I have heard about this bill being discussed here in the Philippines for a long time. It is only now when I actually got to read it. For a backgrounder for non-Filipinos, our country is quite conservative in relation to the rest of the world, possibly due to our Roman Catholicism. Our country is one of the very few where divorce is not allowed. Instead we have annulment which is very tedious and very costly as well.
As for birth control, our country basically is against abortion but quite open to other forms of birth control. The problem though is that sometimes in very rural areas, this technology has not been properly propagated. I heard of some stories about the innocence of some Filipino’s after even being taught birth control by the use of a condom. When some people went to a certain rural area, the people there were taught on how to use the condom, but since a real penis could not be fitted with a condom to be used an example, the lecturer had used his finger instead. After a few months, the lecturer was surprised to find out that there were still a lot of women being pregnant. The lecturer wondered why and found out that instead of fitting the condom on the husband’s penis the people had fitted the condom on their finger.
The Catholic Church is always being blamed for its stance against birth control. Personally speaking, I have yet to meet a person, male or female who has told me that he/she does not use contraception because she is afraid to commit a sin. Usually, they do not use contraception because they are just plain lazy. Another reason is that condoms do not feel good. They say it is like taking candy with the plastic wrapper on. On the other hand if the government can not teach birth control due to the church’s influence on the government that is a different matter. Sometimes some religious groups will try influencing their participants on who to vote for.
Onward to the “Reproductive Health Bill”
Coverage of RH. (1) Information and access to natural and modern family planning (2) Maternal, infant and child health and nutrition (3) Promotion of breast feeding (4) Prevention of abortion and management of post-abortion complications (5) Adolescent and youth health (6) Prevention and management of reproductive tract infections, HIV/AIDS and STDs (7) Elimination of violence against women (8) Counseling on sexuality and sexual and reproductive health (9) Treatment of breast and reproductive tract cancers (10) Male involvement and participation in RH; (11) Prevention and treatment of infertility and (12) RH education for the youth.
sounds reasonable to me
from the same webpage:
Smear offensive
Rep. Edcel C. Lagman
THERE IS A CONTINUING campaign to discredit the reproductive health bill through misinformation. Straightforward answers to the negative propaganda will help educate and enlighten people on the measure.
The bill is not antilife. It is proquality life. It will ensure that children will be blessings for their parents since their births are planned and wanted. It will empower couples with the information and opportunity to plan and space their children. This will not only strengthen the family as a unit but also optimize care for children who will have more opportunities to be educated, healthy and productive.
The bill does not interfere with family life. In fact, it enhances family life. The family is more than a natural nucleus; it is a social institution whose protection and development are impressed with public interest. It is not untouchable by legislation. For this reason, the State has enacted the Civil Code on family relations, the Family Code, and the Child and Youth Welfare Code.
The bill does not legalize abortion. It expressly provides that “abortion remains a crime” and “prevention of abortion” is essential to fully implement the Reproductive Health Care Program. While “management of post-abortion complications” is provided, this is not to condone abortion but to promote the humane treatment of women in life-threatening situations.
It will not lead to the legalization of abortion. It is not true that all countries where contraceptive use is promoted eventually legalize abortion. Many Catholic countries criminalize abortion even as they vigorously promote contraceptive use like Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Paraguay and Ireland. The Muslim and Buddhist countries of Indonesia and Laos also promote contraceptive use yet proscribe abortion. According to studies, correct and regular use of contraceptives reduces abortion rates by as much as 85 percent and negates the need to legalize abortion.
Contraceptives do not have life-threatening side effects. Medical and scientific evidence shows that all the possible medical risks connected with contraceptives are infinitely lower than the risks of an actual pregnancy and everyday activities. The risk of dying within a year of riding a car is 1 in 5,900. The risk of dying within a year of using pills is 1 in 200,000. The risk of dying from a vasectomy is 1 in 1 million and the risk of dying from using an IUD is 1 in 10 million. The probability of dying from condom use is absolutely zero. But the risk of dying from a pregnancy is 1 in 10,000.
The bill will not promote contraceptive mentality. The bill does not prohibit pregnancy. Critics are mistaken in claiming that because contraceptives would be readily available, people would prefer to have no children at all. Couples will not stop wanting children simply because contraceptives are available. Contraceptives are used to prevent unwanted pregnancies but not to stop pregnancies altogether. Timed pregnancies are assured.
The bill does not impose a two-child policy. It does not promote a compulsory policy strictly limiting a family to two children and no punitive action shall be imposed on parents with more than two children. This number is not an imposition or is it arbitrary because results of the 2003 National Demographic and Health Survey show that the ideal of two children approximates the desired fertility of women.
Sexuality education will neither spawn “a generation of sex maniacs” nor breed a culture of promiscuity. Age-appropriate RH education promotes correct sexual values. It will not only instill consciousness of freedom of choice but also responsible exercise of one’s rights. The UN and countries which have youth sexuality education document its beneficial results: understanding of proper sexual values is promoted; early initiation into sexual relations is delayed; abstinence before marriage is encouraged; multiple-sex partners is avoided; and spread of sexually transmitted diseases is prevented.
It does not claim that family planning is the panacea for poverty. It simply recognizes the verifiable link between a huge population and poverty. Unbridled population growth stunts socioeconomic development and aggravates poverty. The connection between population and development is well-documented and empirically established.
UN Human Development Reports show that countries with higher population growth invariably score lower in human development. The Asian Development Bank in 2004 also listed a large population as one of the major causes of poverty in the country.
The National Statistics Office affirms that large families are prone to poverty with 57.3 percent of families with seven children mired in poverty while only 23.8 percent of families with two children are poor. Recent studies also show that large family size is a significant factor in keeping families poor across generations.
Family planning will not lead to a demographic winter. UP economics professors in their paper “Population and Poverty: The Real Score” declared that the threat of a so-called demographic winter in the Philippines is “greatly exaggerated, and using it as an argument against a sensible population policy is a plain and simple scare tactic.”
The National Statistical Coordinating Board projected that a replacement fertility of 2.1 children per couple could be reached only by 2040. Moreover, despite a reduced population growth rate, the effects of population momentum would continue for another 60 years by which time our total population would be 240 million.
Humanae Vitae is not an infallible doctrine. In 1963, Pope John XXIII created the Papal Commission on Birth Control to study questions on population and family planning. The Commission included ranking prelates and theologians.
Voting 69 to 10, it strongly recommended that the Church change its teaching on contraception as it concluded that “the regulation of conception appears necessary for many couples who wish to achieve a responsible, open and reasonable parenthood in today’s circumstances.”
However, it was the minority report that Pope Paul VI eventually supported and which became the basis of Humanae Vitae.
Even 40 years ago when the encyclical was issued, theologians did not generally think that it was infallible. Monsignor Fernando Lambruschini, spokesperson of the Vatican at the time of its release, said “attentive reading of the encyclical Humanae Vitae does not suggest the theological note of infallibility… It is not infallible.”
Five days after the issuance of the encyclical, a statement against it was signed by 87 Catholic theologians. It asserted that “Catholics may dissent from … noninfallible Church doctrine” and that “Catholic spouses could responsibly decide in some circumstances to use artificial contraception.”
(Rep. Edcel C. Lagman of Albay is the principal author of the proposed Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008.)
[…] thegreymouser wrote an interesting post today on […]
Birth Control and the “Reproductive Health Bill”…
Medical and scientific evidence shows that all the possible medical risks connected with contraceptives are infinitely lower than the risks of an actual pregnancy and everyday activities. The risk of dying within a year of riding a car ……
Please join the lively debate and discussion on this topic over at Filipino Voices
Is the Reproductive Health Bill Unconstitutional
Resolved: That Abortion Be Decriminalized
Remove the Anti-poor Bans on Divorce and Abortion
When Does Human Life Begin?
The Catholic Magisterium on Contraception
Support the Reproductive Health Bill
Some Fallacies in the Reproductive Health Bill Debate
We’d love to hear your opinion on this crucial national issue.
For families in countries with no population problem, or an opposite problem (i.e. declining population growth), like Singapore, having more children is strictly an economic question.
I think population is an important economic variable–especially in a poor country. However, dealing with the issue of population growth, especially in the Philippines, becomes a cultural and religious debate, when it shouldn’t be.
Interesting reading on abortions:
Click to access PhilippinesUPIA.pdf
An excerpt: (emphasis mine)
This reproductive bill should also be examined from an economic angle primarily.
i feel that women should be given more access to contraceptives like the pill and injectables. that way, even if they have asses for husbands who refuse to use a condom for ‘sensation’ related reasons, they won’t necessarily get pregnant.
also, the government has a role to play because injectables (which are good for 3 months) may not be within the budget of those who need it.
Agree. But don’t expect the women’s groups to bring this up–shifting the onus to the male libido, and tuen more circular debates ensue.
i read about it in a report issued, where one of the authors was one of our professors at up law. they were looking at how the policies of a past manila city administration made it difficult for women to procure artificial contraception.
before, women could get the injectable from a barangay clinic. when that particular administration took over though, this was stopped, which made it quite difficult for these women to engage in family planning.
I hope that in the case of Manila, the admin wasn’t just trying to score brownie points from the Church for political purposes.
Meanwhile, whatever the motivations, the results are undeniably: higher population and more illicit abortions.
My mom had an abortion because she was suspecting she’ll have a baby girl again.
My aunt had several abortions after 4 kids.
My cousin also had several abortions, but her jerk husband became a born-again christian so now they have more kids. All their abortion sins have been forgiven daw because he is now a born-again. Stupid jerk!
I hope that more traditional sexist chinese couples would just abort their baby girls rather than let them live only to oppress them.
Many years ago there was an ad to promote a brand of television and oddly the pitch went something like this: “Stop the population explosion buy a television”. The rationale for the pitch is’nt hard to discipher, i.e., if a couple had a television at home they will have some diversion which can take their minds away from copulating. It is logical to think that the target of that ad then were the poorer segment of Filipinos because obviously the wealthy already have televisions to be begin with and they have other more important things to do than merely watch TV to divert their minds from having sex. You know what, I think the same holds true today, not that television is the answer to the population explosion, but that poor people tend to copulate more than the affluent simply for lack of anything better to do. This is why you see so many children in the slums together with older people who do nothing but just sit and chat the whole day. It has been a while since television was a rare item among the poor but despite the deluge of TV sets in the poor areas (you can see that in the smallest shanty now a TV antenna protruding from a window or on top is a common feature) and despite the contraceptives given freely then, the population explosion went on unabated or perhaps even worsened. To my mind over population is not so much the reason for our poor economy, rather it is our poor economy that is the reason for over population.
[…] October 24, 2008 by Doc A follow-up to our previous discussion. […]
[…] affair in question was the ‘RH bill’. From the same website, but from another author. https://thecriticalthinker.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/birth-control-and-the-reproductive-health-bill/ There are of course other things which ‘decent Catholics’ are not supposed to do, […]