The right to privacy: From Roe vs Wade

In response to our column last Tuesday on the RH bill, Fr. John Orat, parish priest of Daan Bantayan, Cebu (120 kms north of Cebu City), asked me if I saw the debate on the RH Bill which was aired on Aug. 21st. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see it. Anyway, here’s Fr. Orat’s letter. 

“Dear Bobit, This is about the 3rd national RH bill TV debate seen last Sunday, Aug. 21 at TV5. At first the result of the vote was 50-50. Pro-RH debaters repeated their lament about 11 maternity-related deaths. Fr. Melvin Castro stated ‘The laws needed to address that problem are in existence. There is no need for an RH bill. Government only needs to act on it’.

When the question “Makabubuti ba ang RH bill?” came up, 25 percent said yes, 75 percent no. I have read the RH bill and it does not contain “abortion,” said another. That may be the case but so many already know that most contraceptives are abortifacients and it did not make any good argument.

Then the discussion revolved on artificial contraception as a sin because it violates the punitive and procreative grounds for marriage. But what about old people? It is natural not artificial that they cannot bear children. That is the will of God. Who can question that?

The story of Onan was also taken up. God punished him with death because he contracepted by spilling his seed on the ground in order to avoid having a child with Tamar, the wife of his dead brother. The sex act is meant for God to create life. It is a sin to circumvent that. That RH debate ended with a 0 percent vote in favor of the RH bill and 100 percent against. If the truth is the basis of all the RH arguments I would definitely say that that would be the usual conclusion. Thanks Fr. John Orat.”

Sayang I missed that debate! I have read the text messages of my friends that the ABC-5 RH debate was the most telling as it began with a very lopsided vote in favor of the RH bill. I don’t know why the media did not get that report? As the debate progressed, you could see that the people watching the debate were convinced that the RH bill was not necessary, it is not in consonance with Filipino values and the moral laws of the church, where most of our legal laws are based. Hence the debate ended with those supporting the RH bill deciding to dump it and vote against its passage.

Meanwhile, Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago is upbeat these days after getting the nomination and endorsement by Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario and President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III to sit as judge in one of the major international judicial bodies, dubbed the International Court of Justice of the United Nations (ICJ). But if you ask me, this nomination is far from being a shoo-in, because Sen. Miriam’s being a principal sponsor of the RH bill in the Senate opens her to questions about her moral views.

This month, Sen. Miriam will start campaigning for this post at The Hague in the Netherlands and then to New York City. But unless she changes her stand in supporting the RH bill, I have inside information that the pro-life groups which have links with the US Pro-life organizations would go out of their way to block her getting that seat. I was even told by some friends that if Sen. Santiago bagged that nomination, that would be a big blow to the pro-RH campaign as she would have to quit her Senate seat.

In my book, if Sen. Miriam Santiago cannot even give life to unborn children, it means she cannot give the defenseless souls any justice. On this issue alone, we cannot risk having Sen. Santiago being in the ICJ unless she clarifies her stand on this moral issue that the Catholic Church is fully against. For instance when she cited US Jurisprudence to push for the RH bill, she did not realize she was telling us Filipinos that by following the path of the United States that had its own RH bill passed into law, it brought them to pass laws on abortion. Obviously, Sen. Miriam Santiago wasn’t thinking well when she blurted that statement, which is now truth revealed.

In her “Right to privacy” statement more than a week ago, Sen. Santiago quoted two known US cases, Griswold vs. Connecticut and the famous Roe v. Wade ruling in the early ’70s that allowed abortion rights in the United States. But what she did not clarify to the public is that Justice Harry Blackmum who declared that abortion is a “fundamental right” under the US constitution said very clearly, “Abortion is a fundamental right because if falls under the ‘penumbra’ of the right to privacy.” So in the end, we can see that Sen. Miriam is pushing for the Philippines to adopt laws on abortion!

What Sen. Santiago also failed to inform us is that Norma McCovey, the original litigant of Roe vs. Wade (she used the pseudonym, Jane Roe) confessed to the grievous mistake she had committed and has since joined the Pro-Life Movement in the US since 1995 and has been working to overturn Roe vs. Wade with no success as evil had finally taken its roots in the US.

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