Comprehensive Q and A on the RH bill in Tagalog / Filipino

Tanong at Sagot Tungkol Sa RH Bill 4244 - originally published in the CBCP Monitor

On keeping the Church out of the bedroom

An article written earlier this year by Teresa Tunay OCDS

'Ma, keep out of my bed!'

Quite a number of parents I know who have a good relationship with their children throw their hands up in frustration when it comes to the issue of the RH Bill.  A dear friend sounds weary telling me, “Hay naku, that subject is taboo in our home!  Mia is pro-RH.  She’s 22, studies at UP, and tells me, ‘Ma, you can tell me anything you want except go against RH.  Case closed!’ Imagine!  It makes me sooo sad!”

Another mother who is so passionately against RH Bill declined my offer of a pro-life car sticker, saying, “We have only one family car; my son will never use that sticker!”  She says that her 23-year old single, pro-RH son once and for all squelched her pro-life explanations with, “Ma, keep out of my bed!”  

Both mothers are devoted and practising Catholics, faithful to Church teachings, raised their children well, and have the sympathy and support of their husbands—typical of the happy middle class Filipino family.  And now, in their frustration, both are asking themselves, “Where did we go wrong?  They used to be such nice, obedient kids!” 

When a couple of my own nieces, in their late 20s, openly told me they were for the passage of the RH Bill, all I replied was, “Your are intelligent girls.  If you knew everything about that bill, you yourselves would fight it.”  They countered, “What’s wrong with giving maternal health services to poor people?”  Then the husband of one asked, “What else is there to know?”  I said, “Just think—if that bill were so perfect, why is it taking years to be passed?”  Long story short, he asked that I email him all background information I have about it.

So why would otherwise good and intelligent young people support such a damaging and misleading bill?  How do proponents of the bill lure to their camp well-meaning celebrities like Lea Salonga who herself admitted on TV during a debate that she does not contracept because she’d rather “leave it to God”, nor does she take the pill because “it’s bad for my voice”?  By the way, she was cut off the air at that point.

Young, supposedly smart people who openly and even loudly support the RH bill’s passage do so because they are misinformed—they are given limited information (usually about the “good side” of the bill) to tug at their heartstrings and make them believe they are doing the Filipino people some service by fighting anti-RH folks.

Others who tolerate RH Bill’s passage merely pick up information from the media—where the louder voices, as we know, are more commonly and easily heard and believed.  Few are convinced that the issue is important enough for them to read the bill, to follow the interpellation sessions, or to obtain more information from people in the know.

Worse, there is a malicious misinformation campaign aimed at establishing in the minds of the young that the RH Bill case is simply a Catholic Church vs. State issue: CBCP vs. Noynoy, Old vs. Modern, natural family planning vs. artificial, etc.  As a result many anti-Catholics, Catholics but anti-Church, and those who think themselves “cool” and avant-garde automatically judge the RH bill as commendable and put down the Church as a bunch of old fogeys and narrow-minded hypocrites who are woefully out of touch with reality. 

Enemies of the truth scheme to discredit the Church in the eyes of the young because the Church is the only institution potent enough to expose lies, defend the truth, and perpetuate the good.  The question is: how well are we arming our young people with the love of truth?      

From pro-RH bill to pro-life: a public school teacher's conversion story

From Teresa Tunay's blog:

One woman's story, as told to...

Following is the story of a public school teacher who went with friends to the Batasan to give moral support to the sponsors of the RH Bill. Here’s her account, as told to this writer:

“I am a public school teacher. I grew an interest in the RH Bill because of my friends who work in a Non Government Office (NGO) and are in favor of the bill’s passing. Ever since I learned that we women would have at last a law dedicated to our health and empowerment, I followed the developments in the news. I watched ‘Harapan’ and ‘Grand Debate’ on television. I rooted for the pro-RH side, convinced beyond doubt that I would be among the first to benefit from the RH Bill if passed. I voted online for the bill’s passing, and although I wondered why the anti-RH gathered more votes, I thought people voted against the bill because they did not know what I and my friends knew; or maybe they were nuns and society women who do not experience the same problems we lower class women do.

“I am still of reproductive age, I take the pill, and I am married to a brute. My children are aged 8, 7 and 5. When talking with my friends about the helplessness of women in our society and under the law, I would get mad and think ours is really a male-dominated society. Women who get to the top (like women in politics, business or movie stars) do so because they are born rich or beautiful and therefore have the support of men in power. They have the luck which we other women do not have, but I am not complaining. At least I finished college and have a good job; however, that does not put me in a much better place than my fellow Filipinas who never even got beyond Grade 6.

An Open Letter on the RH Bill to a Congressman

Reading between the lies

An open letter to my Congressman

by Teresa Tunay OCDS

Dear Congressman: you had for so long given us the impression that you were against the RH Bill until one day when you were identified in the papers as one of its supporters. We were shocked; we could hardly believe someone we had trusted and respected could actually espouse what this RH Bill stands for.

Sir, I have tried several times to get through to your office to express concerns aired by some of your constituents, mostly women. I say “some” because we cannot show you a million signatures opposing your stand. We are ordinary mothers, grandmothers, maiden aunts, sisters, professionals and plain housewives who only want the best for our families. And we voted for you. We had simply wanted your ear for a few minutes, but we have not been fortunate, so please understand why we are instead writing this open letter to you. We have a fair knowledge of what the RH Bill is about but none of us is a lawyer, a philosopher, a politician or a theologian, so please bear with us if our thoughts are not as organized we would want them to be. We are merely speaking from our guts.

Sir, we are not aiming to convert you for we still would like to believe that you mean well, but we do pray that the RH Bill may never be passed.

We reject the RH Bill because it is based on the premise that we do not need God to live fruitful lives. To us God-fearing, God-loving Filipinos, that is a lie. Being rooted in a paradigm that takes God out of the equation, how can the RH Bill be good for anyone? It is studded with half-truths, pseudo-truths and truthisms cleverly formulated to mimic the truth. Reading between the lies, we get this picture of the RH Bill:

• It wants us to think that human reason and human intelligence are all we need for everything to be right with the world.

• It coerces everybody else to think that way, and rejects the truth that the God who created and loves us will never abandon us.

• It is maka-hayop, not maka-tao, promoting pleasure without pain, irresponsible sex, dangerous couplings, and a hedonistic mentality that will eventually drag future generations downward to moral incoherence.

• It undermines the worth of human beings by implying that they are what their genitalia define, nothing more.

• It ridicules our faith by offering overly pragmatic solutions to perceived problems.

• It tramples upon the life-giving values—family, sacrifice, hope, compassion—that have kept our

nation afloat in spite of history’s tyranny, human greed and natural calamities.

• It intends to mislead people and then uses commendable phrases such as “reproductive health” and “responsible parenthood” to disguise its dark intentions.

• It dishonors fathers and mothers by robbing them of the right and the responsibility to rear their children according to their deeply held religious convictions.

• It reduces the question of reproductive health into a simplistic choice between natural family

planning and artificial family planning, labeling natural as unnatural and stupid and equating artificial with modern and smart.

• It spits upon the Constitution—pity that many of our lawmakers themselves would violate the

Constitution by pushing this bill! Where are they leading this country to?

• It seduces young people by instilling in them a false sense of independence and sophistication in knowing their parents will be legally helpless about their sex life.

• It anaesthetizes the conscience of the young, saying it’s perfectly okay to experiment with sex as long as they are “protected”; this is contrary to what we teach our children.

• It corrupts children by infusing in them a contraceptive mentality, giving them “sex education” too early in order to abort their maturing in the love of God.

• It deceives the women it claims to inform and empower, praising only the convenience that

contraception offers but not its deadly side effects.

• It is oppressive, maintaining the First World myth of overpopulation at the expense of our poor.

• It imposes an alien lifestyle on Filipinos, seeing children as mere mouths to feed, treating pregnancy as a sickness and unbridled sex as a human right.

• It steals from the people by using tax payers’ money to buy contraceptive devices for people who can’t and won’t control their sexual appetites.

• It tramples upon not only our freedom now, but also the freedom of future generations to raise their children according to their cherished beliefs.

• It wants to scratch out the cross from Christianity, scoffing at self-discipline, the beauty of abstinence, sacrifice for family’s sake, and fidelity to one’s spouse.

• It belittles the capacity of the Filipinos to tap their inner resources, to turn to the God within, to

transcend want and misfortune and become what God wants them to be.

Dear Congressman, this is what saddens us about your support of the RH Bill. You do not seem to see that it is not just a question of Pro-RH vs. Pro-Life, State vs. Church, Antiquated vs. Modern as your media friends would have people believe.

Do you know why we pray hard for you, sir? Because you seem unaware that you yourself are a victim in this battle between good and evil, being used as a pawn by the rich against the poor, by world powers against the impoverished nations—yes, against your own people! They are the authors of the depopulation agenda that is behind the RH Bill. Brilliant decision makers who think they know everything and therefore do not need God. They do not wish to be nudged out of the comfort zones their genius has built. (Or have you never heard of a depopulation agenda?)

Why do the rich and powerful blame us and our children for their imagined shortage in our planet’s resources? Do our poor squander fuel on automobile races, speed boats, air shows, war craft and heaven-knows-what other adult toys they invent in the name of progress? We are the great majority who do not have swimming pools in our backyards and golf lawns to water. Why don’t they turn their guns and golf clubs into ploughshares and pruning hooks for a change?

Sir, we voted for you believing you would protect our interests. Please do not betray us by endorsing a culture of death that will lead us to a national suicide. Your fellow Congressmen look up to you; please enjoin them to have faith in the Filipino, not in those predators posing as our altruistic Big Brothers when all they covet is our land. The RH Bill is coming from a place of fear, the fear of losing their worldly power and wealth. Filipinos have nothing to fear, because we have faith. In our simplicity we believe we are children of a loving Father who knows our needs and guides us to meet them—in His way.

Thank you for having read this far. We assure you of our prayers. And with all due respect, we wish to let you know that we will be giving your mother and your wife a copy of this letter.

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This article by Teresa R. Tunay, OCDS, came out in the author's column, And that's the truth, CBCP Monitor, the official publication of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, April 25-May 8, 2011 issue, page 5