Deceitful and confusing

The pending bill on contraception (HB 3773 or the proposed Responsible Parenthood and Population Management Act) has many misconceptions because its provisions are deceiving.

It expressly aims to prevent abortion by making family planning information widely accessible allegedly because abortion rates are lowest in countries where people are well informed in family planning. Yet in its proposed family planning program that will enable "couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information and means to carry out their decisions", the bill would make available to them, "a full range of family planning methods". While these methods are touted to be "legal and medically safe", the bill requires the government through the "Reproductive Health and Population Management Council" to offer artificial means of contraception including drugs, agents or methods medically proven as "abortifacients" or causing abortion, like Birth Control Pills, Intra-Uterine Devices, Depo-Provera and other implants, and "Emergency Contraceptives" These are methods that regularly prevent implantation of the embryo into the uterus, thereby causing the killing of the unborn child which is what abortion is all about.

Perhaps the sponsors and supporters of this bill in the lower house still have that "Stateside" mentality and would like to "import" again from the United States the medical definition of pregnancy which was changed in 1972 declaring that pregnancy occurs after implantation of the embryo into the uterus. But international medical experts have already attested that pregnancy occurs upon conception and before implantation. By virtue of this medical doctrine, our Constitution has expressly declared as a State policy, "that it shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception". Obviously, in their eagerness to give government support to the sale and use of these contraceptives, the bill’s sponsors and supporters have inadvertently or intentionally overlooked this Constitutional provision.

Indeed our congressmen and women could use the US as a model in finding out the many vicious and damaging distortions that contraceptives have wrought on society. They will find out that the use of contraceptives has not prevented abortions for unwanted pregnancies. Because of over 50 percent failure rate of contraceptives among American women, abortion has eventually become a perceived necessity. Studies even from pro-choice groups show that 1 in 3 American women have had at least one abortion in their lifetime and that in the year 2000 alone, 54 percent who had an abortion were using contraceptives in the month they became pregnant. These studies confirm the truth that artificial contraception facilitates sexual proximity eventually leading to even more unexpected and unwanted pregnancies (Alan Guttmacher Institute). Our legislators in the lower house should not also be oblivious to the fact that in France, where over 9 of 10 married women resort to contraception, two-thirds of unplanned pregnancies occurred in contraception users. One fifth of the unplanned pregnancies happened among women using Birth Control Pill and a tenth among women using Intra-Uterine devices both of which are hypothetically touted as highly effective medical methods of contraception.

More confusing yet is the section (19) on prohibited acts. While the sponsors and supporters of the bill say that it reflects the liberal position and recognizes "conscientious objections" based on "ethical and religious grounds", the bill punishes health care service providers who withhold information about family planning methods or who refuse to perform voluntary sterilization and ligation on patients of legal age. Thus, private and public health care providers would be compelled to offer and disseminate information, or perform methods of family planning regardless of their own religious and ethical beliefs that artificial contraception violates "the law of nature and nature’s God" as well as their scientifically proven convictions that these methods cause cancer, AIDs and other sexually transmissible diseases that bring more hardship to the people. No amount of nit-picking hide the fact that this section is definitely against the free exercise of religion guaranteed by our Constitution. "However strong the State’s interest in universal compulsory information or education, it is by no means absolute to the exclusion or subordination of all other interests like the free exercise of religion (Wisconsin v. Yoder 40 LW 4476, May 15, 1972). Indeed it could be said that this section would in effect compel health care providers to commit abortion.

Our congressmen and women should be reminded therefore that poverty cannot be solved by this bill allegedly designed to check population growth. For as long as social injustice reigns in our midst, where the riches of the earth are concentrated only among a few, and for as long as our legislators adamantly hold on to their pork barrel and continue to serve the interest of the manufacturers of these artificial contraceptives that make them even richer at our expense, we will remain economically and physically poor and spiritually and morally bankrupt. If thirty years ago, we have already learned and told our people that better governance, less greedy leaders and more businessmen with social consciences are the solutions to our poverty, peddling the same hope today is more imperative. It is not telling them to "wait idly" for their true rewards in the after life but pointing out to them the whole truth that our political and business leaders have not done what they are supposed to do thirty years ago so as to awaken them to the falsity and the pernicious effects of the solutions these leaders are peddling now.

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