Thursday, October 30, 2008

Retire the Reproductive Health Bill

House Bill No. 5043 is titled “An Act Providing For National Policy On Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development and For Other Purposes.” Until it reached the floor for debate, I had thought it sufficient to dwell simply on the general principles of legislation and the basic provisions of the Constitution on human life, family and marriage to show that the bill has no place in our law.

The first point I tried to make is that there are certain activities of man as man, which are not subject to state regulation of any sort. These involve fundamental human rights that precede and transcend the State, such as the right to breathe, the right to think, the right to feel, the right to love, the right to hope, the right to believe.

The State has no business instructing the citizen, by law, how to breathe, how to think, how to feel, how to love, how to hope, how to believe. Under our Constitution, it may not even instruct congressmen how to interpellate, journalists how to write, broadcasters how to read the news.

Anyone who understands what has been said so far should have no difficulty understanding that the State has no business instructing married couples that they should first contracept or get themselves sterilized before they could engage in sexual intercourse.

The bill’s proponents seem completely unable or unwilling to grasp this rather plain and simple point. They seem to believe that they can legislate anything they want to legislate simply because they sit in Congress. This is a serious moral and intellectual disorder which finds support only in totalitarian states where the legislator need not sit in Congress. We are not yet a totalitarian state.

The second point I tried to make is that no proposed statute can possibly prosper which seeks to amend, or go around or against the Constitution outside of the constitutional amendatory process. And HB 5043 more than amply does this.

Article II, Section 12 of the Constitution is, or ought to be, a sufficient bar to HB 5043. “The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. The natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the development of moral character shall receive the support of the Government.”

The provision, though not self-enforcing, needs no interpretation. Family life is sacred; it possesses a quality that belongs primarily to God. The family is the starting point of society and should be left alone to do its work as a family; the State’s duty is to protect it against all threats, including those coming from the State itself. The moral character of the youth is not likely to be developed by concentrating their minds on hedonistic sex.

By this provision, the Constitution bans abortion, but not contraception or sterilization. But can the State be an honest protector of the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from the moment of conception if its first business is to prevent women from conceiving? Of course, not. So the necessary implication of Sec. 12, Article II is a ban on state-sponsored or state-mediated contraception and sterilization, even though there is no such ban on private parties.

Even without the above provision, the whole Article XV on “The Family” should suffice. This recognizes marriage as “an inviolable social institution,”“the foundation of the family,” which shall be “protected by the State.” It further recognizes the Filipino family as the “foundation of the nation” and obliges the State to “strengthen its solidarity and actively promote its total development.” It further obliges the State to defend “the right of spouses to found a family according to their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood.”

Unless the Constitution has become a mere scrap of paper, these provisions should have barred the House of Representatives from approving HB 5043 at committee level. Even if all the economic justifications, which had been thoroughly discredited, had more teeth, the moral and constitutional bar, which the bill has failed to hurdle, should have prompted the committees to send it to the archives.

But there was a brazen attempt to steamroll the bill. Four reproductive health bills had been referred jointly to the House committees on health and on population and family relations. On April 29, 2008, the committees heard three of the four bills. They set a second hearing for May 21, 2008. But when the committees met on that date, the presiding officer announced that they would now deliberate on “the substitute bill” to the four bills. And on one member’s motion, the committees approved “the substitute bill.” No further hearing.

This was in violation of the constitutional provision, and a rule of the House, which mandate adequate consultations with families or family associations. The statement that the same bill had been heard in previous congresses, even if true, is irrelevant and immaterial, since all bills that fail to be acted upon by a particular congress die at the end of that congress. If any bill be refiled in a new congress, it should go through the legislative mill as though it was being filed for the first time.

Nowhere in the records does it appear that the joint committees ever instructed any officer or group of officers to consolidate the bills into one. The chair’s statement and the member’s motion spoke of “the substitute bill” as already in being, without need of a motion that it first be created.

Normally, bills are consolidated by a technical working group (TWG) created by the committee or joint committees upon a member’s motion to consolidate. There was no such motion, and no TWG was ever created. Where then did the substitute bill emanate?

Upon interpellation, the sponsor, who surprisingly is not the committee chair endorsing the bill, but rather the principal author himself, was reported to have said that the authors of the four component bills did it.

If true, it was highly irregular. Why? Because at that stage the bills were already under the joint committees’ jurisdiction and control, and nothing on record shows they had asked the authors to consolidate.

If false, which seems more likely, a serious ethical question arises, which completely vitiates the integrity of the proceedings, and which must be resolved by the House ethics committee, before which it should now be raised.

This is not a trifling technicality. There is loud talk in the House that the substitute bill, as well as the original component bills, was produced by a foreign-funded non-government entity, called the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development (PLCPD). PLCPD falls under the classification of “foreign agent,” according to the Foreign Agents Act of 1979, which I had the honor of initiating at the interim Batasang Pambansa.

The fact that all the reproductive health bills in the House and the Senate tend to read and sound alike, both in style and in content, and that PLCPD had been running ads urging passage of the bill, while David and Lucile Packard Foundation, one of its foreign funders, had criticized the government for the slowdown in its purchase of contraceptives, seem to provide more than ample basis for the loud talk in the House.

What foreign interests are behind the wild and moneyed push for this bill? Why are so many foreign-funded NGOs, featuring brand and customary “nationalists”, trying to ride roughshod over the Constitution and Catholic objections to it on moral and constitutional grounds?

The answer may be downloaded on the internet. Population control has a long history. It began in antiquity, but it became an invasive global political force in 1974 after Henry Kissinger came up with National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200, titled “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests.”

This secret document created the template for the global population action plan that called for a two-child family worldwide by the year 2000. Since then the greying and dying of the population of the West has exposed the folly of this plan. But some people still want to dance the dance. Just who are making them dance?

Regardless of the motives and agendas imbedded in HB 5043, as a piece of legislation, it is shot through with holes. It cannot survive an honest House. As stated in the beginning, the bill is titled, “An Act Providing For A National Policy On Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development, And For Other Purposes.”

The Constitution provides that “every bill passed by the Congress shall embrace only one subject which shall be expressed in the title thereof.” The bill’s failure to reflect its penal nature is a constitutional violation; the fact that it contains three separate subjects – reproductive health, responsible parenthood, and population development -- which it tries, unsuccessfully, to link together, is another.

But the bill’s most obvious and ultimately insurmountable defect is that it seeks to “provide” a national policy where the Constitution already provides one. You read this in Article II, Declaration of Principles and State Policies, eloquently spread out from Section 9 to Sec. 18 or further.

Congress can only implement the policy laid out in the Constitution. It cannot hope to replace or revise it. Of course, one may now try to amend the title to say that the bill is “implementing” the constitutional policy rather than trying to provide a new one. That, however, cannot stand. The contents of HB 5043 do not at all reflect the substance of the constitutional policy; they rather seek to deny, assault and pervert the same.

One final point. Assume (arguendo) that the constitutional policy did not at all exist, the government’s contraceptives and sterilization program – illegal as it is – already exists. You only need to play back then Health Secretary Johnny Flavier’s proud boast before his NGO crowd at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo to confirm it. The fat outlays inserted in the present and next year’s budgets for reproductive health further confirm it.

After all is said and done, is HB 5043 not, in fact, an attempt to legalize an illegal program that has been there for years?

5 comments:

PinoyApache said...

i really dunno what's behind their agenda about this so-called reproductive health bill. very confusing & quite amusing. why legislate a thing when the mere fact that these aids of contraception were already there and is quite legal & overtly passed around in public. is it the fines imposed upon any individual or organization that they are after? for what? for not supporting this soon-to-be-law (i must be dreaming here)? no way! i will never support this foolishness launched by the bill's proponents. 2010 is near and it sure will be the end of their political careers.

jvincentsong said...

CATHOLICS CANNOT SUPPORT THE RH BILL IN GOOD CONSCIENCE

A response to the position paper Catholics Can Support the RH Bill in Good Conscience

To the community of the Ateneo de Manila University:

We, alumni of our alma mater, wish to respond to the position paper authored by 14 members of our faculty. We laud our professors for a wide-ranging presentation on the Philippine social situation, most especially the undesirable effects of an unmanaged population growth to women, the poor and our young people. We commend their dedication to the integral human development of the Filipino people in these troubling times. However, with respect and fraternal charity towards them, we respond that Catholics cannot support the RH Bill in good conscience.



The question of which method Catholics can and should use in the regulation of birth has been resolved in the encyclical letter Humanae Vitae (quoted as HV) of Pope Paul VI. "…the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles" (HV 16).



Several questions—and indeed objections—arise from this teaching. We ask, "Is this teaching of the Holy Father definitive?" While the fact remains that Pope Paul VI did not issue the above-mentioned encyclical ex cathedra, it is also a fact that the Pope and the bishops are "authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ" (Lumen Gentium 25). "The ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him teaches the faithful the truth to believe, the charity to practice, the beatitude to hope for" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2034).



We therefore distinguish between a solemn magisterium of the Church and an ordinary and universal magisterium (cf. Code of Canon Law 750). Catholics are exhorted to believe those things which are "proposed as divinely revealed either (italics ours) by the solemn magisterium of the Church, or by its ordinary and universal magisterium" (ibid.). "All are therefore bound to shun any contrary doctrines" (ibid.). Since Humanae Vitae is an exercise of the ordinary teaching faculty of the Holy Father, we can rely on it to be a truthful and faithful interpretation of the teachings of Jesus Christ.



A second question arises, "How did Pope Paul VI arrive at such a pronouncement? " An extensive commentary on the encyclical is beyond the scope of this letter, but it will suffice for the moment to say that the Holy Father considered two points: the social situation of his time (and indeed of ours) and an authentic interpretation of the moral law. Very early in the encyclical, Pope Paul VI recognizes that "the changes that have taken place are of considerable importance" (HV 2). He comments on the rapid increase in population and the incommensurate increase in resources, and therefore the difficulty of raising a large family.



However, he is quick to clarify that while the Church encourages parents to be responsible in planning their families, responsible parenthood "concerns the objective moral order which was established by God and of which a right conscience (italics ours) is the true interpreter" (HV 10). Neither the Church nor the Pope can invent the truth about the sanctity of human life and the divine gift that is the sexual faculty. They can only articulate and clarify it, but never create it.. In our effort to be a Church for the Poor and to look at reality from the poor's perspective, we remember that it is only Jesus who is "the Way, the Truth and the Life" (John 14:6) and we look to the Church and the Pope, to whom the keys were given, for guidance and counsel.



A third objection surfaces, "What of the primacy of conscience?" The position paper of the professors states, "Catholic social teachings similarly recognize the primacy of the well-formed conscience over wooden compliance to directives from political and religious authorities" (page 13). While it is true that our conscience always bids us to follow its voice, "in the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him in obedience" (Gaudium et Spes 16).



Following one's conscience is therefore not a matter of what one "feels" or "thinks" to be right or wrong. Rather, conscience must stand as a "witness to the authority of truth (italics ours) in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 177). The Catechism quotes John Henry Cardinal Newman who says, "[Conscience] is a messenger of him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by his representatives" (ibid. 1778). The task of conscience is therefore not to invent truth, but to discern what is true by listening to the voice of Jesus echoed by and through the Church.



It is important to understand that this argument does not lead to a "wooden compliance to directives." Our faith, in St. Anselm's words, is a faith that seeks understanding, fides quaerens intellectum. Catholics therefore do not blindly obey teachings just because they come from the Church. Rather, their faith bids them to seek to understand the mind, heart and spirit of the Church and make them his own.



In the Gospel of St. John, when the Lord told the crowd, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world" (6:51), some of his disciples said, "This is a hard saying; who can accept it?" (6:60). "As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him" (6:66). GK Chesterton poetically articulated this attitude when he said, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."



We are similarly faced with a "hard saying"—a faithful and true saying, but hard nevertheless. The Church is not blind to the plight of women, the poor and our young people, but as Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales recently affirmed, this issue is not simply a matter of demographics, economics or sociology. "It's an ethical issue… It's a moral issue." The Church cannot alter the truth about the sanctity of life and the sexual faculty to provide a ready answer to our social dilemma. Catholics whose consciences are good and well formed, and are docile to the honest but firm voice of the Church are bound by conscience not to support the RH Bill. Rather, faced with strong opposition from every side, they turn to our Lord together with St. Peter and exclaim, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!" (John 6:68).







Paul Christopher Cheng

AB Economics-Honors 2008

paulcheng29@ yahoo.com



Varsolo Sunio

BS Physics-CE 2007

var_sunio@yahoo. com



Gino Antonio Trinidad

AB Political Science 2008

gtrinidad@myway. com

iVan said...

You are seriously out of your mind Kit Tatad. i am so glad i never voted for you and I endlessly thank God that He did not let you win a new term in the senate!

M. said...

It is unfortunate Francisco Tatad is not in the senate and you would agree with me were you aware of the underlying dangers of the bill. The documents he cites are very real and the policies it promotes are now wide spread. The HB 5043 apparently legalises that which is already legal but what many are failing to see is that the real intent behind the law is a move to control the poorest classes by forcibly reducing their number. There are sections in the law that are thinly hidden attempts at forcing indigent women to contracept or have tubal ligations.
Before accusing someone of irrationality take the bill and read it and read the documents and cited and then you will come to realise how very sane and justified Francisco Tatad is.

Carolyn Moynihan said...

Hi Mr Tatad,

Congratulations on your informative blog. The editors of MercatorNet would like to talk to you about demographic issues. Please contact Carolyn Moynihan:
carolyn@mercatornet.com
Cheers,
CM