The following was originally a comment to the article, “The Redundancy of The RH Bill“, penned by Primer C. Pagunuran.
It challenges reflection that a lawyer, instead of a doctor, is the chief architect and single strong advocate of House Bill 5043 which actually consolidated into one, House Bills 17, 812, 2753 and 3920 in this 14th Congress. The simple idea of gender equality easily permits room for women proponents themselves, in either House or Senate, to be the mouthpiece as well as the voice behind such a now controversial bill that is met with so much opposition from not few traditional groups – not Rep. Edcel Lagman – unless otherwise no other proponent from the female species is available. Women issues are the exclusive domain of women, or so I thought?
Offhand, HB 5043 pretentiously placed reproductive health, responsible parenthood, and population development under its policy framework. Good. But, let us be reminded that a single legislative measure such as HB 5043 that carries more than three subject matters is actually violative of “overloading”. Bottomline, that is the way professors of law teaching on “How a Bill becomes a Law” always teach us. Where will HB 5043 all transport us to? Such a would-be law that prohibits and in fact penalizes any health care service provider who refuses to perform medically-safe reproductive health care services in the absence of spousal consent or authorization is revolting. What is this?
Boldly, the bill claims the policy is anchored on the rationale of sustainable development with a manageable population of healthy, educated and productive citizens. Truly, this carries some kind of racist bias against those otherwise unhealthy, uneducated, and unproductive in our realpolitik. Is this Hitler’s idea of a “super race”? What about China with approximately two billion population that has managed equitably well without compromising its position as the next economic superpower? I say as anecdotal the sweet claim of a population management stratagem of a two-child policy. The proponent himself has more than two of his own, doesn’t he?
If we have higher population than any developing country in the world, it is a blessing especially so that all developing countries, no exception, are now suffering from a graying population and are now in search of manpower to replace their aging manpower base. Where then do they have to import human capital? Where will they recruit the Industrial Reserve Army but from the Philippines? Have we as much as forget that OFW remittances of our fellow Filipinos buoys up an otherwise fledging economy? The next generation of overseas workers to fill the great demand of manpower from the global market has to be born now – beyond the two-child limit. This kind of thinking might run counter to the bill’s claim that manpower is the principal asset of every country.
If there will be a universal access to quality reproductive health care services, methods, devices, supplies and relevant information, this means that a whole range of options is at anybody’s disposal. Studies have already validated that reproductive health care as practiced in the more developed societies already negative impacted upon the home, family life, career, social milieu, culture, and society as a whole. It has been shown that women committed suicides. It has been shown that the incidence of broken families rose. It has been shown that children from broken homes are what triggered dramatic rise in the crime statistical chart. As divorces multiply, broken homes multiply just as well. Medically, a lot of these so-called contraceptive pills are not safe and just how many pills are manufactured in a minute and at what cost?
Shotgun approach has been the design of HB 5043 – it will kill all birds that took flight – adults, adolescents, children – without distinction. It sounds crazy for the bill to claim that women seeking care from post-abortion complications shall be treated and consoled in a humane, non-judgmental and compassionate manner without being guilty of doing abortion in the unseen process. This kind of intended access opens the door wide to a lot of other possibilities in need of reproductive health care attention, not to be excluded, would be abortion itself at its initial stage. To give people the freedom to decide, if, when and how often to have a satisfying and safe sex life, as claimed, tears at the very moral fabric of our social existence.
What then constitute as reproductive health-related problems that the bill aims to prevent and avoid, reason for a full range of options? Openly enough, the bill espouses making available all methods and techniques to prevent unwanted, unplanned, and mistimed pregnancies but what exactly are these? Pregnancies – whether or not wanted, planned, or timed – are pregnancies. Any act or means to be sought to prevent it should be called as what? It would not be abortion, would it? Whoever invented these labels without any scientific basis ought to be a murderer?
It is noticeable how a proviso has been carried that would, in effect, expand the coverage of the National Health Insurance Program or NHIP especially to many poor and marginalized women to include a full range of reproductive health care services and supplies as health insurance benefits. Will money be inserted in another else’s pocket? How much in State subsidies will be infused into a supposed-to-be existing program or agency, again and again?
Rider or not to a proposed bill, the creation of a Board of Commissioners of POPCOM (or Population Commission) of 14 heads of agencies plus 3 representatives from the private sector ought to be the subject matter of another and separate bill yet to be proposed and filed in Congress considering that when a board meets, honoraria are given. At the very least, their appointment by the President for a term of 3 years means that some people get to be employed, first and second, time. Even the Department of Agriculture and the Commission on Higher Education will be members thereof make for Ripleys.
Again, more midwives or skilled attendants need to be employed in every municipality or city based on some ideal ratio. More qualified personnel in each city or province will have to be employed in hospitals to provide emergency obstetric care, again, based on ideal ratio of say one such hospital for every 500,000 population. How good indeed that indigent patients will be covered by PhilHealth insurance benefits for hospital services related to family planning? Again, are we putting money in another else’s pocket?
Another apparent caveat of the proposed HB 5043 is the fact that every congressional district will be provided a van for Mobile Health Care Service from their PDAF but it is not stated too clear if this means an additional budget to their PDAF. A mandatory health reproductive education will be required of those from Grade V to Fourth Year High School. Will parents agree to this law? Inserting 10% additional increase in the honoraria of barangay health workers is truly an inducement. Will not barangay captains or mayors agree to this scheme and its pecuniary benefits?
From where I stand, readers of HB 5043 can read with caution the corpus of purely statistical data in the explanatory note of the bill from which it based its goal to erect a law that is always met with extreme opposition from those thought to become its beneficiaries as well as to its intended victims. In the end, adults, adolescents, and children that the bill purports to help will be the true victims of a law that is easy enough to approve given that it has “strings attached” to it. Not remotely, some laws really self-destruct as soon as they get implemented and this proposed measure shall be one of them. Since coins will be dropped in the vendo machine, many legislators might tend to stamp their own approval of HB 5043, irrespective of dictates of conscience – and so be it.
(Email to: nielsky_2003@yahoo.com or text to: 09164985265)
Popularity: 2% [?]
Wow, we have someone who advocates tearing families apart for long periods of time. Great!
Mabuhay ang basag na pamilyang Pilipino!
Ironic, didn’t China have a one child policy? Contradictions, contradictions :P
All women and men deserve access to the preventive family planning services that can help them plan and space their children and make responsible decisions about their lives and their futures.
Such a long article, but I stopped reading at paragraph 4.
First, China had (or does it still have?) a one-child policy. Right now, it’s experiencing growing inequality between the rich and the poor, because in a “2 billion” population, only a handful of people are well-to-do. So no, China has not managed to be “equitably well”.
Second, I don’t think our country should be in the business of exporting skills and labor. If I understand correctly, you are opposed to the bill because you want our country to be the biggest source of labor in the world. Granting that we do become that, the world would, of course, want value for their money. Ergo, they would only take those with the right skills at the lowest possible price. So, what kind of workers/professionals would be left inside the country? Mediocre.
Conversely, how sure are you that this baby-boom you are proposing would equate to adults capable and qualified to working abroad? What if, due to our abysmal education system and poor living conditions, most of them get stuck in the country?
You gonna feed all of them?
shbkgk;rgh
sure its really great i suppport it!
An anti-climactic US presidency
Nothing alters the fact that as soon as votes have been counted, the Americans have spoken – catapulting to power – one Democrat Barack Obama as the 44th US president. And few more days before Obama should assume office come January 20, 2009, a looming question on whether or not he is a natural born citizen to be an eligible president is gathering adherents in the internet by every tick of the hour to the point it is seen to end in a constitutional crisis.
Barack Obama is a US senator alright but apparently the US constitution has not set the same requirement for the Office of the President. It sets the higher standard that the candidate should not only be a US citizen but a natural born citizen at that. Thus, if official documentary proof will show that Obama is not a natural born citizen of the United States, then the issue should first be resolved. No less than the Supreme Court should step into the scene and to lay final judgment on whether or not Obama should assume watch to the office 64 million Americans have placed him – the White House.
The US Supreme Court has been perceived to have taken varying attitudes to the lawsuits that have already been filed – refuses to take up the citizenship issue, declines to make an opinion on the question of eligibility, holds off decision to grant hearing, and so forth. However well the camp of Obama can hide the vault copy of Obama’s birth certificate from scrutiny, until shown, not few Americans will always press that Obama himself speaks the truth surrounding his citizenship and eligibility as stipulated in Section 1, Article 2 of the US Constitution (USC).
In all likelihood, it is going to be Catch 22 – case of damn if you do, damn if you don’t. If Obama admits to the fact that he is not a natural born citizen of America, then his political detractors can easily prepare the menu for his possible impeachment – if and when – he insists to take oath and assumes office. On the other hand, if Obama claims that he is a natural born citizen under specific provisions of the US Constitution other than Section 1, Article 2 of USC, then there may be special judicial course of action at the disposal of the newly elected president, just maybe. It is not far removed either, that the Supreme Court can assume a rather activist stance to ‘rationalize’ when it takes to the view of defending Obama from what maybe a judicially overstretched perspective.
The idea that confronts every average American is the simple requirement that the truth be revealed since the issue has been thrown in the intellectual landscape. And it does not have to be mired in the realm of pure legalese as when it must compel the Supreme Court to rule over the case. In the end, the internet that is largely responsible for making sure Obama wins in this presidential election might be the same vehicle that could in fact, unmake Obama. But this is full of implications in the higher scheme of things.
Not remotely, observers find it strange that America has voted for that one who would later on be proven to be one who is not eligible to become US president on account of his citizenship requirement. The new president of the strongest nation in the world that is America has been elected and yet will be ejected even before he assumes official watch. The strongest legal argument against those who press on the eligibility issue is yet to be discussed in any forum in the internet. Thus, until the issues are joined, the American people have no way of making their own judgment as to which theory to believe.
There ought to be two schools of thought on this controversy: one commits to the thesis that Obama is not a natural born citizen of America and the other embraces this prevailing claim’s antithesis – that Obama is a natural born citizen. There is the bar of public opinion if the Supreme Court is found to be slow in the action. A host of questions will remain unanswered until Obama confronts the lingering doubt in the minds of the American public that he is possibly not a natural born citizen of US and therefore should be held accountable for every patent violation of the Constitution.
Certainly, Obama cannot be a mere guest at the White House since he must be its lawful occupant in order to be able to exercise the powers of the President. The US Constitution cannot be set aside without a final answer to this citizenship question. Until addressed, the seeming controversy might divide a wedge among the American people in what would evolve as the new – Great Intellectual Divide. There might just be one more day left to save the pond where water lilies double in size each day choking other life forms underneath. US does not deserve to be in the kind of situation it is in at the moment. It bears watching how Obama can clear his way out of the noose. Perhaps, there shall not be any farther obstacle to the new president-elect to assume the presidential power cannot operate in a vacuum.
PRIMER C. PAGUNURAN
UP Diliman, Quezon City Email: nielsky
_2003@yahoo.com
Reproductive Health Bill: It’s Evil, Not Just Wrong. “This RH bill is the sum or total of the altruistic mindset of those who are pushing for and supporting its enactment. It is primarily the evil effect of the philosophy of death (of altruism), which most people embrace in this country. Once it is enacted, employers would be obliged under pain of possible imprisonment to provide reproductive services (services which are not supposed to be shouldered by employers) for their employees. This bill seeks to institutionalize slavery in this country.” http://fvdb.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/reproductive-health-bill-its-evil-not-just-wrong/
God is the author of life. Those who are pro-God and pro-life should reject RH bill
which is anti-life. It promotes contraception (against conception) which is preventing the formation of new life. It promotes abortion. Pills and IUDs abort the life of the newly conceived child by preventing it from implanting in the uterus. The RH bill endanger the lives of women because combined oral contraceptives increase a woman’s risk of cervical cancer, breast cancer, and liver cancer. Let us pray that the evil RH bill be rejected in congress by lawmakers who are pro-life.