Court junks petition to stop sex education

The Quezon City court has junked the petition of parents asking for a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the conduct of sex education in selected schools by the Department of Education (DepEd).

Judge Rosanna Fe Romero-Maglaya of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 88 presumably made her judgment objectively, without harping on the controversy over the issue, thus providing a big boost to women and reproductive health rights advocates who believe in the rightness of giving basic information on reproductive health among students in the public schools.

The petitioners, led by defeated senatorial candidate Jo Aurea Imbong, filed last month before the court a civil suit against then Secretary Mona Valisno and Undersecretary Ramon Bacani to stop them from integrating sex education in the school curriculum and declare DepEd Memorandum No. 261 series 2005 as null and void.

Judge Maglaya ruled: “In the instant case, the petitioners failed to show their clear and unmistakable right alleged to have been violated to entitle them to the relief being prayed for . . . None of the petitioners were able to show that their children, who may be the subjects of the assailed program, are students of the said pilot schools.”

The schools where the pilot teaching of sex education are not within the jurisdiction of the Quezon City judge, as they are being tested in the Mt. Province and Ifugao, Olongapo City, Masbate, Eastern Samar, Bohol and Cebu, Davao City, Sultan Kudarat, Lanao del Sur, Sulu, Maguindanao and Tawi-Tawi, Las Piñas City, Parañaque City and Muntinlupa City.

The lawyers of Valisno, Clara Padilla and Anita B. Visbal, argued in their opposition-in-intervention that the Imbong et .al. case was out of jurisdiction of the city court, since the pilot schools for testing the education program are in other places. Attorney Padilla won her point. But the crux of her argument, to my mind, is that the modules that the DepEd is pilot-testing does not aim to promote promiscuity among the young, but give them information contained in modules on adolescent reproductive health (ARH) care that will help them prevent occurrences of premarital pregnancies and contraction of diseases, including HIV and AIDS.

Lawyers Padilla and Visbal pleaded in their intervention that they be allowed to protect their rights “and the rights of children and adolescents to education and information and to empower them and capacitate them according to their evolving capacities as recognized by the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) of which the Philippines is a state party and is duty-bound to fulfill.”

DepEd, according to Padilla, must be allowed to continue conducting its pilot modules on ARH through its Life Skills-Based Education program. “Any disruption of the program will prove to be detrimental to the physical, mental, and psychological well-being of children and adolescents in the pilot schools where the program will be implemented,” said Padilla.

Without such a program, children and adolescents “are bound to suffer irreparable damage” due to the lack of essential, life skills-based education that are very crucial to make them knowledgeable about certain risks.

These risks include early sex resulting in early pregnancies, vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections (STIs), reproductive tract infections (RTIs), HIV, vulnerability to rape, early pregnancies including maternal mortality and morbidity, dropping out of school because of the demands of pregnancy and childbearing, and early marriage.

ARH talks about the benefits of responsible parenthood, such as preventing unwanted and unintended pregnancies and reducing the need for abortion, treatment of STIs and RTs, prevention of rape and incest, and prevention of violence against women, among others.

Teaching ARH, said Padilla, “is one sure way of keeping these children in school and ensuring their graduation and giving them the opportunity to have careers, better employment and increased financial capability.”

The ARH modules, according to Padilla, have long been ongoing since 2005 and the DepEd and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) “have been receiving positive feedback from the principals, teachers, parents and students. There are reports from principals that ever since they have been implementing the ARH modules, there has been a decrease in adolescent pregnancies in their schools.”

Padilla noted that parents and teachers associations in the pilot schools were consulted. The petitioners (Jo Aurea M. Imbong and James M. Imbong, et.al.) had the option to consult and discuss the modules. However, “they opted not to do so because they simply do not want any kind of sex education in whatever content or method in our school system.”

If the petitioners do not want their children to have any kind of sex education, “they have the option to exempt their children from using their right to religious belief but they cannot impose their religious beliefs on the public school system nor on the rights of others to ARH education, otherwise, that would be infringing on the rights of others to freedom of thought, conscience and religion and any prohibition, injunction, and TRO on the DepEd ARH program in schools would be tantamount to the establishment of the petitioners’ religion.”

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Silliman University will turn 109 years old this coming August, and loyal Sillimanians all over the world are observing the date with celebratory activities, ranging from ballroom dancing to lectures, Sunday worship services, picnics, and golf tournaments.

The Silliman University Alumni Association of Metro Manila, headed by Rod Pepito as president, for one, will hold an alumni invitational golf fellowship tournament on August 5 at the Villamor Golf & Country Club, located inside the Philippine Air Force Base in Nichols, Pasay City. Proceeds will go to the university to assist work student-scholars pay for books and tuition, and a fund- resource build-up to enable the chapter to buy its own office.

Other activities in Manila are an anniversary reunion dinner program, on August 22, beginning at 6 p.m., at the Makati Sports Club. Tickets are priced at P800 per head.

A worship service will be held at the UCCP-Ellinwood Malate Church on August 22, with Silliman president Ben S. Malayang as guest speaker.

For inquires, call Jay Joaquin at 8106242 or Rod Pepito at 09178142757.

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My e-mail:[email protected]