man so that he can realize that God’s hands made him and shaped him in his mother’s womb, that God’s Law is always right, governing the world in perfect harmony.

Through the celebration of the Year of Faith we are hopeful that the world alarmed by its 7 billion citizens would soon realize that God is more powerful than all our problems. The Holy Father put it this way: “To a greater extent than in the past, faith is now being subjected to a series of questions arising from a changed mentality which, especially today, limits the field of rational certainties to that of scientific and technological discoveries. Nevertheless, the Church has never been afraid of demonstrating that there cannot be any conflict between faith and genuine science, because both, albeit via different routes, tend towards the truth” (Porta Fidei).

Christ being with us this earth of 7 billion warm bodies is still our best possible world.

There's a shortage of sharing, not of food

2011-10-27T06:01:00.002+08:00

Personal Recess

2011-10-23T11:43:00.001+08:00

I will be on "recess" from this blog until after November 10, unless there are extremely important developments in the debate over the RH bill.

I am aware of the essays and commentaries versus the RH bill that have been published in the newspapers or on the Internet in the past several weeks, but none of these contain any point that had not been brought up earlier.

In the meantime, I invite you, dear readers, to peruse the archives of this blog, which contain enough material to debunk and bury the claims of the supporters of the RH bill. I also suggest that you visit the websites of CBCP for Life and Filipinos for Life.

The New Archbishop of Manila and the RH Bill

2011-10-13T20:41:00.003+08:00

The Catholic Position on the RH Bill congratulates His Excellency, Luis Antonio G. Tagle DD, Bishop of Imus, on his appointment to the See of Manila as its 32nd Archbishop by His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI.

On this occasion, it is important to recall that the Archbishop-elect has spoken out repeatedly versus the RH bill. This blog's posts on Archbishop-elect Tagle's statements versus the bill can be found here.

The CBCP for Life Youtube channel has all of Archbishop-elect Tagle's videos versus the RH bill in one page: The Word Exposed - RH Bill Series.

Call to Prayer

2011-10-07T23:59:00.000+08:00

(I will maintain this post as the lead post of this blog until October 10, 2011. Newer articles below. CAP)

In the face of the onslaught of secularism and pansexualist ideologies throughout the world, the call to prayer must be sounded more insistently than ever before.

I invite all my Catholic readers of Filipino heritage to take part in the following prayer crusade:

A million roses for the world: A Filipino campaign of prayer for the whole world

How NOT to help women

2011-10-07T03:27:00.000+08:00

From Bobit Avila's latest column for the Philippine Star, published on October 6, 2011:

Finally, despite his problem in communicating in the English language, Sen. Lito Lapid entered the controversial debate in the Senate on the controversial issue of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill, coming up with a stinging question directed to its principal sponsor Sen. Pia Cayetano about the possible side effects of contraceptives. Sen. Lapid apparently revealed that his wife took such pills after she gave birth to their second child. Yet she still got pregnant and bore a baby with a heart disease who later died at the tender age of nine years old. What a tragedy for Sen. Lapid.

Speaking in the Tagalog (they sometimes call this Filipino) language, Sen. Lapid asked his wife if she was taking birth control pills and she answered him with a “yes.” By some divine revelation, suddenly, the pro-RH Senators were faced with someone among their peers who took contraceptives in the hope that it can stop pregnancy. But this totally failed and worse of all, the baby was born with a birth defect, thanks to that contraceptive.

When she was asked by Sen. Lapid whether contraceptives can cause physical deformities, Sen. Pia Cayetano dismissed them, saying that no research shows that contraceptives can cause birth defects. Come now Sen. Cayetano, there are countless research studies that prove that contraceptives do not only kill (as in the case of the baby of Sen. Lapid), it also causes birth defects, and yes for mothers they cause breast cancer.

Incidentally, the month of October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. If Sen. Pia Cayetano truly wants to help our womenfolk, she must instead warn them of the dangers of the use of contraceptives as they are not a guarantee that it prevents pregnancy, but also maim babies if they get born. Worse of all, they can cause breast cancer to women or mothers who use them. If Sen. Pia Cayetano truly cares for our womenfolk, she should instead warn them of the dangers in the use of abortifacient contraceptives.

Money that could be better spent elsewhere...

2011-10-07T03:22:00.001+08:00

From CBCP for Life, two articles on the massive price tag of the RH bill:

New revelation: RH bill price tag = P13.7 billion

MANILA, Oct. 5, 2011–It took a Lito Lapid to finally reveal one of the pro-RH lobby’s well-kept secrets: the gargantuan price tag of the proposed contraceptive welfare program.

The Pampango senator, ridiculed by the pro-RH side for his inability to debate the “reproductive health” (RH) bill’s proponents in English, managed to eke out the figure Tuesday from one of the measure’s sponsors, Sen. Pia Cayetano.

After hemming and hawing, Cayetano admitted during interpellations on Senate Bill 2865 that the Department of Health (DOH) had asked for P13.7 billion to implement the RH bill for the year 2012 alone – an amount bigger than the individual budgets of the departments of energy, finance, foreign affairs, justice, labor, science, tourism, and trade. The figure also dwarfs the budgets proposed for the Office of the President and Congress, as well as for the entire Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The revelation of the huge RH budget is the latest in the string of exposes to hound the pro-RH lobby, which had earlier been found to be using outdated data on maternal deaths and abortion. RH proponents had long been saying that the budget would only be P3 billion annually.

Lapid pointed out that even at P3 billion per year, slum dwellers could already be sent back to the provinces and given their own land over a 10-year period.

“[Iyan ay] sapat na halaga para bigyan ng lupa ang squatter sa probinsya,” he told Cayetano.

The gargantuan RH budget prompted Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile to interject, asking why DOH officials did not mention the amount in budget hearings.

Enrile blasted RH proponents for not being transparent on the real purposes of the bill, pointing out that billions of pesos in taxpayers’ money could go only to artificial birth control and that this could all boil down to “tawaran” or haggling.

“This now suggests to me that at the bottom of this bill this is a measure to control the population of the country. Why is DOH not telling us that it is anticipating that it will involve such a huge amount of funding coming from tax money? We have to scrutinize this bill very carefully. This might be a trap for the country.”

Enrile recalled that the Marcos regime did not entirely implement a US-funded population control program, as it was a US foreign policy dictate. True enough, the declassification in the 1990s of the National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests, written by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1974, showed that the Philippines was among 13 countries targeted for depopulation to protect American commercial interests.

“This bill is unfair to the Senate. It does not tell us what it wants to do. Maybe I’m dense or not as intelligent as the sponsors of the bill but my impression is this bill is not candid enough on what is its real purpose,” he said.

In response, Cayetano again resorted to appeals to emotion, nearly shedding tears in describing the situation of poor families and mothers dying of childbirth – ignoring recent studies that maternal deaths have gone down by more than 80% since the 1980s.

Cayetano said part of the funding would go to “basic” and “comprehensive” facilities, or birthing centers at the community level.

Senate Majority Leader Vicente “Tito” Sotto III, however, said such facilities have long been put up in the communities, even without an RH bill. (CBCP for Life)

****

RH funding could lead to more taxes, higher health premiums – Recto

MANILA, Oct. 6, 2011–Brace for higher taxes, more expensive healthcare premiums.

This scenario was raised by Sen. Ralph G. Recto on Wednesday, citing provisions in the controversial “reproductive health” (RH) bill that would require billions in taxpayers’ money.

Interpellating one of the Senate sponsors, Sen. Pia Cayetano, Recto pointed to Sections 9 and 10 of Senate Bill 2865, concerning state subsidies for contraceptives.

Section 9, which declares family planning supplies as “essential medicines,” requires that hormonal contraceptives, intrauterine devices, and injectables, among others, “be included in the regular purchase of essential medicines and supplies of all national and local hospitals, provincial, city, and municipal health offices, including rural health units.”

Meanwhile, Section 10 mandates the Department of Health (DoH) to lead in the procurement and distribution of family planning supplies for the whole country. The section prescribes a formula for determining budget allotments: “(a) the number of women of reproductive age and couples who want to space or limit their children; (b) contraceptive prevalence rate, by type of method used; and (c) cost of family planning supplies.”

Reading the two sections together, Recto said the bill would require the government to pay for the contraceptives of as much as 44 million people.

On Tuesday, Cayetano admitted that the DoH had sought P13.7 billion in funding for the RH bill for 2012 alone. On Wednesday, Cayetano said P7.5 billion would be needed yearly to pay for 22,000 nurses and 4,500 midwives.

Such huge funding requirement would take away resources needed to combat the leading causes of deaths in the country, which are heart disease, cardiovascular disease, pneumonia, tuberculosis, respiratory diseases, and diabetes, Recto argued.

“Are you going take it from these? It’s a zero sum game, unless you ask people to contribute more payroll tax or through PhilHealth,” he said.

Recto added: “We’re promising too much and you can’t deliver … And is this the best way to help the poor?”

Cayetano offered to delete Section 10. (Dominic Francisco)

To solve poverty...

2011-10-03T15:50:00.000+08:00

...the following should be given to the poor.

Philippine Daily Inquirer Editorial Cartoon, October 3, 2011

The PDI webpage for this particular cartoon has the following comment by a certain "bgcorg" as well, which deserves to be published on this and other blogs dedicated to the pro-life crusade against the RH bill.

The Editorial Cartoon today, October 3, 2011, eloquently paints in "a thousand words," the pressing needs of most people in the country today just surviving in a deluge [what a wet, floody day!] of poverty. Jobs, education, basic health care [hi, senior citizens!], livelihood opportunities, timely government aid [read: prospective efforts to anticipate climate change calamities or at least mitigate their devastating consequences included], government support to absorb the impact of high prices in fuel and transportation, basic and prime commodities and essential needs, if salaries do not cope up with inflation [as it happens now], affordable housing and a better quality of life worthy of human dignity to spread the blessings of democracy. The life saving device thrown to the almost drowning constituents of this country would give them HOPE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE symbolized by jobs, education and basic health care, among others that are directly what they would need under the circumstances, not condoms or artificial contraceptive methods, devices and procedures (mechanical, surgical/medical, chemical) that would only be devastating to achieve zero or negative population growth in 40 years. Advocates of the rh bill surprisingly are looking at canned solutions foisted by interest groups greedy for profit, not the overall national interest in the long-term perspective. In pursuit of hope and social justice, eminently stand the keywords of JOBS AND OPPORTUNITIES, especially for those who have less in life. Level the playing field!

The people are asking for "bread" and the cute proponents of the rh bill are giving them "cake." We should, instead, apply to the problem of poverty what is the correct and proper solution as true patriots of this country: GIVE THE PEOPLE FISHING RODS so that they can earn fishing for a lifetime, not just food on the table for a day, as the old proverb goes. We would be used, against our true national interest and our cherished patrimony by giving in to the subtle campaign of international assistance in exchange for 40 years of commercial domination and colonialization not only in the billions of pesos annually for the purchase of "essential medicines" such as condoms and artificial contraceptive methods, devices and procedures. This is giving the people cake when they ask for bread. On the other hand, if this government works for the full human development of its constituents so that social justice is restored in Christ in this country, seeing hope and preoccupied with gainful livelihood or employment opportunities, less pre-occupation in sex during reproductive age could result, for a more healthy and sound population growth rate that allows for a "replacement rate in population growth. Proponents of the rh bill are silent about the evil consequences of a zero or negative growth rate, deliberately, or feigning innocence, just to satisfy their hidden agenda! No patriotic vision for our country, caring nothing about the future of the youth of our Fatherland, its cultural values and positive core values of life, love, sex, marriage and the family.

I congratulate the Editorial Cartoon of the Inquirer today. In a nutshell, you have picturesquely captured the message against the legalization of condoms and artificial contraceptive practices. While information is good leading to an informed choice, it would be mental dishonesty to disparage the use of modern Natural Family Planning Methods in favor of artificial contraception and condoms, injecting the wrong idea to those "needing the information" that modern Natural Family Planning Methods are expensive, unsafe and not reliable [the very contrary is true and statistically proven by research to be so] while supplying them with a liberal stock of contraceptive devices with the assurance that they are now "legal" and not against one's conscience to use, all at the expense of public funds and with the full force of the "Daang matuwid." Thinking Filipinos should really now say, "NO TO THE RH BILL!!!!"

Setting the record straight on the Philippine Medical Association's stance on the RH Bill

2011-09-27T00:57:00.000+08:00

From the Varsitarian:

PMA backs pro-life stance vs RH bill

September 24, 6:46 p.m. - THE PHILIPPINE Medical Association (PMA) has backed the pro-life position that life begins at fertilization, saying this scientific fact should be the basis of the reproductive health (RH) bill.

In a statement sent to the Senate, the PMA also rejected the RH bill's penalty clause on doctors, and argued that the religious beliefs of patients should be respected.

The group of doctors demanded “utmost respect” for physicians’ rights, which are being threatened by the RH bill.

The bill will require doctors to provide RH services. Those who object on the grounds of conscience must refer the patient to another doctor, or face penalties.

“They (physicians) must be left undisturbed to decide what is best for their patients,” the position paper, signed by PMA president Dr. Oscar Tinio and PMA Commission on Legislation chairman Dr. Bu Castro, said.

Moreover, the PMA said a patient’s right to exercise his or her religion “must be accorded full respect,” and that patients are entitled to quality health services.

The government should prioritize maternal and child health care over the distribution of contraceptives, the group added.

While the first phrase of the statement appears to be in support of the RH bill, the PMA said it only supports the bill “insofar as it is founded strongly on the principle that ‘life or conception begins at fertilization.’”

Not ‘frog biology’

The PMA said the assumption that life begins at implantation (normally on the 14th day from the start of fertilization) is wrong because there is already a living individual from fertilization.

It said the so-called “pre-embryo” stage of fertilization, advocated by Clifford Grobstein and Richard McCormick, S.J. in 1979, had conclusions based on “frog biology.”

“[T]he PMA does not support the studies done on frogs but rather it supports the scientific data that a new cell, the zygote, comes into existence at the ‘moment’ of sperm-egg fusion, an event that occurs in less than a second," the position paper said.

The statement added that there is no human embryologist in the world who would deny that life begins at fertilization.

“The PMA thus abhors any procedure, machination or scheme or medication that will interrupt any stage of fertilization and prevents its normal growth to adulthood until the stage of natural death,” the statement said.

Contraception treats a woman’s body as though there was something wrong with how God created it, the PMA said.

“In an age that has become very weary of dumping pollutants into the environment, it is so ironic that people are so willing to dump pollutants into their bodies,” the statement said.

Among the health risks of contraceptives mentioned in the statement are high blood pressure, stroke, and some forms of cancer.

It added that preventing the fertilized egg from implanting into the wall of the uterus is considered an early-term abortion.

Oral contraceptive pills work by preventing ovulation, but in case of "breakthrough ovulation" and fertilization, the hostile environment created by chemicals in the uterine lining could prevent implantation. Pills have also been declared Group 1 carcinogens by a research body under the World Health Organization.

“Some speak of ‘accidental pregnancies’ as if getting pregnant were like getting hit by a car … But the truth is that if a pregnancy results from an act of sexual intercourse, this means that something has gone right, not that something has gone wrong,” the PMA statement said. Rommel Marvin C. Rio

****************************************************************************

For those who want to read the PMA Statement for themselves, here it is:

On Malacanang's undue interest in the RH bill

2011-09-27T00:02:00.000+08:00

Opposing something wrong

Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star)

Malacañang’s undue interest in the RH bill at this stage cannot help but arouse curiosity. The palace spokesman Edwin Lacierda even went out of bounds by telling our legislators to cut short the debate on the bill and vote on it already. As PNoy’s mouthpiece, he is putting his boss in a tight spot because his stance is a clear violation of the principle of separation of powers among the three main branches of the government. The President may be the most powerful official in our system of government but he certainly cannot tell Congress to rush their process of legislation especially on a bill as controversial as the RH bill. He can only certify to Congress the bills which he believes should be passed.

This latest stance of Malacañang further confirms the existence of strong lobby groups pushing for the bill’s passage and the increasing pressure they are exerting. Of course lobbying for legislation is an accepted practice but in this case of the RH bill, the lobbyists allegedly have well funded foreign backers who are known advocates of abortion. With more reason therefore should legislators thoroughly discuss and more deeply look into every nuance in the bill to ensure that it will not eventually lead to recognizing abortion in this country. Indeed even before further debating and discussing the RH bill, Congress should conduct an inquiry on this lobby groups and their funding. This inquiry is definitely “in aid of legislation”.

Meddling in the legislative process by rushing the legislators to vote on the bill provides a stronger reason to further scrutinize the bill because it is an indubitable sign that the bill has many more questionable features which the authors and their backers would not like to be examined and exposed. It cannot really be denied that the original bill was not crafted by our legislators but by the lobbyists. The local authors in Congress only tried to edit it in such a way that it will look like a measure that will be for women’s reproductive health and that it will not appear as a population control measure imposed on this country by developed countries through UN agencies.

Indeed, one of the features of the RH bill which has never been denied is the supposed promotion of the women’s reproductive health by using artificial contraceptives to prevent pregnancy or conception. Obviously there is already something wrong with this feature because it considers pregnancy as a disability or a disease that should be gotten rid of or prevented. Worse yet is that it tries to get rid of pregnancy as a disease through the use of artificial contraceptives that have known adverse effects on life, health, marriage and family.

Another feature in the bill which the authors have not fully disclosed or admitted is that it is a population control measure implementing the population control policy of developed countries particularly the US through the United Nations (UN) and its agencies specially the UN Fund for Population and Development. This is the same policy of the Obama administration promoting abortion to control population in developing countries. In fact no less than Secretary of State Clinton has openly admitted that “Reproductive Health includes abortion”.

Of course, the sponsors of the RH bill in both houses have repeatedly said that it does not allow or legalize abortion; that the RH bill is not about abortion. They claim that while the entire range of artificial methods and contraceptives are made available by the bill, women are still given the freedom to choose what methods to use for promoting their reproductive health.

Free choice is really an accepted and popular notion. But given the facts about some contraceptives that have already been medically proven to be abortifacients like the RU 486, the IUD’s and the “Morning After Pills”, the question we must ask is: should people be given the right to choose to kill innocent children in the womb if that’s what they want to do? As Randy Alcorn said in his book “Pro-Life Answers to Pro Choice Arguments”, “When we oppose the right to choose…abortion, we aren’t opposing a right, we are opposing a wrong. And we are not narrow-minded or bigoted for doing so. We’re just decent people concerned for the rights of the innocent”.

Curiously, one of the new authors of the RH bill in the Senate is Miriam Defensor-Santiago who is aspiring to be a member of the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ). The coincidence is quite noticeable that she is now aggressively pushing for an early vote on the RH bill with the assistance of Malacañang, at the same time that she is campaigning for the ICJ post. Such coincidence inevitably leads to the conclusion that her successful campaign for the post depends to a large extent, on her successful sponsorship of the RH bill.

This conclusion is further bolstered when PNoy, who is supporting Santiago’s candidacy, made a pitch for the RH bill, which he calls more euphemistically as “Responsible Parenthood” (RP) bill, in his recent trip to the US. There, PNoy once more repeated the authors’ “freedom of choice” line” respecting the use of contraceptives that are abortifacients saying that parents should be given the freedom to choose the methods in spacing the births of their children. Again the question should be what choice is he talking about? Does it include contraceptives that cause abortion given the fact that the bill makes available all sorts of contraceptives including those causing abortion?

Quoting the scripture, PNoy says that he is pushing for the passage of the RP bill because on judgment day he will be asked “what he has done for the least of his brethren”. Apparently, PNoy would not want to commit a sin of omission. He or his advisers however must be reminded that a sin of omission is committed when one fails to do something good. The RH bill however which may result in abortion is not something good.

Young Congressmen versus the RH Bill

2011-09-26T15:44:00.005+08:00

This declaration against the RH Bill by ten young congressmen (nine of whom have their signatures and pictures at the bottom of the page) has been published in today's Philippine Daily Inquirer (page D-4).

The nine are:

1) Dakilo Carlo E. Cua (Lone District of Quirino)

2) Rachel Marguerite B. Del Mar (Cebu, 1st District)

3) Fatima Aliah Q. Dimaporo (Lanao del Norte, 2nd District)

4) Lucy T. Gomez (Leyte, 4th District)

5) Karlo Alexei B. Nograles (Davao City, 1st District)

6) Gabriel R. Quisimbing (Cebu, 6th District)

7) Irwin C. Tieng (Buhay Party List)

8) Mariano Michael M. Velarde Jr. (Buhay Party List)

9) Lord Allan Jay Q. Velasco (Lone District of Marinduque)

UPDATE: This manifesto is summarized and lauded in Atty. Joe Sison's column for September 30, 2011, The Filipino youth's plea.

The RH bill is a population control measure, no ifs, no buts

2011-09-25T03:06:00.000+08:00

From Emil Jurado's latest column, "American imperialism and the RH bill"

The reproductive health bill, which the President also calls his responsible parenthood advocacy, is all about population control—no ifs and buts about it.

I am disturbed, however, that when advocates mouth statistics coming from the United Nations about the number of women dying every day, they are in fact helping boost American imperialism.

After all, what do contraceptives do? Prevent pregnancy. That’s the bottom line of the bill—population control!

And I am even not talking from a Catholic point of view—even though I am a Catholic and I disagree with the state’s use of the taxes I pay to promote contraception. Rather, I am concerned about the Americans’ real objective in enticing the Philippine government with aids and benefits.

I have already written about this, but I wish to emphasize that limiting the population of some 13 developing countries is part of US foreign policy. The countries are India, Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, Ethiopia and Columbia.

Population growth in these countries threatens US security in four basic ways: (1) Certain large nations stand to gain significant political power and influence as a result of their growing populations; (2) The US and its western allies have a vital interests in strategic materials which have to imported from less-developed countries (3) societies with high birthrates have large numbers of young people, who are more likely that older people to challenge global power structures; and (4) population growth in relatively-disadvantaged countries jeopardized US investments.

We would be crazy to allow this just because we receive some grants!

We should not be tools for the advancement of American interests, I am surprised, though, that activists and militants cannot see right through this attempt, going in the guise of free choice.

Why journalists should not support the RH bill

2011-09-21T20:52:00.000+08:00

From Sun Star Baguio:

A matter of knowledge

By Sam Bautista

YOU can count in one hand the number of journalists (well locally anyway) who have expressed their opposition to the Reproductive Health bills filed in the House of Representatives (HB 4244) and the Senate of the Philippines (SB 2865). Literally.

Aside from columnists Fr. Andy Cosalan and Mike del Rosario, the only other Baguio-based journalist I know who is against the RH bills is me. Sure, you can probably count in Bro. Jimmy Bernabe (of DzWT) but there probably isn’t any other.

Have something to report? Tell us in text, photos or videos.

If you have a journalist friend, ask him or her this simple question: “Do you support the RH bill?” and you will probably get a positive response. But ask him (or her) if he (or she) has actually read the bills in Congress, the answer would probably be a “No”.

Which is really funny because how can you support something so important in our lives unless you fully understand its contents?

I was fortunate enough to have been invited to Saturday’s symposium on the RH Bills and why the Catholic Church is so staunchly against it. Thanks to the Sacred Heart Community for inviting me to this very important discussion. Thanks too to the Diocese of Baguio and Benguet for the opportunity which only solidified my objection to this piece of legislation which started out with a lie and continues to lie to the Filipino people.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to journalists.

If only my colleagues were there Saturday, especially those pro-RH, then they may change their tune if only on one account.

You see if there is one thing which journalists will vehemently and rabidly oppose is censorship. Censorship meaning government curtailing anyone’s right to self expression and especially the Freedom of Speech and of the Press.

And yet, majority of journalists would support the RH Bill without even knowing it is one of the vehicle by which these freedoms, which the 1987 Constitution assures, will be attacked. The RH bills if passed by Congress will definitely disallow these freedoms journalists hold dear and close to their hearts.

So, ask your journalist friend again if he (or she) knows this little known fact, and you might just get a blank stare. Yes, a blank stare from one we look up to because they are supposed to know more about these things than mere humans.

Yes, friends, it will curtail our right to speech and the press. Yes, it will muffle your voice once it passes Congress muster.

How so?

Well, under the prohibited acts section of HB 4244, Section 28, this paragraph is included:

“The following acts are prohibited… e) Any person who maliciously engages in disinformation about the intent or provisions of this Act.”

The punishment for violating this paragraph are, under Section 29. Penalties, imprisonment from one month to six months, or a fine of P10,000 up to P50,000, or both upon the discretion and direction of the court.

Maliciously engages in disinformation about the RH law is merely legalese to mean no one may talk AGAINST the law. Which means me, if this thing passes. In fact, I expect to spend six months of every year in prison and lose all my earnings because I will not stop talking against this RH thingy especially if Congress passes it into law.

Maliciously engages in disinformation about the RH law is censorship, pure and simple.

So it really is a wonder why any member of the press could even support a bill which guarantees State censorship.

Anyway, challenge your journalist friend to first study the RH bills in the House and Senate just to see if they know what it truly affects him (or her).

Tomorrow: The RH bill is pro-woman? Don’t bet a breast cancer on it!

Published in the Sun.Star Baguio newspaper on September 21, 2011.

Why the RH bill is actually bad for "free choice"

2011-09-20T01:45:00.001+08:00

The following letter to the editor was published in PDI on September 19, 2011. It is not "totally anti-RH" but it decries state promotion of contraceptives, which lies at the heart of the RH bill.

Battle not between those for and against RH

There is only one way for one not to see the real score in the “highly controversial,” ever-burning, “difficult” issue of the Reproductive Health bill. And that is to close one’s eyes and insist on something that he deliberately wants to project in darkness or doesn’t want to accept in the light.

The bill’s proponents are emphatic on sidetracking the discussions and debates by singling out only the good and valid points of the proposed law. While those opposing it “to the end” dwell only on its bad points. Thus, the RH bill has become eternally “complicated” and has dragged Juan de la Cruz to boredom or purgatory.

But heaven sees both sides from both perspectives.

Free choice, yes, but let government have nothing to do with the funding and efforts to promote artificial contraception, otherwise there would no free choice; there would only be pushing the country’s populace (including children) to the brink of a “free fall.”

It is one thing to be confronted by a temptation brought about by unexpected circumstances, and it’s always a struggle to be in such strait. But it’s quite different to be helplessly and unwittingly “set up” by someone to confront temptations every which way you turn to every day.

How unfathomable that condoms and the like would someday be everywhere in every community just as the Gideon Bibles are widely being distributed at no cost. And it’s ominous that the “campaign-push” for the politically and internationally well-funded artificial contraceptives would be encroaching and would be incomparably much more aggressive and unstinting, for sure.

The battle must be drawn, but not between the pro and anti-RH bill.

—RENI M. VALENZUELA, renimvalenzuela@yahoo.com

A call that must be echoed throughout the Philippines

2011-09-20T01:43:00.000+08:00

From Journal Online:

Be transparent, RH backers dared

Published : Monday, September 19, 2011 00:00

Written by : Bernadette E. Tamayo

SENATOR Vicente Sotto III yesterday dared non-governmental organizations engaged in reproductive health services to allow themselves to be subjected to scrutiny to dispel suspicion that they are being used as “channels for abortions.”

He issued the challenge after proponents of the RH bill scored him for suggesting that they are pushing for legalized abortion. “Are non-government organizations being used as conduits to facilitate abortions in the country?,” Sotto asked.

He noted that one of these groups, the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP) has admitted being a “proud” member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which supports and pushes abortion.

Likewise, Sotto said that FPOP has admitted that IPPF performs abortions in countries where the termination of life in a woman’s womb is legal. Last year the FPOP got P26 million from IPPF to push its agenda.

Another group, Likhaan, has taken Sotto to task for what it called “a witch hunt” for those advocating the RH bill. Like FPOP, Likhaan has not made any categorical statement denying they are pushing for a legalized abortion in the country.

Sotto pointed out that NGOs like FPOP and Likhaan have been receiving foreign funding to push for a national policy on artificial birth control methods, including abortion, as a means of controlling the population.

“Impliedly, a portion of these foreign grants was used to carry out ‘emergency contraception’ and abortion-related services, part of the conditions for the grants,” he said.

Sotto wants to know how many emergency contraceptions –- which he claimed is a euphemism for abortion — have been implemented by these NGOs and whether these are legal in the first place.

He said that abortion, whether safe or unsafe, remains illegal in the Philippines, punishable by six years imprisonment. The Revised Penal Code imposes imprisonment for the woman who underwent the abortion, as well those who helped facilitate the abortion. Article 2, Section 12 of the Constitution mandates the State “to protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”

Sotto said reports on how the funds were spent or disbursed form part of the requirement of the funding agency, and usually before more tranches of grants are given.

He dared the NGOs, which are supposed to be “epitomes” of transparency and accountability, to make their reports public.”

Dear senators: do not be the instruments of the return of American imperialism

2011-09-20T01:39:00.000+08:00

From Bobit Avila's Philippine Star column for September 15, 2011:

A couple of weeks ago the controversial WikiLeaks issue finally entered the Philippine area of responsibility... where cables from the US government to and from the Philippines were exposed in what I would call “Wiki-Tsismis”. Despite Sen. Pia Cayetano’s insistence that the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill will not lead to abortion, Wiki-Tsismis apparently confirms the role of the US government in promoting population control initiatives in the Philippines, through USAID. Perhaps Sen. Cayetano is pretending not to know that almost all contraceptive drugs are abortifacient.

One of these cables apparently revealed that then US Ambassador Kristie Kenney said, “The US Government continues to be the largest donor in the Philippine population sector supporting efforts to improve local government service delivery and increase private sector contributions to family health outcomes.” This cable was sent from Manila to Washington D.C. in July 2008 during the intense debate in the Philippine legislature about state funding for contraceptives and family planning services.

When US State Department Secretary Hilary Clinton came for a visit, she made it clear that the Philippines should pass an RH bill. Now wasn’t that “pressuring” the Philippine Legislature, especially the Senate to follow the “orders” of the United States? Sec. Clinton probably thought that the Philippines is still a colony of the United States... or perhaps she maybe right... that we are still a colony of the United States. So we ask our Senators, notably Sen. Pia Cayetano and Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago... will they be the instruments for the return of American imperialism to the Philippines? The ball is now in the court of the Senate and our pro-RH Senators!

Sen. Pia Cayetano: "Pregnancy is a burden".

2011-09-20T01:13:00.000+08:00

Thank you for your candor, Senator Cayetano. Thank you for unmasking the real thinking of the supporters of the RH Bill.

From CBCP for Life:

RH bill sponsors questioned on birth control supplies as “essential medicines”

MANILA, September 14, 2011–If contraceptives are only meant for birth control, then why are they tagged as “essential medicines” under the RH bill?

Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile asked this and other questions as the Senate resumed the period of interpellation for the controversial “reproductive health” (RH) bill Tuesday.

Enrile cited Section 9 of Senate Bill No. 2865 titled “An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health and Population and Development,” which orders the inclusion of hormonal contraceptives, intrauterine devices, injectables, and “other safe, legal and effective family planning products and supplies” in the National Drug Formulary.

“These products and supplies shall also be included in the regular purchase of essential medicines and supplies of all national and local hospitals, provincial, city, and municipal health offices, including rural health units,” the Senate version of the RH bill states.

The section is titled “Family Planning Supplies as Essential Medicines.”

Interpellating one of the RH bill sponsors, Sen. Pia Cayetano, Enrile noted that condoms do not cure anything while pills, injectables, and intrauterine devices work to prevent fertilization.

Enrile reiterated his belief that the RH bill is a population control measure disguised as a health measure, since “You cannot reduce the size of the family without reducing the population of the country.”

“There is no coercion but the result is population control,” he said.

Aiding Cayetano, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, also an RH sponsor, said birth control, the supposed aim of the bill, was different from population control. The former allows women to control the number of children while in the latter, the State uses its power to reduce the population, particularly those of the unfit.

Enrile, however, pointed out that the RH bill is particularly aimed at the poor.

“This is a law where the state itself intervenes in the size o the family. It is cleverly devised and disguised as a health measure. It is not health, it’s reproductive health, a very specific kind of health,” he said.

He asked: “Why zero in on reproductive health? How many people have died of dengue, malaria, cancer of the breast, cancer of the cervix, cancer of the uterus, hypertension, stroke, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, dysentery?”

Explaining why the poor was being targeted by the RH bill, Cayetano claimed they are being discriminated against when it comes to access to contraceptives.

Families should be allowed to space births, she said, as “pregnancy is a burden,” a “physical, emotional, financial burden.” (Dominic Francisco)

Dubious abortion statistics, courtesy of RH bill supporters

2011-09-17T10:17:00.001+08:00

From Filipinos for Life:

Miriam’s abortion stats questioned

AFTER BEING caught using old data on maternal deaths, pro-RH lobbyists have again been found playing loose with statistics, this time with the number of abortions.

The group Filipinos For Life (F4L), in a statement, welcomed Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s recent admission that the figure 570,000 abortions mentioned in her sponsorship speech for the Reproductive Health (RH) bill was merely an “extrapolation.”

“Fresh from their debacle on the debunked ‘11 maternal deaths a day’ statistic, pro-RH groups should now come clean on how they came up with their dubious abortion figures,” F4L said.

F4L bared that the methodology used by the pro-RH lobby involves a “magic multiplier,” the basis of which is “doubtful, at best” – small, non-random surveys and anecdotal evidence or “personal knowledge.”

“This is hardly empirical,” F4L said.

The methodology, developed by New York-based Guttmacher Institute and the UP Population Institute, simply multiplies the number of women hospitalized for complications due to abortion by 6 or 7, based on multiple assumptions that cannot be validated.

Santiago’s figure comes from the 2009 Guttmacher-UP study “Meeting Women’s Contraceptive Needs in the Philippines” that estimated 3.371 million pregnancies in 2008. Out of this, 17% (573,000) supposedly ended up in “induced abortions.”

There were 90,000 hospital admissions due to induced abortions in 2008, the study claimed, which meant that the multiplier used was between 6 and 7 to produce an inflated figure of 573,000 induced abortions.

‎The study’s authors themselves stated that “available information does not permit estimation of regional-level multipliers.” F4L asked: “Why was the non-empirically derived multiplier used to create a national guesstimate?”

F4L pointed out that Guttmacher-UP’s methodology did not change since an earlier study that used data for the year 2000, and no efforts were exerted to get more reliable counts.

In the older study “The Incidence of Induced Abortion in the Philippines: Current Level and Recent Trends,” published in 2005, Guttmacher-UP claimed 78,901 women were hospitalized due to abortion complications in the country in the year 2000. It inflated the figure to arrive at 473,408 induced abortions in 2000, using a multiplier of 6.

Even the hospital numbers are highly questionable, F4L said. For more than a thousand hospitals, the study simply assumed that the number of abortion-related hospitalizations would be one-half of the number of the top 10th cause of hospital admission, whatever it was.

For hospitals with incomplete records, the number of patients was simply adjusted to follow the proportions based on the number of months reported. “Mathematical equations, meanwhile, produced around 6,000 abortions in hospitals with no records at all,” F4L noted.

F4L said fudging data was the same tactic used by lobbyists to legalize abortion in the United States, pointing to the testimony of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) who later turned his back on the pro-choice movement and produced the anti-abortion documentary “The Silent Scream.”

“At NARAL, one of our favorite tactics was to distort and magnify statistics. We would say, for instance, that there were one million illegal abortions and that 10,000 women died in the United States [because of these illegal abortions], when actual studies would show something like 200,000 illegal abortions and only 200-300 died,” Nathanson said in a 2002 story published in a local magazine.

Abortion is not the solution

2011-09-17T01:09:00.005+08:00

From the website of Filipinos for Life:

When Abortion Seems to be the Only Way Out

by Ruby Ann Kagaoan

At the Senate, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago assures that the Reproductive Health Bill does not promote abortion but in fact aims to reduce it. “Under the Penal Code, abortion is a crime, and it will remain a crime under the RH bill. In fact, one important reason to pass the RH bill is that it will reduce abortions,” Santiago said in her recent sponsorship speech.

Although considered a crime in our country, statistics pointed out by Santiago reveal that “one in three unplanned pregnancies in our country ends in abortion” and “nine out of 10 women who resort to induced abortions are married women, 87 percent of whom are Catholics.”

(Regarding Sen. Defensor-Santiago's abortion "statistics" please see this link. -- CAP)

Although against the country’s laws and one’s faith, why do women resort to abortion? For the pregnant woman in crisis, or the couple, abortion seems to be the only way out.

When we talk about which is the greater crime or sin, abortion or having an unwanted child that you cannot provide for, we delve into morality. But let me start this discussion on the level of health, both physical and emotional, and what are sound options to consider where life can be preserved for both the mother and the unwanted child.

Abortion is a painful process for the woman, physically and emotionally. The unwanted child may have been removed, but not the pain. I have yet to see a woman who has had an abortion not suffer in torment after killing her unborn child, although many years, and even decades, have passed since her having an abortion. Additionally, and this may be viewed by some as merely anecdotal, I have noticed that women who have had D&C after a miscarriage or have had an abortion end up with less ability to complete a pregnancy later in life, no matter how much they already want to have a child, and this, in my analysis, may have something to do with how their uterine walls have been affected by the scraping and other procedures done during a D&C or an abortion. (Let a medical doctor verify this observation.)

There are ways to feed and raise a child, unwanted he or she may be. Consider giving the baby up for adoption. There are institutions that can help save an unwanted baby by helping the mother find suitable adoptive parents for her unwanted baby. In doing this, the woman is spared from the physical and emotional trauma abortion can cause her, and the baby is given a chance to live.

At Grace To Be Born, one of the seven ministries of the Kerygma Family that help pregnant women in crisis, several babies have been saved from abortion. Call 725-9999 for counseling and help or visit its website at http://kerygmafamily.com/modules/counseling/.

Life comes from somewhere greater than what our human bodies can produce. You and I are alive not merely because our cells regenerate, not merely because our lungs process our inhalation and exhalation, but because there is a force beyond us that put life into our bodies. That same force moves the stars and planets, galaxies, and the spaces in between. That force is greater than us humans. It is a force that creates, a force that sustains, a force that can provide love where there is no love. It is a force that can feed a child and his/her mother, for as long as the mother doesn’t lose hope. To kill through abortion is not the solution. To tell someone that it is the solution reveals the state of the heart of the one prescribing abortion.

What we need to tell our people who are considering abortion is what life means. When new life is created, whether willingly or unwillingly, let us tell them what options there are wherein this new life is sustained.

—

This article is first published in the tabloid, People’s Tonight, and online in Journal Online.

About the Author: Ruby Ann Kagaoan is a published author, book editor, composer-singer-pianist, poet, essayist, nationally awarded playwright, journalist, educator, and English trainer. Her column, Pinay@Heart, is published regularly at Journal Online. She blogs at pinay@heart.

On the refusal of RH bill supporters to admit that their pet bill supports abortion

2011-09-14T16:31:00.001+08:00

From Journal Online:

Missing the point

Bishop Teodoro Bacani

The arguments for or against the RH bills both in the Lower House and in the Senate continue unabated. I notice, though, that the pro-RH people in general do not get or refuse to get one of the major objections against the bill. It is this: The so-called contraceptives to be purchased and distributed by the government to the poor are not only contraceptives. They are, in fact, abortifacients.

We who oppose the RH bill do not equate contraception with abortion. We know the distinction very well. When ovulation is prevented or when fertilization is prevented, you have contraception. But when the pill, device or procedure do not only prevent ovulation or fertilization but prevent the implantation of the fertilized ovum or to dislodge from the uterus the already fertilized ovum, you are already talking of abortion. Now, many of these so-called contraceptive devices (pills, IUDs, injectables, and implants) are precisely designed to prevent the fertilized ovum from implanting itself on the uterine wall. The IUD would dislodge the fertilized ovum already implanted on the uterine wall (endometrium).

This third abortifacient function of these contraceptives was not yet known when Humanae Vitae was issued in July 1968. This encyclical-letter very strongly rejected abortion. It also rejected explicitly direct contraception. It was this rejection of all direct contraception which became very controversial then and up to the present. But even those who would disagree with the Pope in his rejection of all direct contraception have no grounds for accepting direct abortion. After the encyclical, the abortifacient effect of many pills came to be known: They do not only prevent conception; they also prevent the implantation of the fertilized ovum. Attacks on papal authority or on the binding force on Catholics of the papal teaching against contraception, therefore, are no argument in favor of the RH bill. The most objectionable part of this bill is not its promotion of contraceptive devices but its proposed dissemination by the government of contraceptive devices which are abortifacient.

To a person, all the proponents of the RH bill claim they are against abortion, and that the bill does not promote abortion. Why then do they propose in the bill the dissemination by the government of devices which are abortifacient?

Some would say that there are opinions from authoritative bodies that the contraceptive devices are not abortifacients since those bodies say that conception begins at implantation.

The answer to that is: The majority today still hold that conception happens at fertilization and not at implantation (which takes place about a week after fertilization). But even if we admit, for the sake of argument, that there is a division of opinion, there is no sound ethics that will admit the direct killing of what is at least probably a human being. When there is any serious doubt at all about the existence of a human life, it is ethically wrong to kill that life. For example, you do not shoot at what seems to be an animal hiding in the bushes if there is at least a probability that it may be a human being and not an animal. Likewise, an embalmer should not embalm a body which may still probably be alive.

This is what the proponents of the RH bill seem to ignore or are ignorant of.

Once they look at this argument in the eye, they will be left only with proposing the dissemination of condoms or spermicides or those pills which will be certified as not capable of preventing the implantation of the fertilized ovum. I do not think they will relish that prospect.

But in all this matter, we should all seek divine guidance. We should pray for our enlightenment and the enlightenment of those who propose or support the bill.

More than for enlightenment, we should also pray for the courage to do what is right and not vote for a bill simply because the party bosses say so.

Respect for life must never be sacrificed for anything else

2011-09-14T16:22:00.002+08:00

From Bobit Avila's September 10, 2011 column for the Philippine Star:

“Dear Bobit, Thank you for your column in the Philippine STAR Sep. 3, 2011. I particularly take into focus the subject matter of Sen. Miriam Santiago. It is very clear she covets this position as an international judge in The Hague. It is also obvious she wants to cap her career in this institution. One wonders what principles one has to sacrifice to obtain a prize for one’s self. Is she sacrificing respect for life as enshrined in our Constitution by supporting the RH bill because this position is being dangled to her?

The new revelations in the Senate on the RH debate show the extent of foreign lobbying for the passage of this RH bill. Lobby groups who were once hidden from the public eye are now exposed with their policies promoting abortion to the world as rights. I shudder to think the good Senator doesn’t have an inkling on this scenario. She is too intelligent to miss this point. Or is she closing her eyes because she desires the position so much? May God help our country. Douglas Gacasan.”

At this point, there is some good news that Sen. Santiago has publicly admitted that the RH Bill still needs to be cleaned up of all references to population control. During last Monday’s interpellation she even said “The United States dictated policy on population control was ‘anathema’ to herself and the other RH bill sponsor Sen. Pia Cayetano.” Perhaps our prayers and rosaries for those supporting the RH bill have given them a new enlightenment that the RH bill is unnecessary, anti-life and anti-God!

The imperialist undertones of the RH bill

2011-09-14T16:17:00.000+08:00

The Leftists and RH bill

Changing World

By BERNARDO M. VILLEGAS

MANILA, Philippines — I am very familiar with the leftist movement in this country because some of its leading lights such as Jose Maria Sison hatched the Kabataan Makabayan (KM) in the late 1960s and early 1970s in one of the rooms of the house of my parents in Singalong. My brother Edberto M. Villegas was one of the founders of KM and was especially active in the underground movement against the Marcos dictatorship.

In fact, Eddie was imprisoned and tortured in Camp Crame for about two years. I used to visit him and admired him for his patriotism while remaining critical of his Marxist beliefs. He has been a long-time professor of political economy and social studies in the UP system of schools (his last assignment was as Chair of the Social Studies Department of the UP Manila campus). Ever a scholar and academic, he still teaches at the UP even after having retired a few years ago.

Although his radical views about the market economy might have mellowed a bit, moving towards the German model of the social market economy, he is still very much a fierce fighter of imperialist forces that threaten Philippine sovereignty.

He still participates in rallies in front of the US embassy when he perceives attempts of the American government to perpetuate their colonial practices in the Philippines. I find his consistent and principled stand in great contrast with the so-called leftists in the House of Representatives who have swallowed hook, line, and sinker the anti-natalist propaganda of some American officials and private organizations.

They are either ignorant of the secret document called NSA 200 written by Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State, to President Gerald Ford in 1974, or they choose to ignore it. The document leaves no doubt about the imperialist intent of US-inspired campaigns to introduce population control programs in developing countries like the Philippines (this formerly secret document actually names the Philippines as one of the target nations for population control propaganda).

The gist of the document is that rapid growth of population in what are known today as emerging markets would threaten US long-term security because America would no longer have unlimited access to the natural resources of these nations if their populations explode.

The modern version of this fear of population explosion has spread to European countries that are suffering from the scourge of the demographic winter. Because their fertility rates have dropped to below replacement levels, many European countries are afraid of being "Islamized" or dominated by other cultures through the massive inflow of immigrant workers whom they need to man their respective economies. They are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea: they need the foreign workers but they are afraid of cultural annihilation.

I am glad Senator Vicente Sotto has questioned some of his colleagues in the Senate about the very active presence and proselytism inside and outside of the Philippine Congress of the disciples of Margaret Sanger, the birth control and eugenics campaigner par excellence in US history.

I cannot think of a better example of cultural imperialism when I see foreigners, not only Americans but also some Europeans, actively funding the pro-RH Bill lobbyists. The most sacred part of the culture of a nation has to do with attitudes and practices concerning the family, marriage and the conjugal act. The leftists in the House of Representatives, who used to rail about US imperialism in the past, are now among those who are the most active in allowing aliens to brainwash the Filipino youth so that they radically change centuries-old traditions concerning the family, especially those related to the immense value given to children.

While I criticize some of today's leftists for being blind to the imperialist undertones of the RH Bill, I congratulate them for having abandoned the theologies of revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The image of Vilma Santos playing the role of a nun inflicted with the Theology of Liberation error in the film "Sister Stella L" returns vividly to my mind every time I read about her success as a local government official in my home province, Batangas.

Thanks to the efforts of the late Blessed John Paul the Great and his able assistant at that time, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), the Church was able to exorcise the evil spirit of liberation theology. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Part II of Jesus of Nazareth, "Since that time (the 1960s), there has been a noticeable reduction in the wave of theologies of revolution that attempt to justify violence as a means of building a better world — the 'kingdom' — by interpreting Jesus as a 'Zealot.' The cruel consequences of religiously motivated violence are only too evident to us all. Violence does not build up the kingdom of God, the kingdom of humanity. On the contrary, it is a favorite instrument of the Antichrist, however idealistic its religious motivation may be. It serves, not humanity, but inhumanity" (Page 15).

For comments, my e-mail address is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph.

Who is crass and uncivil?

2011-09-13T10:48:00.001+08:00

The supporters of the RH Bill often accuse pro-lifers of engaging in "character assassination" and name-calling. Actually, pro-lifers are merely asking serious questions and calling things by their proper name, but this is too much for the partisans of the RH bill.

On the other hand, supporters of the RH bill come up with trash like this:

A deceptive bill

2011-09-13T10:40:00.000+08:00

Today's editorial cartoon on the Philippine Daily Inquirer

What would Cardinal Sin have said about the RH bill?

2011-09-12T01:26:00.000+08:00

The following speech by Archbishop Socrates Villegas has been published on the blog of the Archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan:

Missing Cardinal Sin

Reflection by Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas during the renaming ceremony of E. Rodriguez St.(Mandaluyong City) to Jaime L. Cardinal Street, 31 August 2011

Do you still care to remember Jaime Cardinal Sin? He passed away only six years ago. How time flies! How fast we forget! He would have been eighty three years old today. I wonder if people still remember. As for me, how can I forget? I will always remember and I still miss him.

Cardinal Sin had something to say about almost everything happening to the Church and Philippine society. He did not have to go to Luneta to be heard. Even if he whispered to the wall, society somehow caught his opinion, media was swift to publish and gossipers were quick to exaggerate.

I lived with him as his secretary for eighteen years. I lived with him longer than I lived with my own parents. He taught me. He guided me. He allowed me to care for him. I knew he cared for me as much as he cared for the millions who belonged to his flock. He knew the meaning of living a dangerous life. He knew the meaning of being ready to die to protect his beloved.

What would Cardinal Sin tell us about what is going on the country now? What would Cardinal Sin do about the situation of the Church and government now? Only Cardinal Sin can answer for Cardinal Sin and only Cardinal Sin can answer like Cardinal Sin.

As I remember him and as I knew him, I offer these conjectures of a nostalgic former secretary.

I close my eyes and imagine him in the car on our way to an engagement. I imagine him say: The real battle about the reproductive health bill is not with the legislature where the debates are ongoing and where the voting will be done. The real person to wrestle with is not the President who has sadly called the bill a priority bill. The real battle is in the minds and hearts of our youth. The youth are being misled by wrong teachings. The youth are like parched dry sponge. In their thirst, they absorb all and retain them regardless of the purity of source. I pity our youth. The Church cannot impose its right and authority in this highly pluralistic society. It must be willing to join the arena of public opinion, use new methods and approaches and even jejemon vocabulary to make the message of God convincing. It is not the duty of churchmen to lobby in government offices. Our duty is to teach Christ and only Christ. Our duty is to form people’s minds and prick consciences and let those formed consciences speak up in the plaza of public opinion. This is lay empowerment. This is youth empowerment. This is the church of the people not the church of bishops.

There is a problem deeper than the anti life and anti family bills in the legislature. The blasphemous art exhibits point to a deeper and more alarming issue. The irreverent calumny thrown at religious leaders are symptoms of deeper problems. It is due to the wrong understanding of freedom and the misplaced primacy that is laid on conscience.

After EDSA 1986, we all discovered a fresh breeze of freedom in the air. Lost liberties were restored and the freedom to express was held in high esteem. Freedom is indeed a noble human right and a sublime aspiration but it not unlimited. Freedom since EDSA 1986 has been abused, terribly abused. Freedom is not absolute. The limit of freedom is love. The exercise of freedom must make us more loving. If the use of freedom violates the freedom of another, it is licentiousness; it fails to love. That freedom is lewd and obscene.

There is no absolute freedom. Freedom has limits. Its limit is truth. When freedom violates or assails truth, it can no longer be called freedom. It is debauchery and brute arrogance.

Freedom must respect the law. Freedom without respect for law is anarchy. Laws do not restrict freedom. Laws help us to live in order. When life is orderly, freedom is also safeguarded.

Our countrymen who declare themselves Catholics because they attend Catholic liturgies but disregard the commandments of God and the precepts of the Church are gravely in error. To be a Catholic, it is not enough to pray the Catholic prayers. To say you are a Catholic, you must also live as a Catholic. It is not enough to act according to conscience. Before listening to that conscience, we must first insure that the conscience is sensitive to the laws of God. Conscience is not the ultimate tribunal. The Truth that God has taught us is the highest tribunal. That Truth is in the bible. That Truth is handed to us in the teachings of the Church.

How I miss Cardinal Sin! He taught me to cherish freedom but he also warned me not to raise it to a value more than it deserves. Freedom is one of the great gifts of God to men but the greatest gift is love. Use your freedom to be more loving because “the greatest is love”. Aim for the greatest. Freedom must recognize unchanging truths. Freedom must not enchain truth. Truth is the mother of freedom and it is the height of ingratitude to enslave your mother, isn’t it?

He taught me: Follow your conscience when it speaks but make sure the ears of that conscience are ever attuned to God. When a deaf conscience speaks, ignore that voice. That is the voice of error. Knowing what is right and what is wrong is not inborn. Conscience must be formed and molded unto Christ. The duty of conscience is to listen to its God so that it may be credible when it speaks.

The legacy of Cardinal Sin is freedom. Let us understand freedom in depth. The love of Cardinal Sin was the youth and children. He taught them well. I will honor him by loving those he loved and living as he lived and believing in what he stood for.

Population implosion, not explosion, is the real problem

2011-09-11T16:01:00.000+08:00

From the blog "Drawing Lines":

Solving Population?

by "Petrufied"

I borrowed R's January 2011 issue of the National Geographic because the cover page is attention grabbing, not for its photo (which is the common assumption) but for the cover blurb. "Population 7 Billion: How your world will change." At first glance, the magazine screams, "Doomsday alert! Control the population or die." When you read what's inside, however, it's another story.

The article, penned by Robert Kunzig, points out that while the number is alarming, the fertility decline poses greater effects than the population itself:

The end of a baby boom can have two big economic effects on a country. The first is the “demographic dividend”—a blissful few decades when the boomers swell the labor force and the number of young and old dependents is relatively small, and there is thus a lot of money for other things. Then the second effect kicks in: The boomers start to retire. What had been considered the enduring demographic order is revealed to be a party that has to end. The sharpening American debate over Social Security and last year’s strikes in France over increasing the retirement age are responses to a problem that exists throughout the developed world: how to support an aging population. “In 2050 will there be enough people working to pay for pensions?” asks Frans Willekens, director of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute in The Hague. “The answer is no.” (p.48)

It's a population implosion, not explosion, and it's happening in most developed countries in the world. Imagine, China's fertility rate went from 6 kids per woman in 1965 to a low of 1.5 per woman today. True, the Chinese people still make up a fifth of the world population, but has anyone paused to consider that their land is equally large too?

But let's forget the numbers--I bet this has been discussed over and over already. Truth is, it isn't the issue on implosion vs explosion that bothers me. It's the attitude most people have over the idea of accommodating more people in the planet that I find disturbing.

Kunzig writes that in India, people have been, for 60 years now, battling with overpopulation. Their weapon? Sterilizations. Can you tell me what's wrong with this picture?

The Indian government tried once before to push vasectomies, in the 1970s, when anxiety about the population bomb was at its height. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay used state-of-emergency powers to force a dramatic increase in sterilizations. From 1976 to 1977 the number of operations tripled, to more than eight million. Over six million of those were vasectomies. Family planning workers were pressured to meet quotas; in a few states, sterilization became a condition for receiving new housing or other government benefits. In some cases the police simply rounded up poor people and hauled them to sterilization camps. (p.60)

In their fear of a number, I think many people forget that the number is made up of people like themselves. You don't round up and haul your fellow men or give them incentives to let you mutilate them (and pretend it's for their health when it's really just for your fear of a number). People deserve to be educated to be independent and productive citizens. I think much of the government money would be put in better use if it is invested in the field of training workers, educating kids and producing better livelihood than it would ever be in vasectomy/tubal ligation factories. Let's not forget the dignity of the individual person--just think: what if it was you?

Almas Ali of the Population Foundation says it better: “The goal should be to make the villages livable.... Whenever we talk of population in India, even today, what comes to our mind is the increasing numbers. And the numbers are looked at with fright. This phobia has penetrated the mind-set so much that all the focus is on reducing the number. The focus on people has been pushed to the background.” (p.61)

I bring up this point because the same fear seems to be creeping into our own shores. You read it in the papers, you see it on TV, you hear it over the radio. Have you heard that radio spiel from the Popcom in which a kid complains, "Ano? Mag-aaral ako pagkatapos pa ni Ate, ni Kuya at ni Junior? 'Nay naman!"

First of all, I agree that we should raise families with prudence; however, when, despite all efforts (even with artificial contraception, conception can happen), a baby is given, is it even logical NOT to try to earn more money to send all the kids to school? It's a misplaced kind of prudence at best; it's just a lazy attitude that is not heroic at all--giving only the minimum you have to give, and taking the easiest solution to a problem, never minding if it isn't the right solution...

....

Federico Pascual: why blame the innocent for maternal deaths?

2011-09-11T15:20:00.002+08:00

From Federico Pascual's column in the Philippine Star for September 11, 2011 :

BIRTH CONTROL: My interest in the Reproductive Health debate has been waning, but I was pumped with adrenalin when no less than Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, with Sen. Vicente Sotto not far behind, stood to oppose passage of birth control measures.

Sponsors of RH bills lose points as they lose their cool when replying to searching questions on the abortive effects of birth control pills that the RH bill wants to propagate to unwitting users at great cost to taxpayers.

Maternal deaths and poverty cannot justify killing a helpless fertilized ovum (already a human being as recognized by the Constitution no less) desperately trying to cling for life in the womb’s lining made inhospitable by abortifacient pills.

If a mother could die in childbirth — a possibility even in normal cases — why blame in advance an innocent fetus and execute it?

Why blame the unborn (that did not ask to be produced in the first place) if his family is poor because of government failure to provide opportunities for jobs, education, health care and the decent amenities of normal life?

* * *

MALDISTRIBUTION: Some people drive by a squatter area and see grimy kids in the streets. They conclude that there are just too many of us and that still unborn Filipinos should not be allowed to come into the world.

The problem is actually mainly of population distribution. The population density shows that there is still ample room and resources for more people.

The problem is traceable to the government’s failure to create and spread opportunities and services so people do not flock to urban centers on the mistaken notion that only the cities can provide for life’s necessities.

Taking the line of least resistance, or because it does not know any better, the Aquino administration goes along with the multibillion-peso lobby and pushes the RH bills — in an immoral and criminal bid to kill unborn Filipinos fidgeting in their mothers’ wombs.

* * *

FALSE CLAIMS: Proponents of the RH bill claim that our population growth rate will increase exponentially without a birth control law.

This is simply not true. Data of the government itself show that the projected average annual population growth rate actually has been declining even without an RH law.

Based on the trend as analyzed in 2007 by the National Statistics Office, the growth rate was and is projected to be 1.81 percent from 2010 to 2015, 1.64 percent from 2015 to 2020, and 1.46 percent for 2020 to 2025.

The same NSO study debunks the other claim that the average Filipino household size is 10 or more and will increase without an RH law.

Data show that the average household size has been declining even without an RH law. The household size in 2007 was 4.8 persons, lower than the average household size of 5.0 persons in 2000. The National Capital Region had the lowest average household size of 4.4 persons.

Depopulating the Philippines

2011-09-11T13:08:00.002+08:00

From CBCP for Life

RH coercion in PH part of Western depopulation agenda – US prolifers

MANILA, September 11, 2011–Developing nations around the globe have been working to fight off cultural imperialism which parts of the Western world have been pushing through imposed population control — and the Philippines is not spared from this anti-life agenda, said American culture of life advocates.

“There are similarities between the situation in the Philippines and what we see in other nations worldwide — many, many millions of dollars are sent from the US and Europe to promote the RH agenda in an attempt to stop people in the developing world from having children,” said Stephen Phelan, Human Life International (HLI) Communications Director.

“The RH promoters do whatever they have to do to get these things passed — they spend their money in promotion, in getting journalists on their side, opening clinics to circumvent pro-life laws, wooing politicians who value their own power more than they do the families and culture of the nation they represent. If they can’t get what they want — which is free-of-charge and full access to contraception and abortion — passed democratically, they will use the courts or other non-democratic means to get what they want.”

The “reproductive health” (RH) issue has been the subject of numerous news reports, surveys and television debates since the start of the year, and mass actions demonstrating opposition to the RH bills have been carried out in different parts of the Philippines. And House Bill 4244 and Senate Bill 2865, both in the period of interpellation, have been taken up in both chambers of Congress consistently since President Benigno Aquino III issued a directive in August to prioritize the pending measures despite the public outcry against these from faith-based groups, civic and family organizations, and medical and child development experts.

“Ordinary people don’t want their governments passing anti-life, anti-family legislation. That’s why these measures can only be passed when government officials force their will on the people. That’s what happened in the United States in 2010 with “Obamacare” — which expanded taxpayer-funded abortions, despite massive public opposition — and it’s the same tactic President Aquino is trying now in the Philippines,” observed John Jansen, Director of Generations for Life, the youth arm of the Pro-Life Action League.

“[RH promoters] have unlimited money, and they are very patient, and they try to convince people that if they want the “respect” — really the funding — of the wealthy nations, they will do what they’re told and put structures in place to stop having children. They will exploit corruption in government especially,” Phelan pointed out.

“They know that history shows that you can sneak or force these policies through, then eventually people will come around to the idea that happiness is not in children and families, but in having more wealth and things,” the HLI official added.

Pro-lifers putting up a strong fight

He observed that the Philippine president, however, seemed “very frustrated” and embarrassed in front of international colleagues because “he hasn’t been able to force this bill through. He and his allies are promising hundreds of millions in ‘aid’ and all kinds of worldly accolades if he can just get Filipinos to do what they’re told. He has even adopted the tactic of tying legitimate reforms and development policies to the radical RH policies. It turns out that Filipinos who love life and family are more sophisticated and more united than the pro-RH crowd thought, and they are putting up a strong fight.”

This strong fight as well as the entire backdrop of the fight against “reproductive health” in the country is the subject of “The Philippines: Preserving a Culture of Life,” an HLI-produced documentary which debuted to Philippine and American audiences in August and which features interviews with prominent pro-life crusaders including Dr. Ligaya Acosta, herself a former RH believer as a Department of Health (DOH) employee for almost 30 years.

Despite the “millions of dollars” being poured into forcing RH into the local culture, significant revelations have been made at the Senate and House debates on the legislative measures, such as RH backers’ use of outdated and bloated numbers on maternal mortality and abortion rates, the admission by a pro-RH congresswoman that the RH bill is a population control measure, and the abortion advocacy of at least three pro-RH groups.

But the Philippines is not the only nation fighting imposed demographic targets and working to uphold the culture of life, Jansen stated, and people with faith especially have the necessary means to beat those forcing anti-life, anti-family values on others.

“Without a doubt, the same scenario is playing out in developing countries all over the world,” the Generations for Life official said.

“The morally decadent countries of the Western world have been pushing population control for decades, and the pro-abortion forces have seemingly no reservations about manipulating data — or even resorting to outright lies — if it serves their agenda. Opposition to the pro-life movement is extremely well-funded, and so the only way that people of faith can hope to prevail is by relying on God’s help by being devoted to prayer and penance.” (CBCP for Life)

DLSU academic and Metrobank official versus the RH bill: "No to condom economics"

2011-09-09T21:55:00.000+08:00

From the website of Business World:

Meretricious pursuits

Ildemarc Bautista

The noted economist John Maynard Keynes once said that “practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” One such economist who looms large in today’s policy debates is Thomas Malthus, who advocated limiting population growth by all means necessary to ensure the welfare of the rest of society.

Neo-Malthusians have taken up this policy as well, with the RH bill a prime example of the influence of the man. The problem is that both his views and the framework of the RH bill are, in the end, discriminatory, myopic, scientifically unsound, anachronistic, and patently ill-constructed.

His view is discriminatory because Malthusianism is ultimately biased against the poor; myopic because his vision of society puts Man at the service of wealth and not wealth at the service of Man; scientifically unsound as he fails to recognize that advances in technology can and do readily provide for the needs of an expanding population; anachronistic and ill-constructed because it fails to consider the wealth effect that stabilizes fertility rates.

Thus, the correct framework to use goes the other way -- increase wealth creation and distribution, and fertility rates will be reduced as time and energy get devoted to productive capacity rather than reproductive capacity. This phenomenon is well-documented. It is poverty that drives fertility rates up, and the solution is to address the poverty problem rather than the high fertility rate issue. As countries get rich, fertility rates go down even without government’s having to spend on population programs. Iran is a good example.

Yet here we are, with an RH bill that will require the government to buy and distribute condoms and modern contraceptives, packaging them as a social requirement. This bill thus spouts discredited Malthusian economics favoring the condom lobby, which is pushing for regulatory capture in a classic rent-seeking move to guarantee a revenue stream from contraceptive products. And what better way is there than to have a law that requires not only the government purchase of condoms and contraceptives but also the education of the markets on their use to stimulate higher product consumption, all using taxpayers’ money? In the same way that the tobacco industry did, product marketing will target juveniles via “age-appropriate lessons” to teach our children, their future markets, how to use contraceptive products by law and at our expense. Do we not we see a problem here?

Condoms and non-abortive products are not illegal in the Philippines, and we Catholics respect the rights of those who want to use or produce them. However, it’s another matter to say that we Catholics should subsidize by law what is essentially immoral and wasteful. No, sir, let the producers compete in the market rather than handing them a captive local market on a silver platter, which is what the RH bill will do.

Some will say that there has been market failure especially by the poor to reduce family size, so condoms should be distributed as a government intervention. Well, to a man with a hammer, all problems look like a nail. To people who think that high fertility rates are the problem rather than a symptom, it’s easy to see why condoms are the solution. I agree that there has been market failure, but it’s failure to create more wealth and distribute it better and not a failure by the poor to reduce family size, the latter not being a market issue.

Ergo, rather than an RH bill, the required government intervention is to make laws that expand and tap productive capacity rather than limit reproductive capacity. With rising levels of wealth, fertility rates decline and health levels improve. More jobs, better education, and a real universal health care system, not condom distribution, are what are required to address poverty alleviation.

The condom lobby should not be allowed to extract economic privileges by the hardwiring of condom purchases in our laws, a form of regulatory capture and rent-seeking that distorts the market and diverts government resources to sterile and meretricious pursuits. No, let them compete in the markets and spend on their own marketing. It’s a free country, and they can do it without an RH bill.

No to condom economics. No to the RH bill.

Marc Bautista, CFA, is head of research at Metrobank and teaches in the MS Computational Finance Program of the Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business of De La Salle University. His Web site is marcbautista.webnode.com.

The views expressed above are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official position of De La Salle University, its faculty, and its administrators.

Population control: an idea so bad and outdated...

2011-09-06T21:33:00.000+08:00

... that even many supporters of the RH bill are shying away from it.

From CBCP for Life:

Santiago acknowledges existence of Kissinger Report, says RH bill needs to be cleaned up

MANILA, September 6, 2011–Pro-RH Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago admitted Monday that the “reproductive health” or RH bill being debated by lawmakers still needs to be cleaned up of all references to population control.

During Monday’s interpellation over Senate Bill No. 2865, Santiago said a United States-dictated policy on population control was “anathema” to herself and the other RH bill sponsor, Sen. Pia Cayetano.

Santiago said they will sit down with English-language stylists to make a cleanup of the bill.

The feisty senator acknowledged the existence of National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200 authored by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger – the secret US government document that had been described as Washington’s blueprint for depopulation to ensure unhampered access to the natural resources of developing countries.

The declassified NSSM 200 states that poor countries should limit their populations to prevent anti-imperialist youth from harming US commercial interests. The Kissinger report recommends a) the legalization of abortion; b) financial incentives for countries to increase their abortion, sterilization and contraception-use rates; c) indoctrination of children; and d) mandatory population control, and coercion of other forms, such as withholding disaster and food aid unless a less-developed country implements population control programs.

Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile warned that the bill could rob the country of its “vitality,” citing the dangers of tinkering with the population.

“This bill is a clever device to put population control at the center, masked by health care,” Enrile said. “It is unclear on many things.”

Earlier in Monday’s debate, however, Cayetano said: “There is no population control in this bill.” But she said she was open to tightening the language of the bill to remove population control elements.

Sen. Vicente “Tito” Sotto III argued that laws could be subject to misinterpretation, pointing to the loopholes in the Dangerous Drugs Act that allowed the acquittal of the so-called “Alabang Boys.”

Pro-RH lawmakers have been struggling to keep a single message on population control, with Pangasinan Rep. Kimi Cojuangco admitting in the debates at the House of Representatives on Aug. 24 that the RH bill was “definitely” a population control measure.

But Cojuangco made a turnaround when Zambales Rep. Ma. Milagros Magsaysay pointed out that other RH sponsors have rejected population control. (Dominic Francisco)

Wikileaks and population control in the Philippines

2011-09-06T21:18:00.003+08:00

(See the following articles as well: Wikileaks Cable: U.S. Gov’t Largest Supporter of Philippines Population Control in Past 40 Years and U.S. Govt. Largest Population Control Promoter in Philippines.)

From CBCP for Life:

Wikileaks: US gov’t behind population control in PH for 40 years

MANILA, September 6, 2011–Washington has been behind a population-control drive in the Philippines for the past 40 years, a leaked State Department cable from whistleblower website Wikileaks revealed.

The leaked cable, authored by former US ambassador Kristie Kenney, offers direct proof for the first time of Washington’s long-armed, behind-the-scenes intervention to force developing countries like the Philippines to limit their populations.

Kenney’s July 31, 2008 cable welcomed draft legislation promoting artificial contraceptives, referring to the “reproductive health” (RH) bill, as well as Congress’ decision to allocate $3.38 million and $27 million in 2007 and 2008 for “contraceptive supplies” in the wake of the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) decision to “phase down support for condoms, pills, injectable contraceptives and intra-uterine devices.”

“Landmark appropriations and draft legislation reflect increasing commitment within the Philippine Government to further expand and sustain programs started forty years ago with U.S. Government’s assistance through USAID,” Kenney said.

“The U.S. Government continues to be the largest donor in the Philippine population sector supporting efforts to improve local government service delivery and increase private sector contributions to family health outcomes,” she added.

Kenney noted that USAID’s funding for “population and family planning” in the Philippines had gone up to $15 million annually. “The U.S. Government continues to be a leader in population assistance to the Philippines,” she said.

USAID was also helping manufacturers lower the prices of contraceptives, she said.

“In parallel, within the private sector, USAID technical assistance enables pharmaceutical companies to launch lower-priced contraceptive products, and to expand choices among consumers with more brands on the market,” Kenney said.

Echoing Henry Kissinger’s infamous National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200, Kenney’s cable noted that the Philippines is already the twelfth most populous country in the world, and is “expected to double its population size by 2044.”

NSSM 200 or the so-called “Kissinger Report” – the declassified document that uncovered Washington’s coercive population control policies – identified the Philippines among several high-population-growth countries that should be subjected to depopulation to protect US commercial interests.

Kissinger, who served as Secretary of State, had warned that population growth in less-developed countries could hamper US access to natural resources.

NSSM 200 recommended a) the legalization of abortion; b) financial incentives for countries to increase their abortion, sterilization and contraception-use rates; c) indoctrination of children; and d) mandatory population control, and coercion of other forms, such as withholding disaster and food aid unless a less-developed country implements population control programs.

During Monday’s Senate debate on the RH bill pro-RH Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago admitted that the RH bill still needs to be cleaned up of all references to population control.

Acknowledging the existence of the “Kissinger Report,” Santiago said a United States-dictated policy on population control was “anathema” to herself and the other RH bill sponsor, Sen. Pia Cayetano.

Kenney has drawn the ire of the Aquino administration for another cable in which she described the late president Corazon Aquino as a “tarnished” and “weak” icon of democracy. In response, Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario said Kenney, who is now assigned to Bangkok, was a “dismal failure” in the Philippines. (Dominic Francisco)

More proof of the pro-abortion agenda behind the RH bill

2011-09-06T00:24:00.001+08:00

From CBCP for Life:

Exposed: Three pro-RH groups backing legalized abortion

MANILA, September 5, 2011–At least three non-government organizations have been found to be espousing the legalization of abortion in the Philippines, as senators resumed floor debates on the controversial “reproductive health” (RH) bill Monday.

One of the sponsors of Senate Bill No. 2865, Sen. Pia Cayetano, did not deny that groups such as the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP), the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR), and Likhaan have been campaigning for legalized abortion, under interpellation by Sen. Vicente Sotto III.

Sotto pointed out that FPOP got US$617,000 (P26 million) in funding from the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) – the world’s largest abortion provider – last year.

FPOP’s website carries a document titled “Medical and Service Delivery Guidelines for Sexual and Reproductive Health Services,” which describes medical and surgical methods for inducing abortion.

“[E]fforts should be made to inform the public that abortion is safest when performed early, and women who seek abortion should be encouraged to attend as early in the pregnancy as possible,” the document on the FPOP website states.

FPOP is also on the listing of “Sexual Health Services and abortion clinics Worldwide” by the Dutch abortion group Women on Waves (WoW). WoW takes women aboard hired ships to undergo abortions in international waters, to escape national laws banning abortion.

WoW states on its website: “If you live in a country where there is no access to safe abortion services and you would like to obtain a medical abortion with Mifepristone and Misoprostol, please go to Women on Web. This is an online medical abortion help service that refers to a doctor who can provide you with a medical abortion.”

Mifepristone and Misoprostol are abortion drugs, and both are not legal in the Philippines.

Providing how-to instructions for abortion

Likhaan, meanwhile, published last year a Filipino translation of the book “Where Women Have No Doctor,” Chapter 15 of which has a section titled “Mga Ligtas na Paraan ng Pagpapalaglag.” The book is available to the public on the Likhaan website.

“Tinatanggal ang binubuntis sa pamamagitan ng paghigop, gamit ang ispesyal na tubo (cannula) na pinapadaan sa puwerta at cervix pa-pasok sa matris. Puwedeng gawin ito na hindi pinapatulog ang babae, pero minsan, iniiniksyunan ng gamot sa cervix para makatulong sa sakit. Sa manu-manong proseso (manual vacuum aspiration o MVA), tinatanggal ang binubuntis sa pamamagitan ng ispesyal na heringgilya (syringe). Kung hindi, gumagamit ng maliit na makinang de-kuryente,” the book states.

“Mayroon na ngayong mga gamot na nagagamit ang mga doktor at health worker para magpalaglag. Pinapaimpis ng mga gamot ang matris at pinipiga palabas ang binubuntis. Ang ilang gamot ay nilalagay sa loob ng puwerta … ang ilan ay iniinom, at ang ilan ay iniiniksyon. Kung tama ang gagamiting gamot o kumbinasyon ng mga gamot, ligtas at mabisang paraan ito,” it adds.

Pushing abortion acceptance despite being unlawful

The Manila- and Amsterdam-based WGNRR, headed by UP professor Dr. Sylvia Claudio, talks about its “Abortion Rights Advocacy” on its website:

“Throughout its almost 30 year history, WGNRR has made abortion advocacy a priority.”

The Claudio-led group’s “specific goals” include the investigation of “ways to improve access despite the law,” sharing of “experiences and strategies about how to confront religious fundamentalists,” and finding the “best practices for linking abortion rights to other social justice and human rights campaigns.”

Sotto pointed out that the RH bill provides an “open door” to abortion – Section 3 paragraph i. The provision states: “While this Act does not amend the penal law on abortion, the government shall ensure that all women needing care for post-abortion complications shall be treated and counseled in a humane, non-judgmental and compassionate manner.”

“People and organizations behind it, as far as I’m concerned, are the difficulties I am encountering [in this bill],” Sotto said.

“IPPF has lobbied worldwide for the legalization and repeal of all laws preventing legal access to abortion,” he added.

In reply, Cayetano said: “The fact that an organization has made statements inconsistent with public policy does not prevent them from making statements consistent [with public policy].”

Using a poor analogy, the pro-RH senator said that even if Osama bin Laden supported policies against climate change, environmentalist Sen. Loren Legarda wouldn’t want to be associated with the brains behind the 9/11 attacks.

Sotto, however, retorted: “Climate change – everybody will agree to that. Eh ito contraception and abortion eh!” (Dominic Francisco)

On Sen. Defensor-Santiago's appeal to "the right to privacy": a reminder from Bobit Avila

2011-09-05T17:49:00.000+08:00

From Bobit Avila's most recent column:

In her “Right to privacy” statement more than a week ago, Sen. Santiago quoted two known US cases, Griswold vs. Connecticut and the famous Roe v. Wade ruling in the early ’70s that allowed abortion rights in the United States. But what she did not clarify to the public is that Justice Harry Blackmum who declared that abortion is a “fundamental right” under the US constitution said very clearly, “Abortion is a fundamental right because if falls under the ‘penumbra’ of the right to privacy.” So in the end, we can see that Sen. Miriam is pushing for the Philippines to adopt laws on abortion!

What Sen. Santiago also failed to inform us is that Norma McCovey, the original litigant of Roe vs. Wade (she used the pseudonym, Jane Roe) confessed to the grievous mistake she had committed and has since joined the Pro-Life Movement in the US since 1995 and has been working to overturn Roe vs. Wade with no success as evil had finally taken its roots in the US.

As the pro-life movement has been saying all along: oral contraceptives can cause cancer

2011-09-05T17:21:00.001+08:00

See also this article from ABS-CBN: Hormone pills on list of carcinogens

From CBCP for Life:

WHO agency 2011 report retains pills on list of carcinogens

MANILA, September 3, 2011–Researchers under the World Health Organization (WHO) have again confirmed that oral contraceptives can directly cause cancer – in another setback for lobbyists seeking billions of pesos in yearly taxpayer-funded subsidies to distribute pills for free nationwide under the “reproductive health” (RH) bill.

A monograph released just this year by a working group under the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) made an “overall evaluation” that “oral combined estrogen–progestogen contraceptives are carcinogenic to humans.”

The 2011 report classified the pill as a “Group 1” carcinogen, which means the highest level of evidence of cancer risk.

Other Group 1 carcinogens include asbestos, arsenic, formaldehyde, and plutonium.

“There is sufficient evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of oral combined estrogen–progestogen contraceptives. Oral combined estrogen–progestogen contraceptives cause cancer of the breast, in-situ and invasive cancer of the uterine cervix, and cancer of the liver,” the 40-page section on oral contraceptive pills of the WHO-IARC monograph said.

This is the third time the Lyon, France-based IARC evaluated the carcinogenicity of pills, after earlier working groups formed in 1988 and 2005. Monographs were published in 1989 and 2007.

Synthesizing its review of scientific findings on the pill, the 2011 IARC monograph said: “A large body of evidence was evaluated for several organ sites, among which the Working Group concluded there are increased risks for cancer of the breast in young women among current and recent users only […].”

There was also increased risk for “in-situ and invasive cancer of the uterine cervix, and for cancer of the liver in populations that are at low risk for HBV [Hepatitis B virus] infection (this risk is presumably masked by the large risk associated with HBV infection in HBV-endemic populations),” the report said.

“In addition, for cancer of the uterine cervix, the magnitude of the associations is similar for in-situ and invasive disease, and the risks increase with duration of use, and decline after cessation of use,” it added.

While there are risks for breast, uterine cervix, and liver cancers, pills were considered “protective” against endometrial and ovarian cancers. But this was not enough to alter the WHO-IARC’s overall evaluation that oral combined estrogen–progestogen contraceptives are highly carcinogenic to humans.

The US National Cancer Institute, in an online fact sheet, had also acknowledged that pills could cause breast cancer, advising women “who are concerned about their risk for cancer … to talk with their health care provider.”

Pro-life groups have called on RH bill lobbyists to bare information on the dangerous side effects of pills and other contraceptives such as the IUD to the public, noting that the RH bill is being pushed under the pretext of “access to information” and “informed choice.”

Latest government data showed that only 16% of Filipino women use the pill. Only about 60% of pill users know about “possible side effects.” It was unclear what side effects were discussed by government health workers, and whether women were informed that pills are carcinogens. (Dominic Francisco)