The core issues

Up to now, even as the issues affecting the controversial RH law are already with the Supreme Court for resolution, disunity and division surrounding said measure still arise or are being concocted. This time, the seeds of dissension are sown among Catholics themselves following the recently published interview of Pope Francis regarding the Church dogma on contraception, abortion and homosexuality. Some sectors perceive and interpret Pope Francis’ stand on these controversial social issues as “revolutionary” and a break-away from the “conservative” position taken by his predecessors Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II. Thus, they are even classifying Catholics into “Conservatives” and “Liberals.”

To be sure however, there are really no Conservative or Liberal Catholics especially when it comes to the issue on abortion and contraception. On this matter, all Catholics are united in their stand that all human beings have the inalienable and primordial right to life. Just recently, Pope Francis, in his message to the International Federation of Catholic Medical Association, once more strongly condemned abortion as a “manifestation of a throwaway culture that would eliminate the weak and vulnerable in our society.” Speaking just a day after that “revolutionary interview” was published, the Pope emphasized that “The first right of the human person is his life….the condition for all the others.” The Pope concluded his speech by reminding the doctors that “there is no human life more sacred than another just as there exists no human life quantitatively more meaningful than another.”

Hence there is really no need for the Catholic Church in the Philippines to review and reconsider its opposition to the RH law in the light of that recent controversial interview of Pope Francis. The Church’s stand remains the same. Both its Clergy and the Laity are still against this law because they want to protect human life and to uphold every human person’s right to life and not because they want to impose their religious belief on others.

In taking a stand against the law, the Church is likewise merely protecting its faithful comprising 80% of the population from the government’s undue intrusion into their religious belief since under the law the government will be subsidizing anti-life and anti-family contraceptive methods, pills and devices to enable the people especially the poor to use them in planning their family. In effect the law is encouraging or even forcing the people mostly Catholics to do acts contrary to their religious beliefs.

So in connection with this issue on abortion and contraception subject of the RH law, the Church’s opposition is mainly based on its violation of the Constitution, the fundamental law of the land, particularly: Section 12, Article II recognizing the  sanctity of the family and strengthening and protecting it as a basic and autonomous social institution as well as mandating the State to equally protect the life of the mother and of the unborn from conception and Section 5, Article III guaranteeing the freedom of religion.

Thus even if the Catholic Church is opposing the RH law and some of its flock are questioning it before the Supreme Court (SC), the issues raised in the various petitions now pending resolution by the SC are not necessarily moral issues but mainly legal or constitutional issues. The SC here is not really being called upon to resolve questions of morality but issues of legality or constitutionality of Republic Act 10354.

One of the core issues here is whether contraception is indeed abortion in the light of the Constitutional provision mandating the State to protect the life of the unborn from conception. The RH proponents have repeatedly argued that contraception precisely prevents conception so how can there be abortion if there is no conception?

But the issue here is not really that simple. Firstly because medical science has already proven that there are contraceptives directly causing abortion particularly Depoprovera, RU 486, Intra Uterine Device (IUD), Norplant and Morning after Pills. On the other hand, the rest of the contraceptives indeed may not directly cause abortion. But it has also been established especially in the US that the use of contraceptives also leads to abortion. Thus the US Supreme Court in the case of Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, has found out that “for two decades of economic and social development, people have entered into intimate relationship and made choices…in reliance of the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. From these facts, it is clear that contraception may fail and if it fails abortion is resorted to because of unwanted pregnancy”. Thus the US SC concluded that: “In some critical respects, abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception.”

And even assuming that contraception actually and effectively prevents conception, the Constitution (Section 12 Article II) does not actually empower Congress to pass a law preventing conception. It only orders the State to protect the life of the unborn from conception. Preventing conception is indeed inconsistent with the mandate to protect the life of the unborn from conception. Such law preventing conception in effect regulates such matters as the sexual relations of the spouses and the right of each spouse to open coition of the other which are internal aspects of the family that may violate the sanctity of family life.

It is also pointed out that an estimated 400,000 Filipino women are driven to abortion every year, risking their life and health because they lacked access to contraceptive services that the RH law provides. Thus they are forced to undergo clandestine and dangerous abortion. Hence it is argued that access to RH services can prevent abortion. This argument is quite misleading. Access to RH services makes abortion safe. In fact because of such safety provided by the RH, resort to abortion may even increase.

So these are the core issues involving the RH law. They are legal and not moral issues which the SC can thus resolved in the exercise of its judicial power of review.

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