A House bill of paradoxes

By its very title,the "Reproductive Health Care Act" is one of the proposed bills that should have been appreciated.Who could really quarrel with its seemingly laudable purpose of advancing and protecting women’s human rights particularly by providing them access to safe, affordable and quality reproductive health care services?

In fact the bill has so much as expressly provided that "abortion is not included as a family planning method" (Sec.4 [h]) and that "nothing in this act changes the law on abortion"(Sec.5[e]). Obviously, these provisions are calculated attempts to reassure the sceptics and to answer the concientious oppositors who have timely pointed out that "reproductive health care"is a phrase used in international circles as closely associated with abortion services.

But doubts persist regarding the legislative intent on abortion because of the bill’s glaring ambivalence in sections where abortion is mentioned.

Thus in its definition of reproductive health care, the bill enumerates as one of its elements the prevention of abortion but at the same time it also provides for management of its complications (Sec.4 (f) [5]). This is reiterated in Sec.5 on the reproductive health care program where the bill requires the implementation of programs for the prevention of abortion but at the same time talks of management of "post abortion complications". Somehow the impression conveyed is that abortion is no longer a crime that should be punished if it could not be prevented. Instead, its complications should be managed. Indeed in its new explanatory note, the bill cites overwhelming statistics about abortion incidence despite its being illegal; and about the alarming increase in post abortion complications due to attempts at avoiding the consequences of its illegality. This is a subtle way of saying that post abortion complications can be better managed by recognizing abortion as an unavoidable reality that should be legalized. The same fallacious arguments used in the proposal to legalize jueteng.But there is something more serious than jueteng here.For it involves human life that is being devalued and gotten rid of for the sake of reproductive health care.

The bill is consistent only in its inconsistency. It is supposedly anchored on certain constitutional precepts. But its provisions also disregard other State policies enshrined in the charter. In its desire to ensure full respect for human rights particularly the women’s right to health, it has completely set aside the more important constitutional mandate to "equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception".It is so concerned with the rights of individuals that, in the process, it has infringe on the sanctity of family life. This is really one piece of legislation that needs a lot of grinding before it could pass through the legislative mill. It should even go beyond the committee level.

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