Ex-health chief urge lawmakers to be firm on population bill
Activist priest scoffs at politics behind lobbying
By TJ Burgonio
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 21:29:00 07/19/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- Former Health Secretary Alberto Romualdez on Saturday asked the lawmakers not to compromise with the Catholic bishops on the reproductive health bill.
"I don't think that's an issue that the Church should interfere with. That's a social and economic policy, which is purely the business of the government. I don't think they should even say anything about that,'' he said in an interview after a press forum in Quezon City.
"Why should the House and the Senate negotiate with the Church on a social issue?'' he added.
Romualdez, who never got to implement a program to increase the budget for the purchase of contraceptives and promote the two-child policy after President Estrada was toppled in 2001, said he agreed with the intent of the bill
"My own position is, if we want to have a sensible population management program, it should be one that aims at reducing our population growth rate to zero. That can be done only with a two-child policy [that can be implemented for 10 to 15 years],'' he said.
Albay Representative Edcel Lagman, principal author of the House bill, also scoffed at the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines’ Commission on Family and Life's announcement that supporters of the bill would not be welcome to the July 25 prayer rally of the Catholic community in Manila.
"If organizers of the prayer rally on the Filipino family on July 25 do not welcome reproductive health and family planning advocates then that is their call and discretion,'' he said.
"We do not intend to gatecrash this vaudeville of misinformation. It is, however, disheartening that those who claim to be purveyors of truth, are in fact peddling misinformation,'' he added.
He said he got a copy of the "Manifesto of Filipino Families,'' which would be read and circulated on July 25, and which contained some misinformation, like claims that Congress has been railroading the bill, and laws on reproductive health would lead to abortion, among others.
"This is completely untrue. On the contrary, a rational and comprehensive national policy on family planning, which includes contraceptive use, reduces significantly the rate of abortion as documented by international studies,'' he said.
"Consequently, there is no need to legalize abortion if there is an increased usage of modern and effective contraceptives,'' he added.
In his email, activist priest, Fr. Robert Reyes said everyone should "develop the fine moral sensitivity to see and sense what is behind the current controversy.''
"While big words like life, conscience, and law are being bandied about, an imp, a little pesky god called convenience is romping about. The focus on population and threats of excommunication are convenient tools of convenience favoring those it means to favor, which unfortunately do not include the poor,'' he said.
Since Pope Benedict XVI has always been concerned about the "fast spreading culture of death,'' the debate on population management would be a "timely and convenient issue'' for the bishops to show support for him, he said.
"In like manner, the population controversy gives a bishop-friendly President a convenient opportunity to give and show her support to her bishop-friends as a sign of her profound gratitude,'' Reyes said in an e-mailed statement.
And since President Macapagal-Arroyo was friendly to the bishops, lobbying against "pro-choice'' and "anti-life'' bills in Congress would be "easy and quite convenient,'' he added.
But lost in the atmosphere of convenience were the poor who had to contend with the spiraling prices of food and fuel every day, said Reyes, called the "running priest'' for staging runs to highlight his causes and who now works for the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong.
"In all these, those who suffer the most are not heard,'' he said.
While the protagonists in the debate are heard, many poor women “will quietly use contraceptives and resort to abortions (induced and spontaneous),'' according to Reyes.
The Catholic Church will stage a series of prayer rallies this week in a bid to pressure the House of Representatives into dropping the reproductive health bill, which has been passed at the committee level in the House of Representatives.
The CBCP has met with the President to reiterate the Church’s fierce opposition to the bill, saying the measure would pave the way for the eventual acceptance of abortion in the country.
Arroyo responded by vowing to stick to her stand against contraceptives' use.
Ozamiz Archbishop Jesus Dosado has issued a pastoral statement ordering priests in his archdiocese to refuse
communion to what he called pro-abortion politicians.
Lagman and reproductive health advocates have explained that the bill seeks to control the country’s population growth, currently one of the highest in the world at 2.36 percent every year, by educating couples on their choices of artificial and natural birth control methods. To strengthen this choice, funding would be provided for the free distribution of condoms and birth control pills.
Hundreds of thousands of induced abortions are being conducted every year in the Philippines, leading to deaths of many mothers. Reproductive health advocates say poor mothers resort to abortions because they are not aware of completely safe contraceptives and birth spacing.They added that many mothers have compromised their health by giving birth to five up to six children without reasonable birth spacing.
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