Message of the Archbishop of Cebu to the House of Representatives

This message came out today

The Varsitarian has published an article about this statement: Cebu archbishop hits RH bill, warns vs 'contraceptive mentality'

The Varsitarian Editorial on the misunderstood PMA position paper

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.”

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

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:

From the State of the Soul of the Nation Address

From CBCP for Life. Emphases (via underlining) mine.

(UPDATE: A more detailed article can be found in the website of the UST Varsitarian: 'State of the Soul of the Nation' Address: Faith and democracy can coexist'.)

SSONA affirms people’s hope, issues call to President P-Noy

MANILA, July 25, 2011–Several hours before President Benigno Simeon Aquino III was to deliver his first State of the Nation Address (SONA), a crowd of some 1,500 gathered at a historically significant place to take part in a “Congress of the Faithful” and listen to designated representatives of the Pro-Life Coalition deliver its own “State of the Soul of the Nation Address” (SSONA).

From the Corazon Aquino Kalayaan Hall of Club Filipino, where former President Corazon Aquino –the current President’s late mother—took her oath as president after the 1986 Edsa revolt, former Senator Francisco Tatad started the Address on a firm but reassuring note:

“We gather here today in our own name, and in the name of all Filipinos who want to live in truth, justice, freedom, peace and love – in a country that fully recognizes and respects the inviolable dignity of every human person, the State’s irrevocable duty to every citizen, and God’s unfailing providence, from which ‘all blessings flow.’”

He stated that the event was being carried out not to dispute or nullify the President’s words in his SONA, nor was it to imply that the Club Filipino address was the “true SONA,” but “to examine our objective national condition, express our faith and hope in the good things to come and give voice to our just anxieties and fears about the new challenges we face and many recurring ills.”

‘We swear allegiance to the same Constitution’

“We affirm the same truth about man, and profess the same commitment to human life, the family and marriage, which both the Church and the State are totally committed to protect and defend,” he said.

“We swear allegiance and loyalty to the same Constitution, and the same flag, and we claim the same rights and stand by the same duties as citizens.

May [the President] succeed in rekindling our people’s faith in his ability to inspire and lead them along the right and righteous path.

‘Soul of our nation’

We want to listen to the President. And we want all our countrymen to hang on to his every word. But we ask the President and the entire government to listen to us as well in the true spirit of give-and-take.

Before giving the floor to the succeeding speakers, Tatad explained the context in which the Address was crafted.

“By the phrase ‘the soul of our nation,’ we mean the transcendental, moral, intellectual, spiritual and religious qualities that define our being as one people, that bind us together and make each one of us a part of the other in a covenant with the same providence, and assure us that God was speaking to us when he said, “Hearken to my voice, for I will be your God, and you shall be my people” (Jer 7: 23).

Among the speakers who highlighted the call to the President to manifest a deeper faith in the nation’s human resource and to respect fundamental human realities was Pastor Reyzel Cayanan of the Baptist group Biblemode Youth.

Invest in a robust population; respect laws on marriage, life

“We are a young nation with a robust and vibrant population. This is our primary and ultimate resource, our basic and abiding strength. We only need to invest in it and develop it.

“We are a nation of believers, and that is a source of an even greater strength,” Cayanan continued.

“Contrary to the error insisted upon by the dogma of political correctness, faith and democracy can coexist, without one harming the other. For as Alexis de Tocqueville points out, ‘despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.’”

“We must reject the proposition that we could enact a law – any law – that removes the most fundamental area of human behavior, such as the intimate exercise of the procreative and unitive aspect of every marriage, from regulation of the moral law,” he said.

Eleanore Palabyab, M.D., president of Doctors for Life, asserted that the more serious kind of corruption than the kind on which the President’s campaign message is hinged—was the rejection of the laws of God and the twisting of moral principles merely to satisfy the dictates and whims of the flesh.

“Aming dalangin na maging malinaw sana sa ating Pangulo ang kanyang tungkulin na ipagtanggol ang buong katotohanan tungkol sa kabanalan ng pamilya, pag-aasawa at buhay,” Palabyab said.

Other speakers during the SSONA were former Congressman Bienvenido “Benny” Abante, former Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) chief Bro. Rolando Dizon, Soldiers of Christ elder Erlinda Arcadia, and World Youth Alliance Asia-Pacific (WYAAP) regional director Renelyn Tan.

Besides matters of life, family and marriage, also taken up during the over two-hour SSONA were the state of the economy, the poverty picture, the plight of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), peace and order, education, health care, environmental concerns, agrarian reform, foreign affairs, the fight against corruption, and electoral reforms.

The SSONA was preceded by a Eucharistic celebration at nearby Santuario de San Jose Parish. Officiating the mass was Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo together with other clergy; the homily was delivered by healing priest Fr. Fernando Suarez.

Various faith-based groups, socio-civic organizations and youth representatives marched from the church to Club Filipino, with some youth groups staging dynamic demonstrations of pro-life sentiments right outside the club. (Diana Uichanco)

The Reproductive Health bill and Statism

The UST Varsitarian's latest editorial:

RH bill: Spawn of statism

A DIFFERENT show of people-power was staged last March 25 at the Quirino Grandstand when the clergy and religious, pro-life groups, and the Church as a whole gathered to call for the abolition of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill.

During the Mass, attended by some 200,000 to 300,000 people, Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales called for respect for life and the junking of the RH bill. Cardinal Rosales said that despite the bill’s avowals of “responsible parenthood” and “sexual responsibility,” its bias for contraception and “safe sex” is very evident, so that it is hardly expected to foster authentic responsibility and discipline, two virtues, he said, that the people and the nation need. He added that people’s indifference to life, if not their utter disrespect of it, could lead to moral decay.

The Cardinal said life should be defended from conception: “Kapag hindi pinahalagahan ang buhay na iyan sa alinman o saan mang yugto ng buhay ng tao, (sanggol, fetus, matanda, malakas, o mahina) hinding-hindi igagalang ang buhay ng sinuman—at diyan kapag wala ng halaga o walang pagpapahalaga, wala ng magtatanggol sa buhay."

The Cardinal’s remarks are a re-expression of what the Varsitarian has said in its last editorial (“RH Bill: Deadly, Anti-Constitution”). Despite its claim to being a lawful measure by its invocation of supposed constitutional principles and state policies, the RH bill is mum on the most important constitutional principle and state policy that should apply on any measure that seeks to regulate births, curb population growth, and introduce sex education—that the “State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. The natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the development of moral character shall receive the support of the Government.” (Section 12, Article 2) If one pits all of the questionable provisions of the bill against this proviso, one will recognize how the bill is in fact an attack on the 1987 Constitution that had been overwhelmingly ratified by nearly 80 percent of the population! One will agree with the Varsitarian that it is “deadly,” “anti-life,” “anti-family,” and “anti-constitution.” One will recognize that the RH bill is an attack on human dignity and the Filipino nation!

Oh, but contraception is not abortion, the RH bill proponents maintain. But only the truly dense cannot see through their smokescreen, their lie. In the first place, the bill makes a blanket approbation of all contraceptives, which it wants to be declared as “essential” medicines. Some of these contraceptives are technically abortifacients, even physicians admit that. Moreover, the bill compels medical workers to provide services to women suffering post-abortion complications, which is a condonation of abortion and violates the penal statutes on the crime. Much as mercy and compassion should be extended to women suffering from complications arising out of abortion, wouldn’t a law that forces medical practitioners to extend services to them, regardless of established ethical medical protocols, encourage other women to commit abortion, which is a criminal act? In short, doesn’t the RH bill in fact abet criminality?

Meanwhile, UST, maintaining its Catholic nature and character, released a statement last March 24 opposing the RH bill, saying it violates conscience and tramples upon religious freedom.” It said that any government-sponsored responsible parenthood program should be motivated by an “option for life and not against it. Backing the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ stand, UST said natural family planning was the better option as it is “not only pro-life but also pro-poor and pro-women, since it does not endanger people’s health.”

UST is specifically opposing provisions in the consolidated RH bill or House Bill No. 4244, such as Section 9 which names contraceptives as essential medicines, Section 18 demanding all employers to include contraceptives in their employee’s economic package, and Section 22 that prohibits any person from “malicious engagement in disinformation about the intent or provision of this act.”

“This would mean that the purchase of contraceptives shall be the burden of all tax-paying Filipinos, even those who, in conscience, are pro-life,” UST said in its statement. “This is a violation of the freedom of religion, of freedom of conscience, and of freedom of expression.”

As much as how the mainstream media generally biased for the RH bill portray the rally and UST’s stand, both events evinced a growing awareness in the Church and society at large of the demonic ends of the bill, its utter disregard of life. Despite secularism and the pro-choice mentality of many Filipinos, it’s good to know that there are still Catholics and other Filipinos who belive in the sanctity of life and the right to life of both the born and the unborn.

Moreover, Filipinos are beginning to see the dark social-engineering dimensions of the bill. Contrary to what the authors of the bill have been trumpeting, the RH bill is not pro-poor. If it is, then there will be no need for the more than a billion of pesos that is planned to be spent during its initial phase. Filipinos are beginning to realize that the money for it would be better used to address directly the education, food and health needs of the poor. After all, the poor need food, clothing and shelter, not condoms and contaceptives. Filipinos are beginning to see that the RH bill authors and supporters are really Stalinist legislators who see the poor as sex-starved rabbits and blame the poor for their poverty.

In fact, family planning and population control were enshrined in the Marcos Constitution of 1973. Despite the widespread implementation of the draconian birth control law, poverty persisted, denying any correlation between population and poverty. On the contrary, the Philippine economy collapsed, which should show that poverty is caused, not by overpopulation (no such thing), but by corruption, mismanagement, and monopolistic and oligopolistic practices.

Now, Congress, backed by academics from the University of the Philippines (self-proclaimed leftist and nationalist) and Ateneo de Manila University (self-proclaimed democratic liberal and nationalist), both elitist and burgeoise institutions, want population control back! Their concourse should show that Statism exists, whether in the left or the right, and that Stalinists and fascists aren’t so strange bedfellows. In fact, for all practical purposes they’re cozy intimates. And from their act of consummation would issue the monstrous offspring—the RH bill, nothing less than the spawn of Statism.

The New RH Bill: Same Old Same Old....

New RH bill: Deadly, anti-constitution
(An Excerpt from the UST Varsitarian Editorial for March 15, 2011)

PRESIDENT Aquino III should be commended for dropping the reproductive health (RH) bill from his legislative agenda. But his minions in the House of Representatives just the same are prioritizing the passage of the bill. They have in fact consolidated several versions of the bill and rammed it through the process so that, despite the denial of House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte that they were rushing the bill, it’s now on its second reading and up for plenary debates. What the right hand giveth, the left taketh.

The consolidated version incorporates the President’s version of family planning, “responsible parenthood,” and further pushing the envelope, now uses the word “population,” making Edcel Lagman and his battened likes eat their word since they had been claiming before that heir original version of the bill was not a population-control measure. Considering that just about every shade and nuance of the population-control movement has been incorporated into the consolidated version, the bill is now known as “The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act of 2011.”

With 35 sections and more than 5,800 words, the bill promises to become the most extensive measure by any Congress in history, and should leave no doubt to anyone about its Stalinist conceit and social-engineering intentions. Just about every possibility of unwanted pregnancy and regeneration by the poor is checked by the bill. While ostensibly declaring it does not set “demographic and population targets,” it declares that the ideal family size is two, which is just about saying that the population growth target should be zero. (The ideal population growth for the Philippines is zero, according to RH backer and former health secretary Alberto Romualdez!) The bill adds that the state “shall assist couples” to achieve that size.

Those who say that there’s nothing wrong with this should be reminded that the state is not exactly wet behind the ears: it is after all the state and its bureaucracy that have fostered the corruption and waste that characterize the debacle that is the Filipino republic. Considering the sorry tale of the tape as far as the Philippine state is concerned, should the state, which has an overpopulation of bureaucrats battening themselves like Lagman and congressmen on people’s money, have the right to suggest, much less, declare that there’s such a thing as an “ideal” number of children for couples to have?

Much more, should the state have any right to add what follows after the bill’s arrogant discourtesy of declaring how many children Filipino couples should have: “Attaining the ideal family size is neither mandatory nor compulsory. No punitive action shall be imposed on parents having more than two children.” One should rightly cringe at that.

“Assisting” couples to attain the ideal family size wouldn’t be hard for the state since the bill sanctions just about any contraceptive means and, making free use of taxpayer’s money and funding from foreign donors that support abortion, makes them available to all. Those who argue that the bill is pro-choice but not necessarily pro-abortion should look at the bill’s liberal sanction of contraceptives, some of which even physicians admit are technically abortifacient. And they should look at sections 2 and 3 on “Declaration of Policy” and “Guiding Principles.” While the bill enshrines “reproductive health” as a “universal basic human right” and exalts “freedom of choice” – where do you find such in the Philippine Constitution? – it doesn’t mention key state policies in the charter that should be the guiding principles of any law relating to family, life, demographics, and sex education for the young, the most important of which is:

“Section 12. The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. The natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the development of moral character shall receive the support of the Government.”

Why the very telling bypass of such a very relevant constitutional policy in a bill that seeks to use hundreds of millions of pesos to shower contraceptives and abortifacients on the poor; to provide sex education to the young and teach them how to have “safe sex,” even if the education ministries, the biggest bureaucracies, can hardly teach school kids properly the three R’s; and generally to neuter the poor by mass ligation and vasectomy?

Amid the mass of words and declarations and provisions and platitudes of the consolidated RH bill, try to search for constitutional principles such as “the sanctity of family life,” “(protection of) the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception,” “promotion of social justice,” and “dignity of every person.”

So sorry, but you search in vain.

Ona, Akbayan, Jalin

Department of Health Secretary Enrique Ona, should also be praised for sticking to his job as health agent of the state and shunning outlandish stunts like the ones staged by his hopeless predecessor Esperanza Cabral, who distributed condoms at Dangwa Flower Market last year during Valentine’s Day.

Eager to strike back at the bishops who had been holding back the passage of the RH bill, Cabral found a bogeyman last year out of the increase in HIV cases to press for safe sex. Insisting that she was within her jurisdiction as a state health official, she distributed condoms near UST on Valentine’s Day. In doing so, she merely showed the arrogance of the state because Valentine’s is a Catholic feast. Apparently, she had thought February 14 was Motel Day.

Those who cry separation of church and state whenever the bishops and the clergy criticize the RH bill should learn from Cabral’s case. The constitutional provision is really a re-expression of the republican dictum, “non-establishment of religion”; thus, separation of church and state is really a prohibition against the state, not against the church. Cabral’s case shows that it is often the state that transgresses on the church. And whatever the alleged meddling of the church on state affairs is, it’s merely one that is suasive, unlike that by the state which, because of its police and taxing powers, is coercive. For example, where did the condoms that Cabral distributed in Dangwa come from? Didn’t they come from the money of ordinary people who were taxed by the state into supporting such an unsavoury stunt as condom distribution during a religious feast which is supposed to enshrine human love, not animal lust?

Meanwhile, the blasphemous stunt of Cabral last year was restaged on Valentine’s this year by the Akbayan party-list group at the Nepa Q Mart in Quezon City. Its youth arm, Akbayan Youth, is the same group that criticized UST Theology professor Aguedo Florence Jalin for giving incentives to students who would post criticisms on the Akbayan stunt and the RH bill on Akbayan’s Facebook fan page.

It is quite galling that a group that by and large receives international funding, some of them from groups that espouse “reproductive rights,” should take to task a Catholic educator who gives incentives to students doing a completely optional assignment to defend the pro-life stance of the Church against RH and safe-sex proponents. Considering too that the professor did not force his students to do the posting, even making it clear to those who support RH among his classes that they need not join the opposition to the measure, considering further that hardly anyone fails Theology (except those always absent) in UST, Akbayan doth protest too much. Hasn’t Akbayan heard of “academic freedom” and “intellectual honesty”? Jalin was teaching Social Issues of the Church and he had the perfect right, nay the responsibility, to tackle the RH bill and the threat it poses to things which the Church holds dear—the natural law, the dignity of the human person, and the sanctity of life. By urging his students to post their criticisms of RH and of Akbayan’s attack on religion through its distribution of condoms on Valentine’s, a religious feast, Jalin was merely asking them to stand up for what they believe in. To put their money where their mouth is. Which cannot be said of other educators, such as the Ateneo 14, who oppose Catholic teachings on birth control and flaunt their defiance despite teaching in Catholic schools: they put their money where their pocket is while completely chucking intellectual honesty.

Akbayan should be reminded that it is part of the administration coalition and technically, a part of government. Since it has representation in parliament and its people occupy key posts in the administration, it has no choice but to consider criticisms and opposing views. No one in power has the right to be onion-skinned.

The UST Varsitarian's Response to the Ateneo Professors supporting the RH Bill

Dishonest, mediocre, anti-poor

BY ISSUING a statement supporting the population-control bill, Reproductive Health (RH) Bill 5043, the 14 faculty members of the other Catholic university—Ateneo de Manila– betray the canker that may eat into any Catholic institution that, while inherently holy, has tendencies toward evil. Star Wars calls it the Dark Side, St. Thomas Aquinas calls it concupiscence. We simply call it intellectual dishonesty.

Since they teach in a Catholic institution, the 14 should either have the readiness to defend the Catholic position or at least have the sensitivity to refrain from doing something that would divide the Church. But not only do these self-proclaimed Catholic educators break away from the Catholic position and urge Catholics to do so: they twist Catholic teachings to suit their self-serving position.


Their distortions of the Catholic teachings on freedom of conscience and the centrality of the human person are shocking. If these teachers indeed have conscience, as they claim to be practicing in disagreeing with the bishops, it will be what the catechism calls as erroneous conscience. And what centrality of the human person are they talking about when RH bill 5043 seeks to make available contraceptives and abortifacients and pave the way for legalizing abortion by the use of millions of pesos that could otherwise go to direct provisions for maternal health and poverty? Population-control measures like RH bill 5043 look at the poor not as persons but as rabbits whose propagation must be checked. How could the poor have freedom of choice and conscience when the state, backed by hundreds of millions of pesos, compels them to take contraceptives and limit their children to two per couple? Were the Filipino poor neutered by the Marcos dictatorship and the Chinese families forced into complying with the one-child rule by the communists allowed freedoms of information, choice and conscience?


Even more shocking is the academic mediocrity of the professors. Their support for the population-control bill is backed by the intellectual school of doomsday social science, whose methods and claims have been questioned by more cautious, less panic-prone, and more socially responsible schools. A cursory review of the endnotes of their statement would reveal that their review of literature is narrow and shallow. It is as if social science had stopped with Malthus and Ehrlich.


They claim, for instance, that “a close association exists between our country’s chronic poverty and rapid population growth… [thus] curbing out population growth rate is a requisite of sound economic policy and effective poverty reduction strategy,” and that the bill aims to control population growth to arrive at a so-called “healthy” economy.


Their statement should at least belie Rep. Edsel Lagman’s claim that RH bill 5043 is a “healthcare” bill; it is not, it’s a population-control measure that harks back to the days of the dictator Marcos who enshrined family planning in the 1973 Constitution and made it a centerpiece of his “constitutional authoritarianism.”


But going back to the claim of the 14 doomsday pundits that there’s correlation between “chronic poverty” and population growth, it’s astonishing that a claim should be made when most recent literature have shown there’s none. Despite being in the academe, they have missed – or intentionally excluded? – important and authoritative studies on population and poverty that deny any link between the two.


The New York Times, Asiaweek, Far Eastern Economic Review, and Economist have declared overpopulation as among of the greatest hoaxes of the last century. Nobel-winning economists themselves such as Simon Kuznets have denied any negative correlation between population and economic growth. Meanwhile, Amartya Sen and Gary Becker have recommended that funds for birth control would be better used in directly addressing poverty.


Anti-health


But after repeating the tired litany of doomsday population economics, the 14 Horsemen of the Apocalypse just as casually turn to the alleged health benefits of a birth-control program for women, even if not a single one of them has a medical degree or any diploma remotely connected to the health sciences.
But the doctors, nurses and health professionals of UST, Human Life International-Asia, and Pro-Life Philippines know better. Pre- and post-natal care for women has nothing to do with contraceptives and abortion. Medical science can deal with pregnancy complications. If there’s high maternal and infant mortality, it is not because of unwanted pregnancy or pregnancy complications: it is because of the lack of health services. In the same manner, while many Filipinos die of TB and dengue, the public health budgets for combating these diseases are low compared to the tens of millions used for birth control, which basically looks at babies as diseases that need to be checked, contracepted, aborted.


Moreover, it does not follow that readily available contraceptives can improve the health of the people. Health experts say that pills, injectables, abortion suction, menstrual regulation machines, ligation, and vasectomy are in fact risky and could result in injuries, sickness, and even death.


It must be emphasized that “reproductive health” is not maternal health, which is the more embracing, the more medically correct concept to represent the holistic health care of women. RH bill 5043 is not a maternal health measure but a contraceptive measure: it looks at every pregnancy as “unwanted”; it looks at pregnancy as the cause and a compounding of poverty; it tries to check the fertility of women not because of any consideration for women’s health but for purposes of social engineering!


Anti-youth


Nor is the bill “pro-youth” for providing sex education to young people, as the 14 Wolf-criers claim. It would merely increase the chances of the youth engaging in the risky and reckless behavior that safe sex engenders.


Admittedly, information is the right of everyone. But could we expect quality and correct information and instruction from a government whose public education system are a shambles and whose health services are a disaster—and information and instruction for young people during their formative years? Moreover, since the paradigm and ideology of the bill itself are suspect, the course content of any instruction it seeks to provide is also suspect.


Leave sex education to the parents. They may not do a good job at it, but that’s all right since the state can’t seem to get anything right at all!


Pro-abortion, anti-life


Ah, but RH bill 5043 insists it promotes contraception to stop abortion. This is a bald-faced lie when one considers that most of the backers and their funders are pro-choice (read: pro-abortion). One of the signatories of the statement, Mary Racelis, claims in one article that “educated Catholics” should support the bill because it would curb abortions. She cites the “473,000” induced abortions allegedly performed in 2000 without even questioning the veracity of the figure. Worse, she cites the World Health Organization estimate that the abortions could have been double that figure—800,000 abortions!--without questioning how the UN body could have made such an extrapolation.


Any social scientist worth his salt or any Filipino with a modicum of education would easily make educated questions about such figures, considering that previous demographic estimates made in the name of birth control and safe sex have been widely off the mark, such as Thomas Malthus’s doomsday scenario in the 19th century of an overpopulated earth in the next century (“a libel inflicted on the human race,” said Karl Marx); Paul Ehrlich’s similar scenario in 1980 at the turn of the 21st century (he lost the wager with Julian Simon 10 years later, remember?); the projection by UN agencies and Philippine public health authorities in the early 1990’s that the Philippines would have some 10,000 HIV-Aids cases in 10 years because of low condom use (the country has only 3,000 now); the claim of gays they easily comprise 10% of the population (a projection exposed as limp); and the fantastic claim of the UN Fund for Population Assistance and the 1994 Cairo Conference that the “costed population package” to implement so-called reproductive health care services in developing countries by 2015 would total $77.7 billion with domestic contributions from the poor countries themselves who are supposedly beneficiaries of such services funding two-thirds of the cost!


Racelis and her fellow Ateneo divination experts should ask whether or not the same alarmist situation conjured by the UNFPA and Cairo is being used by the WHO, UNFPA and backers (or true authors?) of the Lagman bill to justify the initial tab to implement the RH bill—some P1.2 billion!


Jesuitical


The 14 themselves belong to an institution that has no apprehensions in getting funding from organizations that promote abortion. Together with the Packard Foundation, which promotes “safe and legal abortion” in other countries, Ateneo has put up the Health Unit—Ateneo Graduate School of Business in Leadership Innovations in Population Management. One wonders how Ateneo’s partnership with an abortion foundation dovetails with its setting up a medical school where students are supposed to make the Hippocratic Oath and uphold Catholic bioethics.


And the Ateneo Institute of Church and Social Studies has published a monograph with articles by social scientists from Ateneo and birth-control demographers from UP and other secular institutes (whose studies are cited by the Ateneo 14) that basically back the Lagman bill. The publication and the discussions were funded by a pro-choice organization.


In all of these cozy and cash-rich sleeping-with-the-enemy arrangements, Ateneo’s jesuitic nature seems to be showing indeed.


Anti-development


In any case, by equating women’s health with birth control, the 14 Grim Reapers betray their enslavement to the population ideology of the UN and its agencies and the population-control industry. They betray at least their academic mediocrity—perhaps ingrained by their arrogance—for not considering very relevant and trenchant studies that question the blurring between development and population funding.


The Ateneo professors should at least stop calling themselves “Catholic educators” or “educated Catholics.” For a truly educated Catholic view on population control, here’s the view of Cecilia Hadley and Maria Sophia Aguirre of the Department of Business and Economics of the Catholic University of America as published in the International Journal of Social Economics (2005 Vol. 32, Issue 9):


“During the last decade increasingly large amounts of money have been spent on limiting population growth of underdeveloped countries. Population control is seen as the corner-stone of development and population activities. Thus, population control has become ‘population assistance,’ and birth control has become ‘reproductive health services.’ Population control is pursued at the expense of women’s rights and to the detriment of real economic growth and social improvement.”


Moreover:


“Rather than helping countries and peoples, the continual focus on population assistance has left them desperate for other forms of aid. This focus has actually infringed upon human rights especially upon many women who do not understand the contraceptives they are being given. The large amounts of funds that developing countries are now exhorted to provide for support population measures drain resources better spent elsewhere on such things as reducing malaria and educating women. In short, ‘population assistance’ has usurped a great deal of the energy and funds of the international community without even empirical justification for such an approach to development issues and has resulted in a neglect for other areas of real need.”


We enjoin Thomasians, Ateneans, and all Catholics to be truly themselves—discerning and critical of issues, always seeking the light amid the darkness foisted on them by shadowy figures that include those who call themselves Catholics, educated, and educators. Let us all fight the grand deception of the population-control complex and reject RH bill 5043.


Editorial. Vol. LXXX, No. 5 • November 20, 2008


Illustration by Matthew Niel J. Hebrona