Gut issues

As expected, the issue on the validity of the RH law has been brought to the Supreme Court (SC). This is a most welcome development indeed for it will settle once and for all the raging controversy that has been further inflamed by the President of this country when he used the powers and resources of his office to railroad its enactment by our subservient Congress because of pressure from foreign lobbyists. Hopefully, the SC Justices will resolve the issue according to their best lights stemming from the principles enshrined in our Constitution, the basic law of the land to which all other laws must conform.

In a democracy like ours, the SC is the third independent and separate branch of government which is empowered to resolve this issue conclusively. Its decision is binding on all of us including members of Congress and the Executive department. In taking cognizance of the petition, the SC is not asserting its supremacy over the other departments of government, but merely upholding the supremacy of our constitution.

All of us should therefore be more vigilant this time in ensuring that the principle of separation of powers will be observed by all concerned especially by the Chief Executive who has obviously disregarded it when he pushed Congress to pass the bill and then hastily and surreptitiously sign it. Hopefully he realizes that unity can be restored in our country only if he refrains from meddling with, and pressuring the SC justices to rule in his favor and against the petitioners. We should also fervently hope and pray that the SC justices, especially those appointed by this president will not succumb to such pressure. Otherwise, there will be more disunity in this country with graver consequences.

The petition before the SC really has more significance because it is filed by a family which undoubtedly will be most adversely affected by the law. The petitioners are James and Lovely-Ann Imbong, husband and wife who are both members of the Philippine Bar for themselves and in behalf of their two minor children and their “Magnificat Child Development Center Inc. They are also filing the petition “as a class suit in representation of other parents and individuals similarly situated”. It primarily revolves around the illegality of the law (RA 10354) “as it mocks the nation’s Filipino culture —noble and lofty in its values and holdings on life, motherhood and life — now the fragile lifeblood of a treasured culture that today stands solitary but proud, in contrast to other nations”.

In essence, the petition states facts and raises purely constitutional issues without delving in any way on the religious beliefs or teachings of any church or sect particularly the Catholic Church. Yet media which is obviously pro-RH has once more put a slant on its filing by dragging the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) and implying that it was behind the move since the couple who filed it is the son and daughter in law of Jo Aurea M. Imbong, the legal counsel of the CBCP.

Obviously the pro-RH group and its foreign backers with the aid of media have been conducting a hate campaign against the prelates of the Catholic Church to gain popular support for their bill. They have been attacking the Bishops as being anti-poor for opposing the bill that will supposedly help “poor parents bring forth into this world only those children whom they can raise in a truly humane way”. (Section 2, R.A. 10354) They are accused of violating the principle of separation of Church and State even if they are simply asking the State not to pass any law “trampling upon its religious convictions and beliefs. It is not asking the State to be “the enforcer of its teaching against contraception”. (Archbishop Palma, CBC President). Somehow the hate campaign have been effective even on some Catholics who have expressed disgust, or are turned off when priests talk about the evils of the RH bill in their homilies.

At the risk of being repetitious, let me point out once more that the primary and real issues surrounding this law are matters of fact and of natural and human law, not a matter of faith or religious belief.

The undisputed facts duly confirmed by the actual happenings in other countries, which the SC can take judicial notice of, are: (1) that reproductive health providing access to contraceptives cause or lead to abortion and other serious health problems. If this is not true let the sponsors prove it by taking those pills themselves; (2) that contraception also leads to broken marriages and families spawning other serious social problems; and (3) that the solution to poverty lies not in reducing or limiting the number of poor people but in providing for their basic needs to get out of poverty.

The natural law violated is the “natural process in the transmission of life as designed by God. It is “based on human nature and on God’s plan for the good of humankind and therefore applicable to all men and women no matter what religion they profess”. (Latorre, Catechesis on Contraception, 13-14). The human law basically violated is Article II Section 12 of the Constitution requiring the State “to protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution” and to “equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception”. This section simply imposes a duty on the State to protect the life of the unborn from conception. It does not empower the State to prevent conception which the meaning of contraception as claimed by the bill’s authors.

These are among the gut issues that will be resolved by the SC.

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