House resumes RH bill debate next week

MANILA, Philippines -  The House of Representatives will resume the debate on the Reproductive Health (RH) bill, also known as the Responsible Parenthood (RP) bill, next week.                    

Minority leader Edcel Lagman, principal author and sponsor of the bill, said the bill would likely be taken up in plenary on Tuesday. He said they have conducted a “vote mapping” and are confident of getting the bill approved by the majority.           

He hopes the House would vote on the bill before Congress adjourns again on June 9.                                                       

Another supporter of the bill, Davao del Sur Rep. Marc Douglas Cagas, said the House should already decide on whether to approve or reject the measure.

“This proposal has been pending in Congress for many years. We should vote on it once and for all, and we should accept whatever is the voting result,” he said.

Deputy Speaker Erin Tañada opposed Sen. Vicente Sotto’s proposal for Congress to postpone consideration of the RH bill pending the investigation into Sotto’s claim that there had been misuse of public funds for maternal and child health funds because these do not reach the intended beneficiaries.

Health Secretary Enrique Ona, however, denied that funds for the government’s family health programs are misused.         

“At the moment, I don’t see the so-called graft. I actually had this investigated four months ago,” he said in a chance interview yesterday.                                                                 

He said the release of funds for some local government units was put on hold pending the filling of liquidation reports for their previous allocations.                                  

“What happened was that we cannot release the funds unless there is an approval of the Commission on Audit,” Ona said.

Supporters of the bill said Sotto’s allegation is a “cheap trick” to derail passage of the measure.                                   

“It is very sad that a distinguished policy maker such as Sen. Sotto will resort to a very loose claim of corruption in DOH to discredit the Reproductive Health bill,” said Ramon San Pascual, executive director of the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development Foundation. 

Supporters including former President Fidel Ramos, former health secretary Esperanza Cabral, Lagman, Ona, Agham Rep. Angelo Palmones and former lawmaker Risa Hontiveros attended the launch of the “Day of the Purple Ribbon for RH” at the Crowne Plaza in Ortigas, Pasig City.                   

Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr., meanwhile, had promised that he would schedule a vote on the measure soon.                                         

The bill’s strongest critic, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), pulled out of the dialogue with Malacañang on the bill the other day because of President Aquino’s strong support for its passage into law. – With Evelyn Macairan, Sheila Crisostomo, Helen Flores