Pimentel, Biazon clash over health care bill

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said yesterday he would oppose the passage of the proposed Reproductive Health Care Act which, he claimed, would legalize abortion by granting women the right to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

In a statement, Pimentel called on lawmakers to reject House Bill 4110 and Senate Bill 2325 which, he said, "seek to propagate methods of abortion that are, at best, controversial and worse, illegal given the provisions of the Constitution, civil law and penal law on the issue."

The two measures, he said, would make all kinds of contraceptives available to women "regardless of whether those contraceptives are actually or may be suspect as abortifacients, or not," he said.

But Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, principal sponsor of SB 2325, denied that the measure would legalize abortion.

He said Pimentel, like leaders of the Catholic Church, are mistaken when they assume that the bill’s supporters are advocating legalized abortion.

Biazon said his bill would address the elements of reproductive health such as maternal care and nutrition, family planning, care of post-abortion complications, sexuality education, sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS prevention and care; adolescent reproductive health, violence against women, infertility, sexual dysfunction, reproductive tract infection and male reproductive health.

Biazon said economics was one of the major reasons for promoting population management, saying the country’s annual population growth of 2.36 percent was negating economic growth.

In his statement, Pimentel claimed that the original concept of HB 4110 when it was filed on Dec. 19, 2001, was to legalize abortion.

The bill was withdrawn, he said, because it provoked a public outcry.

According to Pimentel, harping on the supposedly high statistics of women dying of abortion-related causes would only trigger the setting up of so-called "safe abortion facilities" although this is not categorically stated in the bill.

Pimentel said HB 4110 and SB 2325 espouse population control methods that conflict with the Constitution, the Civil Code and Penal Code.

He invoked Article II, Section 12 of the Constitution, which provides that "the state shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child from conception."

This constitutional provision, he said, acknowledges two things: "that life begins at conception and that the life of the mother is of equal value as the life of the unborn child."