"Far from empowering us as women, the RH bill promotes our objectification." - Open letter by pro-life women on the RH bill

Let the Women Speak

WE are women who believe that the Reproductive Health bill, in all its past and present forms, is detrimental to us, our sex, our marriages, and our families.

WE are Catholics and non-Catholics. We are women of faith, and we are also women of reason.

WE believe in true women’s health. We believe in respecting our bodies and the natural processes with which we have been gifted.

Far from empowering us as women, the RH bill promotes our objectification. It does not address the causes of exploitation and violence against women at their roots. It does not solve the problem of men seeing us as mere sources of pleasure. It does not promote our inherent dignity as human beings worthy of respect. State-funded, state-guaranteed access to contraception only empowers those who wish to take advantage of us without having to worry about consequences.

WE do not believe in artificial birth control. Birth control does not come free. As taxpayers we will be paying for it, and as women we will be suffering its effects on our bodies. We will not tolerate the deliberate dismissal of scholarly research that shows contraception’s deleterious effects. We will not tolerate the trampling of our Constitution that says life must be protected at all stages from conception to natural death. We will not tolerate the imposition of governmental contraceptive programs meant to control the population and to brainwash our youth. We do not want the long-term effects of the sexual revolution brought about by a contraceptive mentality.

Granting that the secular government is not beholden to the Catholic or Christian faith, attempting to speak for us women via a socialist agenda destroys the very fiber of democratic breath we have as a people. Doing this undermines our freedom to adhere to something Good, Moral and Ethical. Recognizing our “reproductive” rights as women should not include FORCING us to discard our right to freely believe in morality and goodness and if we choose to, our religious tenets and doctrines.

No one speaks for all of us on these issues. We stand with the Catholic bishops and all leaders, religious and otherwise, who recognize the truth of life-affirming teachings with regard to sex, marriage and family. We call on President Aquino and our Representatives in Congress to heed the voice of all Filipino women, not just the loudest ones. We call on all our leaders to continue to allow us to freely witness to our faiths and beliefs in all their fullness.

Please send your name, address and occupation to the person who sent you this message, or to thefilipinos4life@gmail.com or to thefilipinosforlife@gmail.com. Thank you!

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A full list of the signatories so far can be found HERE

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

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.

A counselor for pregnant women comes out versus the RH bill

Plea to Filipinos: Defeat the Tyrannous RH Bill

by Fredi D'Alessio

In the following letter, a dear friend and associate warns her fellow Filipinos of what she has witnessed first hand in the West: the breakdown of morality, family and faith due to sex education and contraception. Her letter is in response to “The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act of 2011″ (commonly known as the Reproductive Health Act, the RH Act or RH Bill), which is currently being debated in the Philippines.

To My Dear Fellow Filipinos:

The unfolding possibility of the RH Bill’s passing by our government fills me with horror and foreboding because so few understand the impact that such a bill would have on our children, our families, our moral values and the future of our nation. My conscience would never let me rest if I didn’t make a small effort to weigh in with what I have come to discover while living in the United States for almost 23 years.

The birth of my grandchild when my daughter was in crisis led me to get involved with mothers in crisis pregnancies so that they, like my daughter, would choose life for their babies. After 50 million abortions resulting from Roe vs. Wade that legalized abortion in the US, there are millions of women that have suffered its devastating consequences.

In the nearly 22 years I have been actively involved with these women, I began to see so clearly that the ultimate devastating decision to abort came as a direct link to failed contraception or its ensuing contraceptive mentality. There is a tremendous array of “effective” contraceptive drugs, many of them abortifacients, and devices available to women (some as young as 12) promoted through sex education in schools, magazines and the multi-media. Yet they have only served to increase the number of abortions (1.5 million annually) and the number of sexually transmitted diseases from a handful to over 50 strains in just a little over 40 years. Condoms do not prevent the transmission of many of these strains.

I have spoken to and mentored hundreds of teenage girls and young women, not one of whom was told of her unique gifts and dignity as a woman and mother. They were very receptive to messages of abstinence and natural family planning once they understood their true meaning because they have been naturally and divinely wired to believe those truths.

These are statistics and facts, but I have had the unique experience of seeing these young women heartbroken and hurt by this contraceptive culture. Most of them come from broken homes and parents who are also products of this contraceptive age. How is it not possible to see an epidemic of pregnancies among young teenagers (14, 15, and 16 year-olds) with contraception and sex education available to all? (Day care centers are now being built at public high schools.) We see so many at the center where I work. Our modern woman is told she can finally claim her reproductive rights, but she has only become a victim to greater exploitation and worse, having been convinced that destroying her unwanted, unborn child is also her option and right.

Make no mistake; the bitter fruit of contraception is abortion and the devastation of the family. Look at Thailand, the country so successful at controlling her population through a massive condom program – she is now the Aids capital of Asia. Look at its bitter fruit in the West, with its runaway abortion numbers, countless divorces, the threat to legal marriage between a man and a woman and the spread of socially transmitted diseases that are resistant to treatment. Without the building block of healthy families, these nations will soon be ungovernable, if they are not already.

There is a quiet desperation I feel as I watch the country I deeply love go down the path so many others have gone, abandoning their Christian principles and moral roots. The poet George Santayana once said, “Those who have not learned from history are doomed to repeat it”. If we go down the same path, we will lose out greatest assets – our family values and our faith-filled people.

I urge those who have the power to do so, not to pass this bill—and for those that don’t, to pray to a much higher Power that it doesn’t. If it isn’t passed, if we can find the means to control our population the natural way without destroying our values, we will see our country blessed in ways we can never imagine. Our nation once again can show the world that a people that successfully resisted a tyrant can resist the tyranny of outside influences that seek to destroy our families. In 1986, our people fought for democracy; today,we fight for our national soul. If we do succeed, it will make People Power look like a minor miracle.

Patsy M. Sevilla-Gonzalez

Patsy Gonzalez counsels pregnant mothers at Juan Diego Society Women’s Center in San Jose, CA. She also volunteers as an “angel” for The Gabriel Project of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and has extensive experience in sidewalk counseling.

Filipino-Americans versus the RH Bill

RESOLUTION OF FILIPINO-AMERICANS IN OPPOSITION TO THE “REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH” LAW

We the undersigned, do hereby proclaim our strenuous opposition to the Philippines’ “Reproductive Health” law.

The “Reproductive Health” law, under the guise of reducing poverty, would in fact:

Take away limited government funds from treating many high priority medical and food needs and transfers them to fund harmful and deadly abortifacient and anti-family devices and programs.

Open the door to abortion on demand, encourage adultery, cause the breakup of two parent families, and increase teenage pregnancy. (1) 

Force, under penalty of the law, public and private institutions to teach “sex education” in a manner that violates the deeply rooted cultural, social, and religious norms of the Filipino people.

The Filipino-American community does not support such a law, and neither do the People of the Philippines, who when informed of the actual provisions and penalties of the “Reproductive Health,” law rejected it by a staggering 92%. (2)

Article II of the 1987 Philippine Constitution says, in part, "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.”

As Filipino-Americans we are saddened that the United States is leveraging its foreign aid to undermine the fundamental beliefs enshrined in the constitution of the Philippines.

It is with special emphasis that we the undersigned oppose the use of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS of our tax dollars by agencies of the U.S. government such as USAID (3), the Millennium Challenge Corporation (4), and U.S. funded international organizations such the United Nations Development Programme to coerce the sovereign people of the Philippines to adopt “universal access to sexual and reproductive health education, information, and services...” (5)

We recognize that “universal access to reproductive health services” is a euphemism for tax payer funded abortion on demand.

We believe that more education and better jobs, and not the extermination of the poor, is the proper way to fight poverty in the Philippines.

The Filipino-American community stands united in opposition to the “Reproductive Health” law, and to the highly unethical and coercive use by the current administration of tax payer funds to undermine Filipino culture, to undermine the constitution of the Philippines, and to undermine the deeply held religious beliefs of the overwhelming majority of Filipinos.

1 Leading secular social scientists like Nobel prize winner, George Akerlof and US National Defense Consultant, Lionel Tiger, have found that contraceptives have deleterious social effects.
2 http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/insideMetro.htm?f=2010/january/9/metro1.isx&d=2010/january/9

3 http://philippines.usaid.gov/programs/health/health-promotion-communication

4 The MCC is an agency of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government which in 2010 awarded a 5 year grant to the Philippines of $434 million. Part of this sum is being earmarked to promote “reproductive healthcare.” http://www.thepoc.net/thepoc-features/politi-ko/politiko-opinions/10213-a-us-designed-doh-family-planningprogram-growing-the-contraceptives-market.html

5 http://www.undp.org.ph/?link=goal_5

The Business Side of the RH Bill

PiNaysaAmerika's take on the RH Bill:


RH BILL - It is a big business -facts and questions.