Given to the Committee on Population and Family Relations,
House of Representatives, 24 November 2010
FRANCISCO S. TATAD
Former Senate Majority Leader
Board Member, International Right to Life Federation, Cincinnati, Ohio;
World Youth Alliance, New York, NY
There are six bills before the Committee. Three bills bear the same title---AN ACT PROVIDING FOR A NATIONAL POLICY ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD AND POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES. The other three have slightly different titles. But it may not be inaccurate to say that the six bills are six versions of the same Reproductive Health (RH) bill. To simplify matters, I shall simply speak of “the bill” as though they had been consolidated into one.
This bill continues to be described as a health bill. But while the old bill had been under the primary jurisdiction of the Health Committee, with secondary referrals, the present bill has been referred to the Population Committee, and to no other. This invites some curiousity, but it allows the public to see that this is essentially a population control bill.
The bill has two major, shall we say core, proposals, namely:
1. To make the State the official provider of contraceptives and sterilization agents to the public: these, to be distributed as essential medicines in all national and local hospitals and other government health units; and
2. To impose a mandatory sex education on all schoolchildren from Grade V to 4th year High School, without parental consent.
The proponents have given us a long litany of reasons why these proposals are being made. First, they say they want to guarantee women’s right to an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents. But that isn’t quite so. There is no law that prohibits anyone from contracepting and getting sterilized, so they are freely contracepting and getting sterilized, and the national contraceptive prevalence rate is at least 51 percent. Then there are the economic, social, demographic reasons. They may not all be bad economics, sociology or demographics. But the solution to the problems they describe is not in the bill, which could instead create worse problems than it proposes to solve.
The first problem with the bill is that it directly invades the natural, private, and inviolate sanctuary of the family, which our Constitution describes as the foundation of the nation, and which in turn is founded on the inviolable social institution of marriage. The family is the basic unit of society; it precedes both the society and the State. It has rights that do not emanate from any political authority and are far beyond the authority of the State to abridge or regulate.
The married couple’s right to bear children is not only a God-given right. It is above all a God-given duty, given to the first man at the dawn of Creation in Genesis (1:28): “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.” (I believe Congressman Manny Pacquiao, the finest world boxing champion of our time, and the only world-class celebrity in this Congress, recently referred to this in a press conference here in the House.)
But in giving man and woman the duty and “right to procreate”--- the word “reproduce” was reserved for the lower animals--- God, who sees everything before it happens, did not tell husband and wife what to do before, during and after sexual intercourse; He left that to the loving couple’s good judgment, but He left no doubt that he meant business when, while sparing Cain after the murder of Abel, he took away Onan’s life for spilling his seed instead of fully honoring his brother’s widow. Now the RH bill proposes to make contraception and sterilization an institutional component of marriage, and the State as the official and ultimate supplier of contraceptives and sterilization agents.
This raises one overarching prejudicial question, which precedes any discussion of the merits or lack thereof of the proposals being made. The question is this: Congress may pass no law abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances. The government may not tell a journalist, a broadcaster or a Member of Congress what to say on anything, how to say it, and how much time to use in saying it. Does the State now have the right and authority to abridge the most fundamental right of married couples, and instruct them what to do, in the privacy of their bedrooms, before, during, and after sexual intercourse? I am sure we can all agree it does not. Now, does Congress have the right or the authority to give the State a power it does not have and which it has not been so constituted to possess?
“The Philippines is a democratic and republican state” (Art II, Sec 1, Constitution). Its powers are limited, not absolute. Those powers do not allow it to reach into the most intimate sanctuary of the private lives of its citizens. It can only does so by turning totalitarian and arrogating unto itself the power of God. So I raise the overarching question: Does the Philippine State have the right or the authority to instruct married couples what to do in the privacy of their bedrooms, before, during and after sexual intercourse? Does Congress have the right or the authority to give the State a power it does not have and which it has not been so constituted to possess?
My answer to both questions is no, and I trust the Committee and the Congress have the same answer too. Assuming their answer is in the affirmative, I now propose the next question: Can the Constitution, properly understood, lend validity to the RH proposals? What exactly do I mean?
Well, Section 12 of Article II of the Constitution provides: “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 first part , which guarantees State protection for the life of the unborn, is an outright ban on abortion. It is also a ban on state-contraception and sterilization, as distinguished from contraception and sterilization with no state participation. Why so? Because the State cannot possibly protect the life of the unborn from conception while simultaneously engaged in a program of contraception and sterilization whose purpose is to prevent women from conceiving. The two actions are contradictory; they cannot co-exist at the same time; either we uphold the Constitution or welcome the totalitarian state.
But, the Constitution does not define conception, we are told. When does it happen? We say upon fertilization, others say upon implantation. That is not at issue now and we need not resolve it here. But at whatever point conception takes place----whether upon ferilization or upon implantation----the duty of the State to protect the life of the unborn is constant, it does not change. Women could contracept and get sterilized on their own and in so doing deprive the State of unborn life to protect. But the State cannot on its own engage in contraception and sterilization and say that its duty to protect the life of the unborn from conception is limited to those who will get past its program of contraception and sterilization, if any. That would be absurdity on stilts, and it could not be part of any reasonably sane constitution. That is why the State cannot be part of any such program of contraception and sterilization. If that is not clear enough, I hope we would have the time outside of this Committee hearing to demonstrate it further in the plainest, most illustrative language possible.
The same with mandatory sex education. If parents are the natural and primary educators of their children, what right has the State to impose a mandatory sex education on minor school children without parental consent? Because the parents are unable or unwilling to perform their duty? Whatever the reason, the constitutional duty of the Government is to support, not replace, the parents. State takeover of parents’ rights and duties happens only in totalitarian states, and we do not need to get there.
Finally, is there need to provide for a national policy on reproductive health, responsible parenthood and population development? Congress provides a policy on anything if and when such a policy is needed, and no such policy yet exists. Now, the term “reproductive health” is a new coinage, and is not a univocal term: WHO, the various UN agencies, the G-8 if not G-20, and especially the US Secretary of State say the term includes “access to abortion,” while the proponents of the RH bill tell us it does not include “access to abortion.” As far as that goes, we do not yet have a validly legislated “RH policy.” But we have been carrying an appropriation for RH in the General Appropriations Act (GAA) for years, and P2 billion has been appropriated for it this year. How have we been able to do so without a policy in place?
Indeed, there is a policy, and there is a program, except that both are patently unconstitutional. And there is the constitutional policy, if not policies, in Article II, and Article XV of the Constitution, related to child-bearing, parenting, youth and women, other aspects of family life, health, population development, etc. ---the very things sought to be covered by the bill, except that the term “reproductive health” is not used for the reason earlier stated.
The duty of Congress is to implement the non-self-enforcing constitutional policy with an enabling act, not replace it with a new policy which, in this case, is in direct opposition to what the Constitution provides. The RH bill cannot possibly fly, even on this lone objection alone, so long as the Constitution is not cavalierly set aside. To swamp us with sheer numbers without regard to truth and reason is simply mob rule, not lawmaking, which always begins with truth and reason for the common good.
I admire the apparent resolve to fast-track this bill. But these efforts would certainly bear good constitutional fruit if they were directed at complying with the policies spelled out in the Constitution, and by deleting the unconstitutional appropriation for RH in the present budget, and reorienting and reorganizing, if not abolishing altogether, the Population Commission.
Thank you for listening.
Friday, November 26, 2010
THE RH BILL REVISITED
UPDATED 24 NOVEMBER 2010
By Francisco S. Tatad
Former Senate Majority Leader
Board Member, INTERNATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE FEDERATION
Cincinnati, Ohio
Board Member, WORLD YOUTH ALLIANCE
New York, NY
“What is good for the wolves is bad for the sheep.”
-A popular wisdom known to shepherds, sheep and wolves
Q. A paper issued jointly by Loyola School of Theology and the John J.
Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues, and specifically attributed to Fathers Eric Genilo, S. J., John J. Carroll, S. J., and Joaquin Bernas, S.J., observes that “the polarization of Philippine society over the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill has been a source of discomfort and discontent among Filipinos. It is unfortunate that the debate has focused only on whether the Bill should be passed or rejected in its present form. Either option would not be good for Filipinos.” How do you think the debate on the bill should proceed?
A. One must commend the effort of the three Jesuits to find a ‘win-win’ solution to a difficult issue. But we probably see things a little differently. First of all, six versions of the same RH bill have been filed in the House of Representatives, fewer in the Senate. Not enough members of the Fifteenth Congress, and not enough people anywhere have read the bills or bill (let’s just say, bill.) Not enough people to polarize at this time. Polarization could come soon enough, but it is not yet there.
Quite prodigious, though, is the effort of the pro-RH media, the pro-RH pollsters and the foreign-assisted lobby to hype “the need” to enact an RH law. They put in big headlines any pro-RH soundbite, like that one we read from a visiting abortionist professor from Berkeley who said that unless we pass the RH bill, in no time at all we could become another Somalia. It doesn’t matter if the statement makes sense or not; in the case of the Berkeley professor, he must have heard the Philippines was poor because “overpopulated” ---94 million people and a population density of 313 per square kilometer in 300,000 sq. km. of real estate. But he obviously never got to find out that Somalia is wretchedly much poorer because it does not have enough people---less than 10 million Somalians to cover a country twice as big as the Philippines, and a population density of 15 Somalians per square km. Yet those who will quote anything without thinking were glad to quote him like a messenger from above..
Naturally those who oppose the bill have not been slow to respond. These include members of the Catholic clergy and the laity who see in it an attempt to use the power of the State to redefine human life, marriage and the family. If this is what the Loyola Jesuits refer to as “polarization,” then they are probably right. Except that there may be no way of avoiding it, so long as the proposal stays, given what it contains, and the way it is being promoted by its proponents, local and foreign.
What do I mean? Well, to begin with, the basic thrust of the bill has been compelety misrepresented. They have to be more truthful about it. It is not fair to ask those who oppose the bill to moderate their opposition while the unacceptable provisions, which happen to be the main, are not being withdrawn.
Q. What’s so objectionable about their presentation? Don’t they simply want to allow Filipino women to fully exercise their “human right” to make an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents? Is that not, in fact, the bill’s principal purpose and objective?
A. That’s precisely our point. It’s not the main purpose of the bill, but they want us to believe it is. Filipino women and men in great numbers are already freely contracepting and getting sterilized. No law prohibits them from doing so. The Department of Health (DOH) and the Population Commission (Popcom) have been big suppliers of contraceptives and sterilization agents, as one Secretary of Health famously boasted at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. And the General Appropriations Act has been carrying regular appropriations for that purpose since the 70s. DOH and Popcom personnel as well as public and private hospital staff openly ask men and women to get sterilized, especially during a child birth. Many Local Government Units have since signed up. The country’s contraceptive prevalence rating now stands at 50 percent. And they need a law to guarantee women’s right to an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents?
Q. So what is the main objective and purpose?
A. The immediate objective, as written, is to make the State the ultimate
supplier of contraceptives and sterilization agents to the public. These are to be distributed as “essential” frontline medicines to cure human fertility, which is not a disease. The ultimate objective is population control.
The term “population control” is meticulously avoided by the population controllers for political correctness, but the truth is nothing else. The RH proponents in the House let the cat out of the bag when all versions of the bill were referred to the Committee on Population, with no secondary committee referrals, instead of the Health Committee, which had maintained primary jurisdiction over it until last year.
Population control has traveled a long way and is almost solely responsible for the “depopulation” crisis that has begun to tear at the seams of the once affluent Western societies. Through the RH bill and everything that will follow in its wake, it is determined to reshape our own society as well. It is no fairy tale.
Q. Please be more specific.
A. The original objective was to downsize the family everywhere to two
children per, by the year 2000. Where that goal has already been achieved, they are now looking at “the only child” option, even though that has already created a demographic disaster in China, with its projected preponderance of 30 million males without females by 2020. Or they are looking at the family rendered barren by contraception-sterilization-abortion or “same-sex marriage.”
The RH bill seeks to accomplish its objective through universal contraception and sterilization by the State, and mandatory sex education for school children, from Grade V up to high school, without parental consent. The bill is clearly inspired by the global population control agenda, which also provides its strongest support.
This agenda was first spelled out in U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY STUDY MEMORANDUM 200, otherwise known as the 1974 KISSINGER REPORT. It considered the overall effects of continued population growth in developing countries, not on the poverty and social conditions of those countries, but rather upon the economic and security interests of the United States. Thereafter the US launched its global program to curb population growth in developing countries. The program was quickly adopted by the other rich countries, the United Nations and its various agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, the Asian Development Bank and various international funding institutions.
In the US, population control was promoted with great fervor by the Clinton administration. But its strongest support yet has come from President Barack Obama whose first major official act was to authorize the use of US funds, disallowed by his predecessor George W. Bush, to support abortion activities in the developing countries.
Abortion became legal in the US in 1973 by virtue of the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade. Each year, abortion takes a toll of at least 46 million unborn children around the world. China accounts for 13 million, and India 11 million of the total count.
Q. Don’t they know the killing of babies is still a crime?
A. More than that. But not everyone has had the courag (again out of
political correctness), to call it by its proper name---Genocide. But both the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on Dec. 9, 1948---one day before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted---and the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court of 1998 classify as genocid, “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group.” These include, but are not limited to, “deliberately inflicting on the group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part,” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
At the Nuremberg war trials of 1945-6, the Nazis’ effort “to decrease the birth rate in Nazi- occupied countries by sterilization, castration and abortion, by separating husband from wife and men from women and obstructing marriage” was condemned and punished as a “crime against humanity.” But the very same people who condemned such unspeakable horror in the last century are now promoting it as a boon to humanity in this century.
Population control unleashed radical changes in social mores and lifestyle and systematic attacks on human life, the family and marriage. As these attacks intensified, Pope John Paul II warned against the conflict between the culture of life and the culture of death. Among many Filipinos, DEATH came to be known as the lethal acronym for Divorce, Euthanasia, Abortion, Total fertility control, Homosexual practices (same-sex marriage, etc).
What seems to excite some people is the continued dynamism and robustness of our population, despite all our man-made woes. It continues to grow at 1.9 percent annually, according to the CIA World Factbook, while most other countries are posting negative growth rates. This growth rate is not high, but the real numbers continue to grow because people “finally stopped dying like flies.” The average worker in the Philippines is much younger than his counterpart in most of the world, giving us a longterm edge that has been lost forever to so many countries. Population controllers and their propagandists, however, continue to alarm us about our supposedly “exploding” numbers, without looking at the age-structure, which puts us above most of everybody else, when the world’s most serious problem is the irreversible ageing, “de-fertilization”, “depopulation” and “dechristianization” now changing the face of Europe.
Writing in the November/December 2010 issue of the prestigious US quarterly journal, Foreign Affairs, Nicholas Eberstadt, one of the world’s most respected demographers, reports that “almost all of the world’s developed countries have sub-replacement fertility, with overall birth-rates more than 20 percent below the level required for long-term population stability. But developed countries account for less than a fifth of the world’s population; the great majority of the world’s population with sub-replacement fertility in fact reside in low-income societies…Between now and 2020, the global supply of potential workers is set to grow much more slowly than in the previous two decades. According to U.S.Census Bureau projections, the absolute increase in the world’s working-age (between 15 and 64) population between 2010 and 2030 will be around 900 million people, 400 million fewer than over the past two decades. The projected average rate of global manpower growth for the coming decades is 0.9 percent per year, only half the rate for the period between 1990 and 2010… It is not alarmist to warn that there is no time to lose in recognizing---and adapting to---the enormity of the world’s unavoidable demographic challenges.”
Our situation in the Philippines is tragic and perverse. We are being asked to renounce our enormous natural demographic advantage as a great liability, and to embrace the costly and ruinous population policies of the West that have long failed.
Q. Is there anything wrong with the State or Government flooding the
country with contraceptives and sterilization agents and distributing
them free of charge to the public?
1. First of all, this is not the business of the State. It would put the State in an unnecessary contention with the Church, which condemns contraception and sterilization as evil, even though the other “religious traditions” do not. Of course the Church does not expect the State to act as the official enforcer of its teaching, but it does not expect the State either to tell the Church’s faithful not to follow the teaching of their faith. The State cannot favor one “religious tradition” against another; it has to take a neutral position, which would allow the various “religious traditions” to teach their respective doctrines, without the approval or disapproval of the State. Their followers would then be free to follow or not to follow what their respective churches teach.
This is what is happening now. Those who want to contracept and get themselves sterilized are free to do so, and are freely doing so; and those who reject contraception and sterilization as evil are not compelled to do so. The status quo is working, except for the fact that, contrary to what the public has been made to believe, the Government, for many years now, has been consistently funding an RH program and receiving donations in cash and in kind from foreign sources to promote the RH- population control agenda, in violation of the 1987 Constitution. This---rather than a new RH bill----is the real constitutional and legal issue Congress must resolve.
In opposing the bill, the Church is simply asking our legislators to respect the natural moral law, and the most basic of all human rights, related to the sanctity and inviolability of human life, marriage and the family, and never to transgress the sacred precincts of the family bedroom and tell married couples how to exercise their marital rights and duties. No government does that, except in totalitarian States. We are not yet a totalitarian State, thank God, and we must curb every totalitarian impulse latent among our political bosses.
2. Second, the Constitution, to which every law must conform, does not allow state contraception or sterilization. Where does the Constitution say that? Article II ---DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES AND STATE POLICIES---Section 12 provides, among others, that “the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”
That is not just a ban on abortion. It is also a ban on State contraception and sterilization, as distinguished from contraception and sterilization without any State participation. Why so? Because the State cannot be “the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception” while at the same time involved in a contraception and sterilization program whose main, if not sole, purpose is to prevent women, or even just a single woman, from conceiving a child. The two things are opposed to each other and contradictory; the result is an absurdity which all legislation abhors.
3. Third, even if the constitutional ban on state contraception and
sterilization did not exist, the Philippines is not a welfare state
and has neither the duty nor the resources to provide directly for the population’s every need or want. Were the Philippines a welfare state, provided it had not lost its core values, its first duty would have been to provide for the people’s basic needs----food, water, clothing, shelter, education, health---though not any non-essential want, which could include contraceptives. In the area of health, it could mean free medical care and hospitalization for those afflicted with the most common diseases, the leading killer diseases and occasional epidemics, before throwing money (if ever) to eradicate fertility, as though it were a dreaded pandemic. But why is no one asking the State to provide free hospitalization and medical care to all those poor women suffering from cancer, pulmonary and respiratory diseases, tuberculosis, diabetes and other killers?
4. Fourth, the latest state of research has shown that many, if not most, contraceptives are no longer merely contraceptives but actual abortifacients. They do not just prevent conception but rather prevent the initial development of pregnancy even after fertilization. They either intercept the embryo before implantation in the uterus, thus they are called interceptives, or they eliminate the newly implanted embryo altogether, thus they are called contragestives. Since abortion is a criminal offense, the government cannot be part of any program that gives out abortifacients, even if the constitutional ban on state-supplied contraceptives did not exist.
5. Fifth, precisely because State contraception and sterilization are constitutionally prohibited, even if the RH bill were passed on the vote of a “lynch-mob” majority, that would not make it constitutional nor give it the first property of a just law. As Pope Benedict XVI says, “there are things that are always wrong and can never be legalized,” just as “there are some things that absolutely always remain legally binding, things that precede every majority decision, things that majority decisions must respect.” Instead of clearing the way for the massive public distribution of contraceptives and sterilization agents as essential medicines, an unjust law could simply provoke passive or active resistance among a particular class of Filipinos. That could ultimately create worse problems for the society and the State.
Q. The opponents of the RH bill appear to ignore altogether the fact that the bill allows men and women to choose between “modern contraceptives” and the traditional method or natural family planning. Do you also reject natural family planning (NFP)?
A. The bill makes passing mention of NFP, but its real focus is on state contraception and sterilization. Nothing in the bill says NFP shall be promoted as an essential service to married couples, that medical personnel will be trained to provide the service and to train others, that every hospital and clinic and every commercial establishment, etc. will be required to have a specific number of personnel who are skilled in the Billings method or something else. In contrast, there is a detailed proposal on how the State will provide contraceptives and sterilization agents to the public. The token reference to NFP is mere icing on the cake.
But let us first clarify our terms. No parity exists between contraception and NFP. NFP is not contraception---not by a long shot. Contraception requires the use of an artificial method to prevent fertilization, which occurs when a spermatozoa successfully penetrates the ovum in the fallopian tubes. NFP on the other hand simply requires the married couple to abstain from sex during the wife’s fertile period to avoid a possible pregnancy. It does not interfere with a woman’s fertility cycle, nor attempt to render infertile a woman’s fertile period. Because it is not contraception, couples may freely use it to space child-bearing, and the State can support it, consistent with its constitutional duty “to defend the right of spouses to found a family in accordance with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood.”
Q. How effective, and how difficult, is the successful practice of NFP?
A. Some studies in the early 90s have shown that NFP could be
effective up to 98 percent, or higher. But those studies did not
create any strong demand for NFP, simply because the method
does not give the big pharmaceutical firms or even government
bureaucrats the opportunity to make large piles of money.
Q. Aside from State contraception and sterilization, the RH bill is
proposing a mandatory age-appropriate sex education for students
from Grade V up to high school without parental consent. What is
so outrageous about that? Shouldn’t parents welcome it as a
necessary help in the education of their children?
A. The Constitution provides that the natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of their children for civic efficiency and the development of their character shall receive the support of Government. How can the State take that away from parents without becoming a totalitarian state? How could parents in turn throw away their right without submitting to totalitarianism and showing themselves to be irresponsible, unpatriotic and unfit to become parents? Compounding the sheer audacity of that proposal is the patent profanity (lapsing into occasional pornography) of the graphic images that are being piloted as instructional materials in various places as of now. They have no ethically redeeming value, are clearly destructive of the moral character and sexual composure and purity of the young.
Q. Should Catholics oppose the RH bill because it is unconstitutional
or because it goes against the teaching of the Church? What about
non-Catholics?
A. Catholics and non-Catholics should oppose the bill on
constitutional and moral grounds. Both the Constitution and the moral law must be followed at all times. Both are assaulted with equal severity by the RH bill. The moral law is not for Catholics only, and the Constitution binds all citizens. Article II of the Constitution, entitled DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES AND STATE POLICIES, and Article XV, THE FAMILY, speak of “the sanctity of human life; the family as the foundation of the nation; marriage as the foundation of the family and as an inviolable social institution; the right of spouses to found a family according to their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood; the right of the mother to bear a child and the right of the unborn child to be born; the right of parents to be the primary educators of their children; the right of youth and women to achieve their full potential as persons and as citizens; the right of the people to health and to a balanced environment in harmony with nature.”
These policies are not self-enforcing. They need an enabling
law to put flesh and bones into them. This is what the Congress should propose. Not the RH bill. For obvious reasons.
The RH bill reads: AN ACT PROVIDING FOR A NATIONAL POLICY
ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD AND
POPULATION DEVELOPMENT. How does it relate to the constitutional policy or policies laid down in Article II and Article XV on procreation and childbearing, responsible parenthood and population development? It has no bearing at all.
The term “reproductive health” does not appear in our Constitution. It is a new coinage, which entered “international” usage only recently. The World Health Organization, the UN Fund for Population Activities, and the various UN agencies, as well as the US and at least G-8 seem agreed that the term includes “access to abortion.” The authors of the RH bill, on the other hand, assure us that the term does not include “access to abortion,” which remains a punishable crime.
Since the bill invokes “international law” as part of the bases of
its proposals, it seems but right that whatever “international term” is used should carry its popularly accepted international meaning. Otherwise, the bill should use univocal and unambiguous terms only, understandable to Filipinos, for whom the proposed law is written. No legal text should have one meaning for a foreign audience and another meaning for the local. The term “reproductive health” should probably be avoided altogether.
Obviously, “reproductive health” is intended to clothe in
bureaucratic Newspeak the health issues related to childbearing. If
that is so, and we detect no evidence to the contrary, then the RH
bill is seeking to introduce a policy where the Constitution has
already formulated a policy or policies. Is that permissible? Not
so, as we have seen earlier.
Q. As a Catholic, should I listen to my bishop or to my congressman
and the senators on this issue? Please enlighten me.
A. Listen to all. It is a constitutional and moral issue. So listen to
your bishop because the bill is addressed to your whole person, to
everything that you are, your body and soul, your politics, your
economic and social wellbeing, your relations with everyone in your family, and with others, your salvation above all.
Consider this: Congress can pass no law “abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.” The State cannot tell a journalist, broadcaster, or
legislator what to say on any subject, how to say it, and how much
time to take in saying it. And yet you want the State to have the right to tell a man how to have sexual intercourse with his wife?
This is a fundamental moral and meta-legal issue, which must be
clear to every adult person. So listen to your bishop. But listen to your congressman and senators, too, because it is a constitutional issue and every legislation must conform to the Constitution. You have a right to expect your congressman and senators to be familiar with the Constitution and to be faithful to it.
And because the legislators are supposed to represent the people, and you are a part of the people, make sure they listen to you, too. Above all, they have a specific duty under Section 3 (4), Article XV of the Constitution to listen to families and family associations in the planning and implementation of programs affecting them.
Would any politician dare to propose that ARMM use part of its revenue to provide pork for its predominantly Muslim and non-pork-eating population, should the region ever run short of meat? How then could they ever bring themselves to think that Catholic taxpayers could be made to fund a contraception and sterililzation program that criminally violates a doctrine of their faith?
That would be entirely unjust in a situation where Catholics were a small minority. But where they constitute the overwhelming majority, it would be more than unjust: it would be rank tyranny.
Q. The Loyola paper has something on this. Could we have your take on it? It says:
The Protection of Human Life and the Constitution
• The Church insists on protection of human life upon fertilization. The question to be answered by the State is if this is the same position it will take regarding the protection of human life.
• The Philippine Constitution says the State will protect the life of the unborn from conception. It is not specified in the Constitution, whether conception means fertilization or implantation of the embryo in the womb. The Constitutional Convention (sic) seemed to favor fertilization. The definition of conception will have a bearing on whether contraception that prevents the implantation of the embryo would be legally allowed or not. The definition of conception in the Constitution must be worked out both by medical and legal experts to determine the parameters of what reproductive services can be provided by the Bill.
Providing Reproductive Health Information and Services for a Multi-Religious Society
• Even if the majority of the population of the country are Catholics, our democratic system should ensure that public policies are not determined solely by majority vote but by all, including non-Catholics. The Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church rejects the imposition of norms by a majority that is discriminatory of the rights of a minority. (#422)(sic) 423. “Because of its historical and cultural ties to a nation, a religious community might be given special recognition on the part of the State. Such recognition must in no way create discrimination within the civil or social order for other religious groups”; (#169):…”those responsible for government are required to interpret the common good of their country not only according to the guidelines of the majority but also according to the effective good of all the members of the community, including the minority.”
• It is the duty of the various religions to teach their faithful and form their consciences about what their religious tradition allows and prohibits with regard to family planning. It is the duty of the government to provide correct and comprehensive information on all non-abortifacient (as defined by law) family planning methods that are available. Consciences will be better equipped to make informed choices according to their religious traditions.
• Proposal: There can be two separate parallel programs for providing information and training, one for NFP and another for artificial methods of family planning (with separate budgets). The separation of the programs will ensure that NFP will get adequate funding and those trainers who wish to teach only NFP for religious reasons will not be forced to teach artificial methods. The conscience of health workers and trainers should be respected. If a Catholic health worker or trainer conscientiously objects to teaching contracepive methods, he or she shall be allowed to teach only NFP methods.
It is rather a long text, but could you please react to it?
A. We may have covered some of the points already, but just to make sure everything is clear.
• The Church holds that conception takes place upon fertilization. This is also the age-old view of the medical profession, despite some recent claim that it happens upon implantation. What is the State’s position then?
• The State’s position is as the Constitution says it. The Constitution does not say when conception takes place, but the records of the 1986 Constitutional Commission (not Convention), of which Father Bernas was a member, show that when they were debating the provision, that “the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception,” they agreed that conception meant fertilization. It is safe to assume that most Filipinos who had voted to ratify the 1987 Constitution before some people started talking about the implantation theory had the same position.
• But whether conception takes place upon fertilization or upon implantation is not a material issue here. At whatever point conception begins---upon fertilization or upon implantation---the duty of the State” to protect the life of the unborn from conception” does not change. Therefore, the State cannot be part of any program whose purpose is to prevent women, even a single woman, from conceiving a child. That has nothing to do with doing what the Catholics would like the State to do; it has all to do with what the Constitution bids the State to do.
• Should the government then provide the public with all the necessary information on contraceptives? If we oblige the government to do that, then we should oblige it to provide all the necessary information on all medicines for every human ailment. Now,that information is available in the market. Since the government does not manufacture any of these medicines, its more proper duty is to make sure that no harmful medicine for any kind of ailment is ever sold in the market. With respect to contraceptives, which men and women are free to use of their own accord, the government’s duty is to make sure that only those that are not illegal and are medically safe are sold in the market. Interceptives, contragestives and all sorts of abortifacients should be permitted only in the rarest of cases, when treating specific pathological disorders and diseases, upon the prescription of a duly registered medical specialist.
• Clearly, while the government cannot legally support a contraception and sterilization program, the Constitution requires it to support the practice of responsible parenthood through family planning that does not involve artificial contraception. This means NFP, which does not interfere with a woman’s fertility cycle, and is therefore not contraception at all.
Q. Are you still hopeful then that President Aquino could finally be persuaded to reconsider his announced position on the RH bill?
A. Prayerfully so. The pressure from abroad is understandably enormous, but it is a question of the Constitution and national sovereignty. The President’s duty is to defend both at all times, from all forces, including our own friends and allies. That is non-negotiable. And he still has some time to study the Constitution and the history of population control, and what it proposes to do and has already done to mankind. It is a great opportunity for conversion and transformation. Especially if he could see that the effort of the global anti-life forces to redefine the human being, the family and marriage is not a smaller matter than the travel advisories against the Philippines that seem to cause him so much anxiety these days.
Q. If what you say is true, that the RH bill is an imperialist ploy, then why is it that the usual “conservatives” are the ones opposing it, while the so-called “progressives” and “nationalists” are the ones pushing for it?
A. That is one of the great mysteries of our time. We should ask our progressive and nationalist friends why. If they are prepared to shout anti-imperialist slogans, burn the American flag to protest the rape of a Filipino woman by a drunken American sailor, and march for the expulsion of the visiting US forces in Mindanao at the slightest excuse, why are they the first ones to abuse those who oppose with conviction a bill that seeks to impose a racist and anti-poor population control policy on their unsuspecting and misinformed countrymen? Not enough nationalism and patriotism seems to be going on there. But we can’t afford to give up on anyone. We continue to pray that they’ll come around. Our greatest enemy is not malice but ignorance.
Q. The early surveys seem to indicate the pro-RH group has all the numbers, both inside and outside Congress. Is it not time to throw in the towel, or are you praying for a miracle?
A. We must pray for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to prevail. Let’s not forget that nobody can fool all the people all the time. Until the last elections, the paid pollsters and the conscript media had a good run. So many had been fooled by them. But we know, and they know we know, so I hope they’ll know when to stop. . Soon enough the truth will overtake them. So let’s not play their game. Let us instead try to get everyone to answer the following questions:
1. Do you honestly believe that any government has the right to tell any married couple what to do before, during and after marital intercourse?
2. Do you honestly believe that lawmakers and the President could simply ignore the Constitution and the natural moral law and do what the population controllers and the donor institutions are asking them to do without any cost or consequence?
3. Do you honestly believe that if they did all that, the people would simply do nothing and the government would still have any moral authority to govern?
There cannot be any two ways of reading the moral law and the Constitution. To return to the basic issue:
1) If the State is the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception, it cannot run a program that will prevent women from conceiving.
2) If parents are the natural and primary educators of their chldren, the State cannot impose a mandatory sex education program on minor schoolchildren without parental consent.
3) The State cannot do all these things without abolishing the Constitution and morphing into a totalitarian order.
So it’s not just a numbers game. Legislation must begin with the truth
and justice. Even the foreign population controllers must know this,
otherwise they would just be funding and fomenting civil strife.
Q. Is there nothing good at all which the Government can do under the circumstances?
A. The best thing the Government can do is simply to follow the Constitution, uphold and safeguard the nation’s sovereignty, and protect the culture of our people. Colonialism is long over. Let us not allow ourselves to become the plaything of those who want to impose their hedonistic ideologies and flawed lifestyles upon our culture. We have so much to teach them, they have very little to teach us, outside of science and technology, which needs to be governed by ethics in any case.
The best policy the Government can adopt is the first thing known to the medical profession: DO NO HARM. NEITHER PROHIBIT NOR PROVIDE CONTRACEPTIVES TO THE PUBLIC, BUT MAKE SURE EVERYONE IS PROTECTED FROM DIRECT STERILIZATION, AND THOSE WHO ARE CONTRACEPTING ARE LIKEWISE ADEQUATELY PROTECTED FROM ANY SIDE EFFECTS OF THEIR CONTRACEPTIVES, AND FROM INTERCEPTIVES, CONTRAGESTIVES AND ABORTIFACIENTS, WHICH SHOULD ALL BE BANNED.
Q. Does it mean there is absolutely nothing worth saving in the bil? The Loyola paper says “total rejection of the bill…will not change the status quo of high rates of infant mortality, maternal deaths, and abortions.” Any comment?
A. Infant and maternal mortality needs to be adequately addressed, and
the proper medical response is known. It is not contraceptives or sterilization agents. The same with criminal abortion. In fact, the bill contains several good provisions that could be isolated from the toxic corpus of the bill and quickly implemented. These include:
• The establishment or upgrading of hospitals with adequate and qualified personnel, equipment and supplies to be able to provide emergency obstetric care. Or the establishment of one hospital for comprehensive emergency obstetric care and four hospitals for basic emergency obstetric care to serve every 500,000 population.
• The proposal that all LGUs, national and local government hospitals, and other public health units conduct an annual maternal death review in accordance with guidelines set by the DOH.
• The proposal that all serious and life threatening reproductive health conditions such as HIV and AIDS, breast and reproductive tract cancers, and obstetric complications be given maximum benefits as provided by PhilHealth programs.
• The proposal that a Mobile Health Care Service in the form of a van or other means of transportation appropriate to coastal and mountainous areas deliver legitimate health care goods and services, minus the controversial ones.
All these could be done right now with a modicum of creativity and political will. They could be made part of the ongoing health program and adequately funded, just as the present DOH-Popcom RH program has been consistently funded over the years, even if it lacks any constitutional leg to stand on. These need not be legislated at all. That they are in the RH bill is probably simply to provide an ornamental function, some window dressing, to make it appear that the bill is not toxic altogether. But the Executive, if it so desires, could implement them now, without delay, and with no legal impediment.
By Francisco S. Tatad
Former Senate Majority Leader
Board Member, INTERNATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE FEDERATION
Cincinnati, Ohio
Board Member, WORLD YOUTH ALLIANCE
New York, NY
“What is good for the wolves is bad for the sheep.”
-A popular wisdom known to shepherds, sheep and wolves
Q. A paper issued jointly by Loyola School of Theology and the John J.
Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues, and specifically attributed to Fathers Eric Genilo, S. J., John J. Carroll, S. J., and Joaquin Bernas, S.J., observes that “the polarization of Philippine society over the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill has been a source of discomfort and discontent among Filipinos. It is unfortunate that the debate has focused only on whether the Bill should be passed or rejected in its present form. Either option would not be good for Filipinos.” How do you think the debate on the bill should proceed?
A. One must commend the effort of the three Jesuits to find a ‘win-win’ solution to a difficult issue. But we probably see things a little differently. First of all, six versions of the same RH bill have been filed in the House of Representatives, fewer in the Senate. Not enough members of the Fifteenth Congress, and not enough people anywhere have read the bills or bill (let’s just say, bill.) Not enough people to polarize at this time. Polarization could come soon enough, but it is not yet there.
Quite prodigious, though, is the effort of the pro-RH media, the pro-RH pollsters and the foreign-assisted lobby to hype “the need” to enact an RH law. They put in big headlines any pro-RH soundbite, like that one we read from a visiting abortionist professor from Berkeley who said that unless we pass the RH bill, in no time at all we could become another Somalia. It doesn’t matter if the statement makes sense or not; in the case of the Berkeley professor, he must have heard the Philippines was poor because “overpopulated” ---94 million people and a population density of 313 per square kilometer in 300,000 sq. km. of real estate. But he obviously never got to find out that Somalia is wretchedly much poorer because it does not have enough people---less than 10 million Somalians to cover a country twice as big as the Philippines, and a population density of 15 Somalians per square km. Yet those who will quote anything without thinking were glad to quote him like a messenger from above..
Naturally those who oppose the bill have not been slow to respond. These include members of the Catholic clergy and the laity who see in it an attempt to use the power of the State to redefine human life, marriage and the family. If this is what the Loyola Jesuits refer to as “polarization,” then they are probably right. Except that there may be no way of avoiding it, so long as the proposal stays, given what it contains, and the way it is being promoted by its proponents, local and foreign.
What do I mean? Well, to begin with, the basic thrust of the bill has been compelety misrepresented. They have to be more truthful about it. It is not fair to ask those who oppose the bill to moderate their opposition while the unacceptable provisions, which happen to be the main, are not being withdrawn.
Q. What’s so objectionable about their presentation? Don’t they simply want to allow Filipino women to fully exercise their “human right” to make an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents? Is that not, in fact, the bill’s principal purpose and objective?
A. That’s precisely our point. It’s not the main purpose of the bill, but they want us to believe it is. Filipino women and men in great numbers are already freely contracepting and getting sterilized. No law prohibits them from doing so. The Department of Health (DOH) and the Population Commission (Popcom) have been big suppliers of contraceptives and sterilization agents, as one Secretary of Health famously boasted at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. And the General Appropriations Act has been carrying regular appropriations for that purpose since the 70s. DOH and Popcom personnel as well as public and private hospital staff openly ask men and women to get sterilized, especially during a child birth. Many Local Government Units have since signed up. The country’s contraceptive prevalence rating now stands at 50 percent. And they need a law to guarantee women’s right to an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents?
Q. So what is the main objective and purpose?
A. The immediate objective, as written, is to make the State the ultimate
supplier of contraceptives and sterilization agents to the public. These are to be distributed as “essential” frontline medicines to cure human fertility, which is not a disease. The ultimate objective is population control.
The term “population control” is meticulously avoided by the population controllers for political correctness, but the truth is nothing else. The RH proponents in the House let the cat out of the bag when all versions of the bill were referred to the Committee on Population, with no secondary committee referrals, instead of the Health Committee, which had maintained primary jurisdiction over it until last year.
Population control has traveled a long way and is almost solely responsible for the “depopulation” crisis that has begun to tear at the seams of the once affluent Western societies. Through the RH bill and everything that will follow in its wake, it is determined to reshape our own society as well. It is no fairy tale.
Q. Please be more specific.
A. The original objective was to downsize the family everywhere to two
children per, by the year 2000. Where that goal has already been achieved, they are now looking at “the only child” option, even though that has already created a demographic disaster in China, with its projected preponderance of 30 million males without females by 2020. Or they are looking at the family rendered barren by contraception-sterilization-abortion or “same-sex marriage.”
The RH bill seeks to accomplish its objective through universal contraception and sterilization by the State, and mandatory sex education for school children, from Grade V up to high school, without parental consent. The bill is clearly inspired by the global population control agenda, which also provides its strongest support.
This agenda was first spelled out in U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY STUDY MEMORANDUM 200, otherwise known as the 1974 KISSINGER REPORT. It considered the overall effects of continued population growth in developing countries, not on the poverty and social conditions of those countries, but rather upon the economic and security interests of the United States. Thereafter the US launched its global program to curb population growth in developing countries. The program was quickly adopted by the other rich countries, the United Nations and its various agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, the Asian Development Bank and various international funding institutions.
In the US, population control was promoted with great fervor by the Clinton administration. But its strongest support yet has come from President Barack Obama whose first major official act was to authorize the use of US funds, disallowed by his predecessor George W. Bush, to support abortion activities in the developing countries.
Abortion became legal in the US in 1973 by virtue of the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade. Each year, abortion takes a toll of at least 46 million unborn children around the world. China accounts for 13 million, and India 11 million of the total count.
Q. Don’t they know the killing of babies is still a crime?
A. More than that. But not everyone has had the courag (again out of
political correctness), to call it by its proper name---Genocide. But both the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on Dec. 9, 1948---one day before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted---and the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court of 1998 classify as genocid, “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group.” These include, but are not limited to, “deliberately inflicting on the group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part,” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
At the Nuremberg war trials of 1945-6, the Nazis’ effort “to decrease the birth rate in Nazi- occupied countries by sterilization, castration and abortion, by separating husband from wife and men from women and obstructing marriage” was condemned and punished as a “crime against humanity.” But the very same people who condemned such unspeakable horror in the last century are now promoting it as a boon to humanity in this century.
Population control unleashed radical changes in social mores and lifestyle and systematic attacks on human life, the family and marriage. As these attacks intensified, Pope John Paul II warned against the conflict between the culture of life and the culture of death. Among many Filipinos, DEATH came to be known as the lethal acronym for Divorce, Euthanasia, Abortion, Total fertility control, Homosexual practices (same-sex marriage, etc).
What seems to excite some people is the continued dynamism and robustness of our population, despite all our man-made woes. It continues to grow at 1.9 percent annually, according to the CIA World Factbook, while most other countries are posting negative growth rates. This growth rate is not high, but the real numbers continue to grow because people “finally stopped dying like flies.” The average worker in the Philippines is much younger than his counterpart in most of the world, giving us a longterm edge that has been lost forever to so many countries. Population controllers and their propagandists, however, continue to alarm us about our supposedly “exploding” numbers, without looking at the age-structure, which puts us above most of everybody else, when the world’s most serious problem is the irreversible ageing, “de-fertilization”, “depopulation” and “dechristianization” now changing the face of Europe.
Writing in the November/December 2010 issue of the prestigious US quarterly journal, Foreign Affairs, Nicholas Eberstadt, one of the world’s most respected demographers, reports that “almost all of the world’s developed countries have sub-replacement fertility, with overall birth-rates more than 20 percent below the level required for long-term population stability. But developed countries account for less than a fifth of the world’s population; the great majority of the world’s population with sub-replacement fertility in fact reside in low-income societies…Between now and 2020, the global supply of potential workers is set to grow much more slowly than in the previous two decades. According to U.S.Census Bureau projections, the absolute increase in the world’s working-age (between 15 and 64) population between 2010 and 2030 will be around 900 million people, 400 million fewer than over the past two decades. The projected average rate of global manpower growth for the coming decades is 0.9 percent per year, only half the rate for the period between 1990 and 2010… It is not alarmist to warn that there is no time to lose in recognizing---and adapting to---the enormity of the world’s unavoidable demographic challenges.”
Our situation in the Philippines is tragic and perverse. We are being asked to renounce our enormous natural demographic advantage as a great liability, and to embrace the costly and ruinous population policies of the West that have long failed.
Q. Is there anything wrong with the State or Government flooding the
country with contraceptives and sterilization agents and distributing
them free of charge to the public?
1. First of all, this is not the business of the State. It would put the State in an unnecessary contention with the Church, which condemns contraception and sterilization as evil, even though the other “religious traditions” do not. Of course the Church does not expect the State to act as the official enforcer of its teaching, but it does not expect the State either to tell the Church’s faithful not to follow the teaching of their faith. The State cannot favor one “religious tradition” against another; it has to take a neutral position, which would allow the various “religious traditions” to teach their respective doctrines, without the approval or disapproval of the State. Their followers would then be free to follow or not to follow what their respective churches teach.
This is what is happening now. Those who want to contracept and get themselves sterilized are free to do so, and are freely doing so; and those who reject contraception and sterilization as evil are not compelled to do so. The status quo is working, except for the fact that, contrary to what the public has been made to believe, the Government, for many years now, has been consistently funding an RH program and receiving donations in cash and in kind from foreign sources to promote the RH- population control agenda, in violation of the 1987 Constitution. This---rather than a new RH bill----is the real constitutional and legal issue Congress must resolve.
In opposing the bill, the Church is simply asking our legislators to respect the natural moral law, and the most basic of all human rights, related to the sanctity and inviolability of human life, marriage and the family, and never to transgress the sacred precincts of the family bedroom and tell married couples how to exercise their marital rights and duties. No government does that, except in totalitarian States. We are not yet a totalitarian State, thank God, and we must curb every totalitarian impulse latent among our political bosses.
2. Second, the Constitution, to which every law must conform, does not allow state contraception or sterilization. Where does the Constitution say that? Article II ---DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES AND STATE POLICIES---Section 12 provides, among others, that “the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”
That is not just a ban on abortion. It is also a ban on State contraception and sterilization, as distinguished from contraception and sterilization without any State participation. Why so? Because the State cannot be “the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception” while at the same time involved in a contraception and sterilization program whose main, if not sole, purpose is to prevent women, or even just a single woman, from conceiving a child. The two things are opposed to each other and contradictory; the result is an absurdity which all legislation abhors.
3. Third, even if the constitutional ban on state contraception and
sterilization did not exist, the Philippines is not a welfare state
and has neither the duty nor the resources to provide directly for the population’s every need or want. Were the Philippines a welfare state, provided it had not lost its core values, its first duty would have been to provide for the people’s basic needs----food, water, clothing, shelter, education, health---though not any non-essential want, which could include contraceptives. In the area of health, it could mean free medical care and hospitalization for those afflicted with the most common diseases, the leading killer diseases and occasional epidemics, before throwing money (if ever) to eradicate fertility, as though it were a dreaded pandemic. But why is no one asking the State to provide free hospitalization and medical care to all those poor women suffering from cancer, pulmonary and respiratory diseases, tuberculosis, diabetes and other killers?
4. Fourth, the latest state of research has shown that many, if not most, contraceptives are no longer merely contraceptives but actual abortifacients. They do not just prevent conception but rather prevent the initial development of pregnancy even after fertilization. They either intercept the embryo before implantation in the uterus, thus they are called interceptives, or they eliminate the newly implanted embryo altogether, thus they are called contragestives. Since abortion is a criminal offense, the government cannot be part of any program that gives out abortifacients, even if the constitutional ban on state-supplied contraceptives did not exist.
5. Fifth, precisely because State contraception and sterilization are constitutionally prohibited, even if the RH bill were passed on the vote of a “lynch-mob” majority, that would not make it constitutional nor give it the first property of a just law. As Pope Benedict XVI says, “there are things that are always wrong and can never be legalized,” just as “there are some things that absolutely always remain legally binding, things that precede every majority decision, things that majority decisions must respect.” Instead of clearing the way for the massive public distribution of contraceptives and sterilization agents as essential medicines, an unjust law could simply provoke passive or active resistance among a particular class of Filipinos. That could ultimately create worse problems for the society and the State.
Q. The opponents of the RH bill appear to ignore altogether the fact that the bill allows men and women to choose between “modern contraceptives” and the traditional method or natural family planning. Do you also reject natural family planning (NFP)?
A. The bill makes passing mention of NFP, but its real focus is on state contraception and sterilization. Nothing in the bill says NFP shall be promoted as an essential service to married couples, that medical personnel will be trained to provide the service and to train others, that every hospital and clinic and every commercial establishment, etc. will be required to have a specific number of personnel who are skilled in the Billings method or something else. In contrast, there is a detailed proposal on how the State will provide contraceptives and sterilization agents to the public. The token reference to NFP is mere icing on the cake.
But let us first clarify our terms. No parity exists between contraception and NFP. NFP is not contraception---not by a long shot. Contraception requires the use of an artificial method to prevent fertilization, which occurs when a spermatozoa successfully penetrates the ovum in the fallopian tubes. NFP on the other hand simply requires the married couple to abstain from sex during the wife’s fertile period to avoid a possible pregnancy. It does not interfere with a woman’s fertility cycle, nor attempt to render infertile a woman’s fertile period. Because it is not contraception, couples may freely use it to space child-bearing, and the State can support it, consistent with its constitutional duty “to defend the right of spouses to found a family in accordance with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood.”
Q. How effective, and how difficult, is the successful practice of NFP?
A. Some studies in the early 90s have shown that NFP could be
effective up to 98 percent, or higher. But those studies did not
create any strong demand for NFP, simply because the method
does not give the big pharmaceutical firms or even government
bureaucrats the opportunity to make large piles of money.
Q. Aside from State contraception and sterilization, the RH bill is
proposing a mandatory age-appropriate sex education for students
from Grade V up to high school without parental consent. What is
so outrageous about that? Shouldn’t parents welcome it as a
necessary help in the education of their children?
A. The Constitution provides that the natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of their children for civic efficiency and the development of their character shall receive the support of Government. How can the State take that away from parents without becoming a totalitarian state? How could parents in turn throw away their right without submitting to totalitarianism and showing themselves to be irresponsible, unpatriotic and unfit to become parents? Compounding the sheer audacity of that proposal is the patent profanity (lapsing into occasional pornography) of the graphic images that are being piloted as instructional materials in various places as of now. They have no ethically redeeming value, are clearly destructive of the moral character and sexual composure and purity of the young.
Q. Should Catholics oppose the RH bill because it is unconstitutional
or because it goes against the teaching of the Church? What about
non-Catholics?
A. Catholics and non-Catholics should oppose the bill on
constitutional and moral grounds. Both the Constitution and the moral law must be followed at all times. Both are assaulted with equal severity by the RH bill. The moral law is not for Catholics only, and the Constitution binds all citizens. Article II of the Constitution, entitled DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES AND STATE POLICIES, and Article XV, THE FAMILY, speak of “the sanctity of human life; the family as the foundation of the nation; marriage as the foundation of the family and as an inviolable social institution; the right of spouses to found a family according to their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood; the right of the mother to bear a child and the right of the unborn child to be born; the right of parents to be the primary educators of their children; the right of youth and women to achieve their full potential as persons and as citizens; the right of the people to health and to a balanced environment in harmony with nature.”
These policies are not self-enforcing. They need an enabling
law to put flesh and bones into them. This is what the Congress should propose. Not the RH bill. For obvious reasons.
The RH bill reads: AN ACT PROVIDING FOR A NATIONAL POLICY
ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD AND
POPULATION DEVELOPMENT. How does it relate to the constitutional policy or policies laid down in Article II and Article XV on procreation and childbearing, responsible parenthood and population development? It has no bearing at all.
The term “reproductive health” does not appear in our Constitution. It is a new coinage, which entered “international” usage only recently. The World Health Organization, the UN Fund for Population Activities, and the various UN agencies, as well as the US and at least G-8 seem agreed that the term includes “access to abortion.” The authors of the RH bill, on the other hand, assure us that the term does not include “access to abortion,” which remains a punishable crime.
Since the bill invokes “international law” as part of the bases of
its proposals, it seems but right that whatever “international term” is used should carry its popularly accepted international meaning. Otherwise, the bill should use univocal and unambiguous terms only, understandable to Filipinos, for whom the proposed law is written. No legal text should have one meaning for a foreign audience and another meaning for the local. The term “reproductive health” should probably be avoided altogether.
Obviously, “reproductive health” is intended to clothe in
bureaucratic Newspeak the health issues related to childbearing. If
that is so, and we detect no evidence to the contrary, then the RH
bill is seeking to introduce a policy where the Constitution has
already formulated a policy or policies. Is that permissible? Not
so, as we have seen earlier.
Q. As a Catholic, should I listen to my bishop or to my congressman
and the senators on this issue? Please enlighten me.
A. Listen to all. It is a constitutional and moral issue. So listen to
your bishop because the bill is addressed to your whole person, to
everything that you are, your body and soul, your politics, your
economic and social wellbeing, your relations with everyone in your family, and with others, your salvation above all.
Consider this: Congress can pass no law “abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.” The State cannot tell a journalist, broadcaster, or
legislator what to say on any subject, how to say it, and how much
time to take in saying it. And yet you want the State to have the right to tell a man how to have sexual intercourse with his wife?
This is a fundamental moral and meta-legal issue, which must be
clear to every adult person. So listen to your bishop. But listen to your congressman and senators, too, because it is a constitutional issue and every legislation must conform to the Constitution. You have a right to expect your congressman and senators to be familiar with the Constitution and to be faithful to it.
And because the legislators are supposed to represent the people, and you are a part of the people, make sure they listen to you, too. Above all, they have a specific duty under Section 3 (4), Article XV of the Constitution to listen to families and family associations in the planning and implementation of programs affecting them.
Would any politician dare to propose that ARMM use part of its revenue to provide pork for its predominantly Muslim and non-pork-eating population, should the region ever run short of meat? How then could they ever bring themselves to think that Catholic taxpayers could be made to fund a contraception and sterililzation program that criminally violates a doctrine of their faith?
That would be entirely unjust in a situation where Catholics were a small minority. But where they constitute the overwhelming majority, it would be more than unjust: it would be rank tyranny.
Q. The Loyola paper has something on this. Could we have your take on it? It says:
The Protection of Human Life and the Constitution
• The Church insists on protection of human life upon fertilization. The question to be answered by the State is if this is the same position it will take regarding the protection of human life.
• The Philippine Constitution says the State will protect the life of the unborn from conception. It is not specified in the Constitution, whether conception means fertilization or implantation of the embryo in the womb. The Constitutional Convention (sic) seemed to favor fertilization. The definition of conception will have a bearing on whether contraception that prevents the implantation of the embryo would be legally allowed or not. The definition of conception in the Constitution must be worked out both by medical and legal experts to determine the parameters of what reproductive services can be provided by the Bill.
Providing Reproductive Health Information and Services for a Multi-Religious Society
• Even if the majority of the population of the country are Catholics, our democratic system should ensure that public policies are not determined solely by majority vote but by all, including non-Catholics. The Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church rejects the imposition of norms by a majority that is discriminatory of the rights of a minority. (#422)(sic) 423. “Because of its historical and cultural ties to a nation, a religious community might be given special recognition on the part of the State. Such recognition must in no way create discrimination within the civil or social order for other religious groups”; (#169):…”those responsible for government are required to interpret the common good of their country not only according to the guidelines of the majority but also according to the effective good of all the members of the community, including the minority.”
• It is the duty of the various religions to teach their faithful and form their consciences about what their religious tradition allows and prohibits with regard to family planning. It is the duty of the government to provide correct and comprehensive information on all non-abortifacient (as defined by law) family planning methods that are available. Consciences will be better equipped to make informed choices according to their religious traditions.
• Proposal: There can be two separate parallel programs for providing information and training, one for NFP and another for artificial methods of family planning (with separate budgets). The separation of the programs will ensure that NFP will get adequate funding and those trainers who wish to teach only NFP for religious reasons will not be forced to teach artificial methods. The conscience of health workers and trainers should be respected. If a Catholic health worker or trainer conscientiously objects to teaching contracepive methods, he or she shall be allowed to teach only NFP methods.
It is rather a long text, but could you please react to it?
A. We may have covered some of the points already, but just to make sure everything is clear.
• The Church holds that conception takes place upon fertilization. This is also the age-old view of the medical profession, despite some recent claim that it happens upon implantation. What is the State’s position then?
• The State’s position is as the Constitution says it. The Constitution does not say when conception takes place, but the records of the 1986 Constitutional Commission (not Convention), of which Father Bernas was a member, show that when they were debating the provision, that “the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception,” they agreed that conception meant fertilization. It is safe to assume that most Filipinos who had voted to ratify the 1987 Constitution before some people started talking about the implantation theory had the same position.
• But whether conception takes place upon fertilization or upon implantation is not a material issue here. At whatever point conception begins---upon fertilization or upon implantation---the duty of the State” to protect the life of the unborn from conception” does not change. Therefore, the State cannot be part of any program whose purpose is to prevent women, even a single woman, from conceiving a child. That has nothing to do with doing what the Catholics would like the State to do; it has all to do with what the Constitution bids the State to do.
• Should the government then provide the public with all the necessary information on contraceptives? If we oblige the government to do that, then we should oblige it to provide all the necessary information on all medicines for every human ailment. Now,that information is available in the market. Since the government does not manufacture any of these medicines, its more proper duty is to make sure that no harmful medicine for any kind of ailment is ever sold in the market. With respect to contraceptives, which men and women are free to use of their own accord, the government’s duty is to make sure that only those that are not illegal and are medically safe are sold in the market. Interceptives, contragestives and all sorts of abortifacients should be permitted only in the rarest of cases, when treating specific pathological disorders and diseases, upon the prescription of a duly registered medical specialist.
• Clearly, while the government cannot legally support a contraception and sterilization program, the Constitution requires it to support the practice of responsible parenthood through family planning that does not involve artificial contraception. This means NFP, which does not interfere with a woman’s fertility cycle, and is therefore not contraception at all.
Q. Are you still hopeful then that President Aquino could finally be persuaded to reconsider his announced position on the RH bill?
A. Prayerfully so. The pressure from abroad is understandably enormous, but it is a question of the Constitution and national sovereignty. The President’s duty is to defend both at all times, from all forces, including our own friends and allies. That is non-negotiable. And he still has some time to study the Constitution and the history of population control, and what it proposes to do and has already done to mankind. It is a great opportunity for conversion and transformation. Especially if he could see that the effort of the global anti-life forces to redefine the human being, the family and marriage is not a smaller matter than the travel advisories against the Philippines that seem to cause him so much anxiety these days.
Q. If what you say is true, that the RH bill is an imperialist ploy, then why is it that the usual “conservatives” are the ones opposing it, while the so-called “progressives” and “nationalists” are the ones pushing for it?
A. That is one of the great mysteries of our time. We should ask our progressive and nationalist friends why. If they are prepared to shout anti-imperialist slogans, burn the American flag to protest the rape of a Filipino woman by a drunken American sailor, and march for the expulsion of the visiting US forces in Mindanao at the slightest excuse, why are they the first ones to abuse those who oppose with conviction a bill that seeks to impose a racist and anti-poor population control policy on their unsuspecting and misinformed countrymen? Not enough nationalism and patriotism seems to be going on there. But we can’t afford to give up on anyone. We continue to pray that they’ll come around. Our greatest enemy is not malice but ignorance.
Q. The early surveys seem to indicate the pro-RH group has all the numbers, both inside and outside Congress. Is it not time to throw in the towel, or are you praying for a miracle?
A. We must pray for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to prevail. Let’s not forget that nobody can fool all the people all the time. Until the last elections, the paid pollsters and the conscript media had a good run. So many had been fooled by them. But we know, and they know we know, so I hope they’ll know when to stop. . Soon enough the truth will overtake them. So let’s not play their game. Let us instead try to get everyone to answer the following questions:
1. Do you honestly believe that any government has the right to tell any married couple what to do before, during and after marital intercourse?
2. Do you honestly believe that lawmakers and the President could simply ignore the Constitution and the natural moral law and do what the population controllers and the donor institutions are asking them to do without any cost or consequence?
3. Do you honestly believe that if they did all that, the people would simply do nothing and the government would still have any moral authority to govern?
There cannot be any two ways of reading the moral law and the Constitution. To return to the basic issue:
1) If the State is the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception, it cannot run a program that will prevent women from conceiving.
2) If parents are the natural and primary educators of their chldren, the State cannot impose a mandatory sex education program on minor schoolchildren without parental consent.
3) The State cannot do all these things without abolishing the Constitution and morphing into a totalitarian order.
So it’s not just a numbers game. Legislation must begin with the truth
and justice. Even the foreign population controllers must know this,
otherwise they would just be funding and fomenting civil strife.
Q. Is there nothing good at all which the Government can do under the circumstances?
A. The best thing the Government can do is simply to follow the Constitution, uphold and safeguard the nation’s sovereignty, and protect the culture of our people. Colonialism is long over. Let us not allow ourselves to become the plaything of those who want to impose their hedonistic ideologies and flawed lifestyles upon our culture. We have so much to teach them, they have very little to teach us, outside of science and technology, which needs to be governed by ethics in any case.
The best policy the Government can adopt is the first thing known to the medical profession: DO NO HARM. NEITHER PROHIBIT NOR PROVIDE CONTRACEPTIVES TO THE PUBLIC, BUT MAKE SURE EVERYONE IS PROTECTED FROM DIRECT STERILIZATION, AND THOSE WHO ARE CONTRACEPTING ARE LIKEWISE ADEQUATELY PROTECTED FROM ANY SIDE EFFECTS OF THEIR CONTRACEPTIVES, AND FROM INTERCEPTIVES, CONTRAGESTIVES AND ABORTIFACIENTS, WHICH SHOULD ALL BE BANNED.
Q. Does it mean there is absolutely nothing worth saving in the bil? The Loyola paper says “total rejection of the bill…will not change the status quo of high rates of infant mortality, maternal deaths, and abortions.” Any comment?
A. Infant and maternal mortality needs to be adequately addressed, and
the proper medical response is known. It is not contraceptives or sterilization agents. The same with criminal abortion. In fact, the bill contains several good provisions that could be isolated from the toxic corpus of the bill and quickly implemented. These include:
• The establishment or upgrading of hospitals with adequate and qualified personnel, equipment and supplies to be able to provide emergency obstetric care. Or the establishment of one hospital for comprehensive emergency obstetric care and four hospitals for basic emergency obstetric care to serve every 500,000 population.
• The proposal that all LGUs, national and local government hospitals, and other public health units conduct an annual maternal death review in accordance with guidelines set by the DOH.
• The proposal that all serious and life threatening reproductive health conditions such as HIV and AIDS, breast and reproductive tract cancers, and obstetric complications be given maximum benefits as provided by PhilHealth programs.
• The proposal that a Mobile Health Care Service in the form of a van or other means of transportation appropriate to coastal and mountainous areas deliver legitimate health care goods and services, minus the controversial ones.
All these could be done right now with a modicum of creativity and political will. They could be made part of the ongoing health program and adequately funded, just as the present DOH-Popcom RH program has been consistently funded over the years, even if it lacks any constitutional leg to stand on. These need not be legislated at all. That they are in the RH bill is probably simply to provide an ornamental function, some window dressing, to make it appear that the bill is not toxic altogether. But the Executive, if it so desires, could implement them now, without delay, and with no legal impediment.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
THE RH BILL REVISITED
By Francisco S. Tatad
Former Senate Majority Leader
Board Member, INTERNATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE FEDERATION, Cincinnati, Ohio
Board Member, WORLD YOUTH ALLIANCE, New York, NY
“What is good for the wolves is bad for the sheep.”
-A popular wisdom known to shepherds, sheep and wolves
Q. Proponents and supporters of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill claim its principal objective is to allow Filipino women to fully exercise their right to make an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents. Is that, in fact, the bill’s principal objective?
A. It is not. Filipino women and men in great numbers are already freely contracepting and getting sterilized. No law prohibits them from doing so. The Department of Health and the Population Commission have been big suppliers of contraceptives and sterilization agents and the General Appropriations Act has been carrying regular appropriations for that purpose since the 70s. DOH and Popcom personnel as well as public and private hospital staff openly ask men and women to get sterilized, especially during the birth of a new child. Many Local Government Units have since joined their ranks. The country’s contraceptive prevalence rating now stands at 50 percent. It is therefore completely misleading and deceptive to say that the RH bill in both Houses of Congress is intended to help women make an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents.
The real objective and purpose of the bill as written is to make the State the principal, if not lone, provider of contraceptives and sterilization agents to the general public. These will be distributed as “essential” frontline medicines to cure human fertility, which is not yet a disease.
The unwritten, ultimate objective of the bill is population control. The term is meticulously avoided by the population controllers and their propagandists for political correctness, but the truth is nothing else. The original objective was to reduce the size of the family around the world to two children per family by the year 2000. The latest brainstorm seems to celebrate “the only child,” which has already created a demographic disaster in China, with a projected preponderance of 30 million males without females by 2020, or the totally childless “family,” which is guaranteed by “same-sex marriage.” The RH bill seeks to accomplish its objective through universal contraception and sterilization by the State, and mandatory sex education for school children, from Grade V up to high school, without parental consent.
The bill is clearly inspired by the global population control agenda, which also provides its strongest support. This agenda was first spelled out in U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY STUDY MEMORANDUM 200, otherwise known as the 1974 KISSINGER REPORT. It considered the overall effects of continued population growth in developing countries, not on the poverty and social conditions of those countries, but rather upon the economic and security interests of the United States. Thereafter the US launched its global program to curb population growth in developing countries. The program was quickly adopted by the other rich countries, the United Nations and its various agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, the Asian Development Bank and various international funding institutions.
In the US, population control was promoted with great vigor by the Clinton administration, but its strongest support yet has come from President Barack Obama whose first major official edict was to authorize the use of US funds, disallowed by his predecessor George W. Bush, to support abortion activities in the developing countries. Abortion became legal in the US in 1973 by virtue of the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade. Each year, abortion takes a toll of at least 46 million unborn children around the world. China accounts for 13 million, and India 11 million of the total count.
Not everyone has had the courage (again out of political correctness), to call it by its proper name---Genocide. But both the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on Dec. 9, 1948---one day before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted---and the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court of 1998 classify as genocid, “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group.” These include, but are not limited to, “deliberately inflicting on the group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part,” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” At the Nuremberg war trials of 1945-6, the Nazis’ effort “to decrease the birth rate in Nazi- occupied countries by sterilization, castration and abortion, by separating husband from wife and men from women and obstructing marriage” was condemned and punished as a “crime against humanity.” But the very same people who condemned such unspeakable horror in the last century are now promoting it as a boon to humanity in this century.
Population control unleashed radical changes in social mores and lifestyle and systematic attacks on human life, the family and marriage.. As these attacks intensified, Pope John Paul II warned against the conflict between the culture of life and the culture of death. Among many Filipinos, DEATH came to be known as the lethal acronym for Divorce, Euthanasia, Abortion, Total fertility control, Homosexual practices (same-sex marriage, etc).
What seems to excite some people is the continued dynamism and robustness of our population, despite all our man-made woes. It continues to grow at 1.9 percent annually, according to the CIA World Factbook, while most other countries are posting negative growth rates. This growth rate is not high, but the real numbers continue to grow because people “finally stopped dying like flies.” The average worker in the Philippines is much younger than his counterpart in most of the world, giving us a longterm edge that has been lost forever to so many countries. Population controllers and their propagandists, however, continue to alarm us about our supposedly “exploding” numbers, without looking at the age-structure, which puts us above most of everybody else, when the world’s most serious problem is the irreversible ageing, “de-fertilization”, “depopulation” and “dechristianization” now changing the face of Europe.
Writing in the November/December 2010 issue of the prestigious US quarterly journal, Foreign Affairs, Nicholas Eberstadt, one of the world’s most respected demographers, reports that “almost all of the world’s developed countries have sub-replacement fertility, with overall birth-rates more than 20 percent below the level required for long-term population stability. But developed countries account for less than a fifth of the world’s population; the great majority of the world’s population with sub-replacement fertility in fact reside in low-income societies…Between now and 2020, the global supply of potential workers is set to grow much more slowly than in the previous two decades. According to U.S.Census Bureau projections, the absolute increase in the world’s working-age (between 15 and 64) population between 2010 and 2030 will be around 900 million people, 400 million fewer than over the past two decades. The projected average rate of global manpower growth for the coming decades is 0.9 percent per year, only half the rate for the period between 1990 and 2010… It is not alarmist to warn that there is no time to lose in recognizing---and adapting to---the enormity of the world’s unavoidable demographic challenges.”
Our situation in the Philippines is tragic and perverse. We are being asked to renounce our enormous natural demographic advantage as a great liability, and to embrace the costly and ruinous population policies of the West that have long failed.
Q.Is there anything wrong with the State or Government flooding the
country with contraceptives and sterilization agents and distributing them
free of charge to the public?
A. Plenty.
1. First of all, this is not the business of the State. The Catholic Church condemns contraception and sterilization as evil, while other “religious traditions” do not. Given the plurality of beliefs, the State cannot favor one and do violence to all the others, or vice versa. It cannot oblige everyone to reject contraception and sterilization, for that would favor Catholics; but it can neither oblige everyone to use contraceptives and sterilization agents, for that would favor non-Catholics. It has to take a neutral position, which would allow the various “religious traditions” to teach their respective doctrines, without the approval or disapproval of the State. Their followers would then be free to follow or not to follow what their respective churches teach.
This is what is happening now. Those who want to contracept and get themselves sterilized are free to do so, and are freely doing so; and those who reject contraception and sterilization as evil are not compelled to do so. The status quo is working, except for the fact that, contrary to what the public has been made to believe, the Government, for many years now, has been consistently funding an RH program and receiving donations in cash and in kind from foreign sources to promote the RH- population control agenda, in violation of the 1987 Constitution. This is the real constitutional and legal issue Congress must resolve.
In opposing the bill, the Church is simply asking our legislators to respect the natural moral law, and the most basic of all human rights, related to the sanctity and inviolability of human life, marriage and the family, and never to transgress the sacred precincts of the family bedroom and tell married couples how to exercise their marital rights and duties. No government does that, except in totalitarian States. We are not yet a totalitarian State, thank God, and we must curb every totalitarian impulse latent among our political bosses.
2. Second, the Constitution, to which every law must conform, does not allow state contraception or sterilization. Where does the Constitution say that? In Article II ---DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES AND STATE POLICIES---Section 12 provides, among others, that “the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”
That is not just a ban on abortion. It is also a ban on State contraception and sterilization. Why so? Because the State cannot be “the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception” while at the same time involved in a contraception and sterilization program whose main, if not sole, purpose is to prevent women, or even just a single woman, from conceiving a child. The two things are opposed to each other and contradictory; the result is an absurdity which all legislation abhors.
3. Third, even if the constitutional ban on state contraception and
sterilization did not exist, the Philippines is not a welfare state
and has neither the duty nor the resources to provide directly for the population’s every need or want. Were the Philippines a welfare state, provided it had not lost its core values, its first duty would have been to provide for the people’s basic needs----food, water, clothing, shelter, education, health---though not any non-essential want, which could include contraceptives. In the area of health, it could mean free medical care and hospitalization for those afflicted with the most common diseases, the leading killer diseases and occasional epidemics, before throwing money (if ever) to eradicate fertility, as though it were a dreaded pandemic.
4. Fourth, the latest state of research has shown that many, if not most, contraceptives are no longer merely contraceptives but actual abortifacients. They do not just prevent conception but rather prevent the initial development of pregnancy even after fertilization. They either intercept the embryo before implantation in the uterus, thus they are called interceptives, or they eliminate the newly implanted embryo altogether, thus they are called contragestives. Since abortion is a criminal offense, the government cannot be part of any program that gives out abortifacients, even if the constitutional ban on state-supplied contraceptives did not exist.
5. Fifth, precisely because State contraception and sterilization are constitutionally prohibited, even if the RH bill were passed on the vote of a “lynch-mob” majority, that would not make it constitutional nor give it the first property of a just law. As Pope Benedict XVI says, “there are things that are always wrong and can never be legalized,” just as “there are some things that absolutely always remain legally binding, things that precede every majority decision, things that majority decisions must respect.” Instead of clearing the way for the massive public distribution of contraceptives and sterilization agents as essential medicines, an unjust law could simply provoke passive or active resistance among a particular class of Filipinos. That could ultimately create worse problems for the society and the State.
Q. The opponents of the RH bill appear to ignore altogether the fact that the bill allows men and women to choose between “modern contraceptives” and the traditional method or natural family planning. Do you also reject natural family planning (NFP)?
A. The bill makes passing mention of NFP, but its real focus is on state contraception and sterilization. Nothing in the bill says NFP shall be promoted as an essential service to married couples, that medical personnel will be trained to provide the service and to train others, that every hospital and clinic and every commercial establishment, etc. will be required to have a specific number of personnel who are skilled in the Billings method or something else. In contrast, there is a detailed proposal on how the State will provide contraceptives and sterilization agents to the public. The token reference to NFP is mere icing on the cake.
But let us first clarify our terms. No parity exists between contraception and NFP. NFP is not contraception---not by a long shot. Contraception requires the use of an artificial method to prevent fertilization, which occurs when a spermatozoa successfully penetrates the ovum in the fallopian tubes. NFP on the other hand simply requires the married couple to abstain from sex during the wife’s fertile period to avoid a possible pregnancy. It does not interfere with a woman’s fertility cycle, nor attempt to render infertile a woman’s fertile period. Because it is not contraception, couples may freely use it to space child-bearing, and the State can support it, consistent with its constitutional duty “to defend the right of spouses to found a family in accordance with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood.”
Q. How effective, and how difficult, is the successful practice of NFP?
A. Some studies in the early 90s have shown that NFP could be
effective up to 98 percent, or higher. But those studies did not
create any strong demand for NFP, simply because the method
does not give the big pharmaceutical firms or even government
bureaucrats the opportunity to make large piles of money.
Q. Aside from State contraception and sterilization, the RH bill is
proposing a mandatory age-appropriate sex education for students
from Grade V up to high school without parental consent. What is
so outrageous about that? Shouldn’t parents welcome it as a
necessary help in the education of their children?
A. Both the Constitution and moral law recognize parents as the natural and primary educators of their children. The State cannot take away that right without turning totalitarian, and parents cannot throw it away without submitting to totalitarianism and showing themselves to be irresponsible, unpatriotic and unfit to become parents. The rank audacity of that proposal is compounded by the patent profanity (lapsing into occasional pornography) of the graphic images that are being piloted as instructional materials in various places as of now. They have no ethically redeeming value, are clearly destructive of the moral character and sexual composure and purity of the young.
Q. Should Catholics oppose the RH bill because it is unconstitutional
or because it goes against the teaching of the Church? What about
non-Catholics?
A. Catholics and non-Catholics should oppose the bill on
constitutional and moral grounds. Both the Constitution and the moral law must be followed at all times. Both are assaulted with equal severity by the RH bill. The moral law is not for Catholics only, and the Constitution binds all citizens. Article II of the Constitution, entitled DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES AND STATE POLICIES, and Article XV, THE FAMILY, speak of “the sanctity of human life; the family as the foundation of the nation; marriage as the foundation of the family and as an inviolable social institution; the right of spouses to found a family according to their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood; the right of the mother to bear a child and the right of the unborn child to be born; the right of parents to be the primary educators of their children; the right of youth and women to achieve their full potential as persons and as citizens; the right of the people to health and to a balanced environment in harmony with nature.”
These policies are not self-enforcing. They need an enabling
law to put flesh and bones into them. The RH bill cannot possibly be that.
The RH bill reads: AN ACT PROVIDING FOR A NATIONAL POLICY
ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD AND
POPULATION DEVELOPMENT. How does it relate to the constitutional policy or policies laid down in Article II and Article XV on procreation and childbearing, responsible parenthood and population development? It has no bearing at all.
The term “reproductive health” does not appear in our Constitution. It is a new coinage, which entered “international” usage only recently. The World Health Organization, the UN Fund for Population Activities, and the various UN agencies, as well as the US and at least G-8 seem agreed that the term includes “access to abortion.” The authors of the RH bill, on the other hand, assure us that the term does not include “access to abortion,” which remains a punishable crime.
Since the bill invokes “international law” as part of the bases of
its proposals, it seems but right that whatever “international term” is used should carry its popularly accepted international meaning. Otherwise, the bill should use univocal and unambiguous terms only, understandable to Filipinos, for whom the proposed law is written. No legal text should have one meaning for a foreign audience and another meaning for the local. The term “reproductive health” should probably be avoided altogether.
Obviously, “reproductive health” is intended to clothe in
bureaucratic Newspeak the health issues related to childbearing. If
that is so, and we detect no evidence to the contrary, then the RH
bill is seeking to introduce a policy where the Constitution has
already formulated a policy or policies. Is that permissible? Not
so. The only thing Congress can do is to propose a law to
implement a non-self-enforcing constitutional policy or policies.
Can the RH bill do that? Not likely. Why? Because its provisions
are headed in the opposite direction. The pro-RH solons need to
craft a new and better bill.
Q. As a Catholic, should I listen to my bishop or to my congressman
and the senators on this issue? Please enlighten me.
A. Listen to all. It is a constitutional and moral issue. So listen to
your bishop because the bill is addressed to your whole person, to
everything that you are, your body and soul, your politics, your
economic and social wellbeing, your relations with everyone in your family, and with others, your salvation above all.
Does the State or Government have the right to intervene in the most
intimate acts that bind a man and a woman in marriage, or are
these not sacred precincts where not even the State may intrude?
Congress can pass no law “abridging the freedom of speech, of
expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.”
Can that same Congress now pass a law abridging a married couple’s
God-given right to exchange seed and substance in the conjugal
act?
The State has no right to tell a journalist, broadcaster, or
legislator what to say on any subject, how to say it, and how much
time to take in saying it. Does the same State have a higher right to
tell a man how to embrace and make love to his wife?
This is a fundamental moral and meta-legal issue, which must be
clear to every adult person, and on which the Church has a right and
duty to pronounce her position on behalf of the whole person;
listen to it. And listen to your congressman and senators, too,
because it is a constitutional issue and every legislation must
conform to the Constitution. You have a right to expect your
congressman and senators to be familiar with the Constitution and
to be faithful to it. And because the legislators are supposed to
represent the people, and you are a part of the people, make sure
they listen to you, too. Above all, they have a specific duty under Section 3 (4), Article XV of the Constitution to listen to families and family associations in the planning and implementation of programs affecting them.
The State is not mandated to act as the official enforcer of Catholic teaching, or the teaching of any church for that matter, but does the State have the right, or the duty, to enact a law that attacks a specific Church doctrine and requires Catholic taxpayers to fund the program that criminally attacks that doctrine of their faith?
That would be entirely unjust in a situation where Catholics were a small minority. But where they constitute the overwhelming majority, it would be more than unjust: it would be rank tyranny. Especially since, while defending their rights, they are not taking anything away from, or imposing any burden on, any religious minority. The injury to the common good would persist even if Catholics were no longer made to pay their taxes and declared exempt from the unjust law.
Q. But not all the parties are agreed on when life begins. One group says
life begins upon fertilization of the ovum, another group says it begins upon its implantation upon the uterus. Who will resolve this conflict, and how can one take a definitive position against contraception or sterilization while this issue is unresolved?
A. Not being a medical doctor, I can only refer to the accepted wisdom of the ages. For as long as memory holds, the medical profession and the rest of humanity have always understood conception as synonymous with fertilization. The records of the 1986 Constitutional Commission show that when they were debating the provision, that “the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception,” they agreed that conception meant fertilization. Now there are attempts to redefine that. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, for one, defines pregnancy as beginning with implantation. But this seems more in line with some political agenda than with any recent discovery of modern science. The new claim therefore has failed to displace or disturb the settled view of the medical profession: pregnancy begins at fertilization.
Nevertheless, the point I am making has nothing to do with that. It is simply this, that when the Constitution says the State shall protect the life of the unborn from conception, it means that at whatever point life begins—whether upon fertilizer or upon implantation---the duty of the State is to “protect the the life of the unborn” from that moment on. It does not change. Therefore the government cannot be part of a contraception or sterilization program, whose purpose is to prevent women from conceiving. We just cannot have an absurd situation where the State, through its RH program, actively prevents babies from being conceived, so that at the end of the day it would be able to say, “Sorry, we have no unborn babies to protect.”
Q. Is it not possible to debate this issue without involving our faith? Doesn’t the Catholic Church realize that it is losing many of its members for speaking out so strongly on this issue?
A. Yes and no.
Yes, if the proponents of the RH bill could but answer three simple questions:
1) Does the State or the government have the right or duty to tell any married couple how to perform their marital rights and duties in the privacy of their bedroom?
2) If the State is the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception, does it have the right or duty to run a simultaneous contraception and sterilization program whose main, if not sole, purpose is to prevent women from conceiving?
3) If the Constitution recognizes parents as the natural and primary educators of their children, does the State have the right or duty to impose a compulsory sex education program on minor schoolchildren, without parental consent?
Religion does not have to figure at all. But wherever and whenever human dignity is attacked, men and women of faith have a right and a duty to speak out. For as De Tocqueville puts it, “despotism can govern without faith, but liberty cannot.” The oft-misquoted “separation” of Church and State does not separate the State from God. That’s why in the first line of the Preamble of our Constitution, we implore “the aid of Almighty God.” And the President’s oath to “preserve and defend the Constitution, execute (the nation’s) laws, do justice to every man and consecrate myself to the service of the Nation,” ends with, “So help me God.”
And as Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, the Archbishop of Cebu, reminds us, why was the intervention of the bishops so welcome and cheered in February 1986 when they said Ferdinand Marcos had lost the moral authority to govern after winning the snap presidential elections, and now, there is every attempt to silence their objection to the RH bill, which threatens to destroy the integrity of the human person, the family and the entire society? Out of pure cussedness, they even cheer the pro-RH boor who tried to disrupt an ecumenical service at the Manila Cathedral.
The Church to whom most of us belong is not out there to win a rigged survey or popularity contest. She will speak the truth as the truth needs to be said, and when all her false supporters have gone, she will be standing there, stronger than the strongest oak, empty of all false pretences and filled to overflowing with the spirit of God.
Q. Are you still hopeful then that the President could finally be persuaded to reconsider his announced position on the RH bill?
A. One has to be. The pressure from abroad is understandably enormous, but it is a question of the Constitution and national sovereignty. The President’s duty is to defend both at all times, from all forces, including our own friends and allies. That is non-negotiable. And he still has some time to study the Constitution and the history of population control, and what it proposes to do and has already done to mankind. It is a great opportunity for conversion and transformation. Especially if he could see that the effort of the global anti-life forces to redefine the human being, the family and marriage is not a smaller matter than the travel advisories against the Philippines that seem to cause him so much anxiety these days.
Q. If what you say is true, that the RH bill is an imperialist ploy, then why is it that the usual “conservatives” are the ones opposing it, while the so-called “progressives” and “nationalists” are the ones pushing for it?
A. That is one of the great mysteries of our time. We should ask our progressive and nationalist friends why. If they are prepared to shout anti-imperialist slogans, burn the American flag to protest the rape of a Filipino woman by a drunken American sailor, and march for the expulsion of the visiting US forces in Mindanao at the slightest excuse, why are they the first ones to abuse those who oppose with conviction a bill that seeks to impose a racist and anti-poor population control policy on their unsuspecting and misinformed countrymen? Not enough nationalism and patriotism seems to be going on there. But we can’t afford to give up on anyone. We continue to pray that they’ll come around. Our greatest enemy is not malice but ignorance.
Q. The surveys seem to indicate the pro-RH group has all the numbers, both inside and outside Congress. Is it not time to throw in the towel, or are you praying for a miracle?
A. We must pray for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to prevail. Let’s not forget that nobody can fool all the people all the time. Until the last elections, the paid pollsters and the conscript media had a good run. So many had been fooled by them.
But we know, and they know we know, what kind of deception they had been foisting upon our people. Soon enough the truth will overtake them. So let’s not play their game. Let us instead try to get everyone to answer the following questions:
1. Do you honestly believe that any government has the right to tell any married couple what to do before, during and after marital intercourse?
2. Do you honestly believe that lawmakers and the President could simply ignore the Constitution and the natural moral law and do what the population controllers and the donor institutions are asking them to do without any cost or consequence?
3. Do you honestly believe that if they did all that, the people would simply do nothing and the government would still have any moral authority to govern?
There cannot be any two ways of reading the moral law and the Constitution. To return to the basic issue:
1) If the State is the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception, it cannot run a program that will prevent women from conceiving.
2) If parents are the natural and primary educators of their chldren, the State cannot impose a mandatory sex education program on minor schoolchildren without parental consent.
3) The State cannot do all these things without abolishing the Constitution and morphing into a totalitarian order.
So it’s not just a numbers game. Legislation must begin with the truth
and justice. Even the foreign population controllers must know this,
otherwise they would just be funding civil disorder.
Q. Is there anything good at all which the Government can do under the circumstances?
A. The best thing the Government can do is simply to follow the Constitution, uphold and safeguard the nation’s sovereignty, and protect the culture of our people. Colonialism is long over. Let us not allow ourselves to become the plaything of those who want to impose their hedonistic ideologies and flawed lifestyles upon our culture. We have so much to teach them, they have very little to teach us, outside of science and technology, which needs to be governed by ethics in any case.
The best policy the Government can adopt is the first thing known to the medical profession: DO NO HARM. NEITHER PROHIBIT NOR PROVIDE CONTRACEPTIVES TO THE PUBLIC, BUT MAKE SURE EVERYONE IS PROTECTED FROM DIRECT STERILIZATION, AND THOSE WHO ARE CONTRACEPTING ARE LIKEWISE ADEQUATELY PROTECTED FROM ANY SIDE EFFECTS OF THEIR CONTRACEPTIVES, AND FROM INTERCEPTIVES, CONTRAGESTIVES AND ABORTIFACIENTS, WHICH SHOULD ALL BE BANNED.
Q. Does it mean there is absolutely nothing in the RH bill worthy of enactment? A paper issued jointly by Loyola School of Theology and the John J. Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues, and specifically attributed to three distinguished Jesuits-----Fathers Eric O. Genilo, S.J., John J. Carroll, S. J., and Joaquin Bernas, S. J. ----says “total rejection of the bill…will not change the status quo of high rates of infant mortality, maternal deaths, and abortions.” What is your take on that?
A. Infant and maternal mortality needs to be adequately addressed, and
the proper medical response is known. It is not contraceptives or sterilization agents. The same with criminal abortion. In fact, the bill contains several good provisions that could be immediately
implemented to address this and other problems. For instance:
• The establishment or upgrading of hospitals with adequate and qualified personnel, equipment and supplies to be able to provide emergency obstetric care. Or the establishment of one hospital for comprehensive emergency obstetric care and four hospitals for basic emergency obstetric care to serve every 500,000 population.
• The proposal that all LGUs, national and local government hospitals, and other public health units conduct an annual maternal death review in accordance with guidelines set by the DOH.
• The proposal that all serious and life threatening reproductive health conditions such as HIV and AIDS, breast and reproductive tract cancers, and obstetric complications be given maximum benefits as provided by PhilHealth programs.
• The proposal that a Mobile Health Care Service in the form of a van or other means of transportation appropriate to coastal and mountainous areas deliver legitimate health care goods and services, minus the controversial ones.
All these could be done right now with a modicum of creativity and political will. They could be made part of the ongoing health program and adequately funded, just as the present DOH-Popcom RH program has been consistently funded over the years, even if it lacks any constitutional leg to stand on. These need not be legislated at all. That they are in the RH bill is probably simply to provide an ornamental function, some window dressing, to make it appear that the bill is not toxic altogether. But the Executive, if it so desires, could implement them now, without delay, and with no legal impediment.
Former Senate Majority Leader
Board Member, INTERNATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE FEDERATION, Cincinnati, Ohio
Board Member, WORLD YOUTH ALLIANCE, New York, NY
“What is good for the wolves is bad for the sheep.”
-A popular wisdom known to shepherds, sheep and wolves
Q. Proponents and supporters of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill claim its principal objective is to allow Filipino women to fully exercise their right to make an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents. Is that, in fact, the bill’s principal objective?
A. It is not. Filipino women and men in great numbers are already freely contracepting and getting sterilized. No law prohibits them from doing so. The Department of Health and the Population Commission have been big suppliers of contraceptives and sterilization agents and the General Appropriations Act has been carrying regular appropriations for that purpose since the 70s. DOH and Popcom personnel as well as public and private hospital staff openly ask men and women to get sterilized, especially during the birth of a new child. Many Local Government Units have since joined their ranks. The country’s contraceptive prevalence rating now stands at 50 percent. It is therefore completely misleading and deceptive to say that the RH bill in both Houses of Congress is intended to help women make an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents.
The real objective and purpose of the bill as written is to make the State the principal, if not lone, provider of contraceptives and sterilization agents to the general public. These will be distributed as “essential” frontline medicines to cure human fertility, which is not yet a disease.
The unwritten, ultimate objective of the bill is population control. The term is meticulously avoided by the population controllers and their propagandists for political correctness, but the truth is nothing else. The original objective was to reduce the size of the family around the world to two children per family by the year 2000. The latest brainstorm seems to celebrate “the only child,” which has already created a demographic disaster in China, with a projected preponderance of 30 million males without females by 2020, or the totally childless “family,” which is guaranteed by “same-sex marriage.” The RH bill seeks to accomplish its objective through universal contraception and sterilization by the State, and mandatory sex education for school children, from Grade V up to high school, without parental consent.
The bill is clearly inspired by the global population control agenda, which also provides its strongest support. This agenda was first spelled out in U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY STUDY MEMORANDUM 200, otherwise known as the 1974 KISSINGER REPORT. It considered the overall effects of continued population growth in developing countries, not on the poverty and social conditions of those countries, but rather upon the economic and security interests of the United States. Thereafter the US launched its global program to curb population growth in developing countries. The program was quickly adopted by the other rich countries, the United Nations and its various agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, the Asian Development Bank and various international funding institutions.
In the US, population control was promoted with great vigor by the Clinton administration, but its strongest support yet has come from President Barack Obama whose first major official edict was to authorize the use of US funds, disallowed by his predecessor George W. Bush, to support abortion activities in the developing countries. Abortion became legal in the US in 1973 by virtue of the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade. Each year, abortion takes a toll of at least 46 million unborn children around the world. China accounts for 13 million, and India 11 million of the total count.
Not everyone has had the courage (again out of political correctness), to call it by its proper name---Genocide. But both the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on Dec. 9, 1948---one day before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted---and the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court of 1998 classify as genocid, “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group.” These include, but are not limited to, “deliberately inflicting on the group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part,” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” At the Nuremberg war trials of 1945-6, the Nazis’ effort “to decrease the birth rate in Nazi- occupied countries by sterilization, castration and abortion, by separating husband from wife and men from women and obstructing marriage” was condemned and punished as a “crime against humanity.” But the very same people who condemned such unspeakable horror in the last century are now promoting it as a boon to humanity in this century.
Population control unleashed radical changes in social mores and lifestyle and systematic attacks on human life, the family and marriage.. As these attacks intensified, Pope John Paul II warned against the conflict between the culture of life and the culture of death. Among many Filipinos, DEATH came to be known as the lethal acronym for Divorce, Euthanasia, Abortion, Total fertility control, Homosexual practices (same-sex marriage, etc).
What seems to excite some people is the continued dynamism and robustness of our population, despite all our man-made woes. It continues to grow at 1.9 percent annually, according to the CIA World Factbook, while most other countries are posting negative growth rates. This growth rate is not high, but the real numbers continue to grow because people “finally stopped dying like flies.” The average worker in the Philippines is much younger than his counterpart in most of the world, giving us a longterm edge that has been lost forever to so many countries. Population controllers and their propagandists, however, continue to alarm us about our supposedly “exploding” numbers, without looking at the age-structure, which puts us above most of everybody else, when the world’s most serious problem is the irreversible ageing, “de-fertilization”, “depopulation” and “dechristianization” now changing the face of Europe.
Writing in the November/December 2010 issue of the prestigious US quarterly journal, Foreign Affairs, Nicholas Eberstadt, one of the world’s most respected demographers, reports that “almost all of the world’s developed countries have sub-replacement fertility, with overall birth-rates more than 20 percent below the level required for long-term population stability. But developed countries account for less than a fifth of the world’s population; the great majority of the world’s population with sub-replacement fertility in fact reside in low-income societies…Between now and 2020, the global supply of potential workers is set to grow much more slowly than in the previous two decades. According to U.S.Census Bureau projections, the absolute increase in the world’s working-age (between 15 and 64) population between 2010 and 2030 will be around 900 million people, 400 million fewer than over the past two decades. The projected average rate of global manpower growth for the coming decades is 0.9 percent per year, only half the rate for the period between 1990 and 2010… It is not alarmist to warn that there is no time to lose in recognizing---and adapting to---the enormity of the world’s unavoidable demographic challenges.”
Our situation in the Philippines is tragic and perverse. We are being asked to renounce our enormous natural demographic advantage as a great liability, and to embrace the costly and ruinous population policies of the West that have long failed.
Q.Is there anything wrong with the State or Government flooding the
country with contraceptives and sterilization agents and distributing them
free of charge to the public?
A. Plenty.
1. First of all, this is not the business of the State. The Catholic Church condemns contraception and sterilization as evil, while other “religious traditions” do not. Given the plurality of beliefs, the State cannot favor one and do violence to all the others, or vice versa. It cannot oblige everyone to reject contraception and sterilization, for that would favor Catholics; but it can neither oblige everyone to use contraceptives and sterilization agents, for that would favor non-Catholics. It has to take a neutral position, which would allow the various “religious traditions” to teach their respective doctrines, without the approval or disapproval of the State. Their followers would then be free to follow or not to follow what their respective churches teach.
This is what is happening now. Those who want to contracept and get themselves sterilized are free to do so, and are freely doing so; and those who reject contraception and sterilization as evil are not compelled to do so. The status quo is working, except for the fact that, contrary to what the public has been made to believe, the Government, for many years now, has been consistently funding an RH program and receiving donations in cash and in kind from foreign sources to promote the RH- population control agenda, in violation of the 1987 Constitution. This is the real constitutional and legal issue Congress must resolve.
In opposing the bill, the Church is simply asking our legislators to respect the natural moral law, and the most basic of all human rights, related to the sanctity and inviolability of human life, marriage and the family, and never to transgress the sacred precincts of the family bedroom and tell married couples how to exercise their marital rights and duties. No government does that, except in totalitarian States. We are not yet a totalitarian State, thank God, and we must curb every totalitarian impulse latent among our political bosses.
2. Second, the Constitution, to which every law must conform, does not allow state contraception or sterilization. Where does the Constitution say that? In Article II ---DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES AND STATE POLICIES---Section 12 provides, among others, that “the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”
That is not just a ban on abortion. It is also a ban on State contraception and sterilization. Why so? Because the State cannot be “the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception” while at the same time involved in a contraception and sterilization program whose main, if not sole, purpose is to prevent women, or even just a single woman, from conceiving a child. The two things are opposed to each other and contradictory; the result is an absurdity which all legislation abhors.
3. Third, even if the constitutional ban on state contraception and
sterilization did not exist, the Philippines is not a welfare state
and has neither the duty nor the resources to provide directly for the population’s every need or want. Were the Philippines a welfare state, provided it had not lost its core values, its first duty would have been to provide for the people’s basic needs----food, water, clothing, shelter, education, health---though not any non-essential want, which could include contraceptives. In the area of health, it could mean free medical care and hospitalization for those afflicted with the most common diseases, the leading killer diseases and occasional epidemics, before throwing money (if ever) to eradicate fertility, as though it were a dreaded pandemic.
4. Fourth, the latest state of research has shown that many, if not most, contraceptives are no longer merely contraceptives but actual abortifacients. They do not just prevent conception but rather prevent the initial development of pregnancy even after fertilization. They either intercept the embryo before implantation in the uterus, thus they are called interceptives, or they eliminate the newly implanted embryo altogether, thus they are called contragestives. Since abortion is a criminal offense, the government cannot be part of any program that gives out abortifacients, even if the constitutional ban on state-supplied contraceptives did not exist.
5. Fifth, precisely because State contraception and sterilization are constitutionally prohibited, even if the RH bill were passed on the vote of a “lynch-mob” majority, that would not make it constitutional nor give it the first property of a just law. As Pope Benedict XVI says, “there are things that are always wrong and can never be legalized,” just as “there are some things that absolutely always remain legally binding, things that precede every majority decision, things that majority decisions must respect.” Instead of clearing the way for the massive public distribution of contraceptives and sterilization agents as essential medicines, an unjust law could simply provoke passive or active resistance among a particular class of Filipinos. That could ultimately create worse problems for the society and the State.
Q. The opponents of the RH bill appear to ignore altogether the fact that the bill allows men and women to choose between “modern contraceptives” and the traditional method or natural family planning. Do you also reject natural family planning (NFP)?
A. The bill makes passing mention of NFP, but its real focus is on state contraception and sterilization. Nothing in the bill says NFP shall be promoted as an essential service to married couples, that medical personnel will be trained to provide the service and to train others, that every hospital and clinic and every commercial establishment, etc. will be required to have a specific number of personnel who are skilled in the Billings method or something else. In contrast, there is a detailed proposal on how the State will provide contraceptives and sterilization agents to the public. The token reference to NFP is mere icing on the cake.
But let us first clarify our terms. No parity exists between contraception and NFP. NFP is not contraception---not by a long shot. Contraception requires the use of an artificial method to prevent fertilization, which occurs when a spermatozoa successfully penetrates the ovum in the fallopian tubes. NFP on the other hand simply requires the married couple to abstain from sex during the wife’s fertile period to avoid a possible pregnancy. It does not interfere with a woman’s fertility cycle, nor attempt to render infertile a woman’s fertile period. Because it is not contraception, couples may freely use it to space child-bearing, and the State can support it, consistent with its constitutional duty “to defend the right of spouses to found a family in accordance with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood.”
Q. How effective, and how difficult, is the successful practice of NFP?
A. Some studies in the early 90s have shown that NFP could be
effective up to 98 percent, or higher. But those studies did not
create any strong demand for NFP, simply because the method
does not give the big pharmaceutical firms or even government
bureaucrats the opportunity to make large piles of money.
Q. Aside from State contraception and sterilization, the RH bill is
proposing a mandatory age-appropriate sex education for students
from Grade V up to high school without parental consent. What is
so outrageous about that? Shouldn’t parents welcome it as a
necessary help in the education of their children?
A. Both the Constitution and moral law recognize parents as the natural and primary educators of their children. The State cannot take away that right without turning totalitarian, and parents cannot throw it away without submitting to totalitarianism and showing themselves to be irresponsible, unpatriotic and unfit to become parents. The rank audacity of that proposal is compounded by the patent profanity (lapsing into occasional pornography) of the graphic images that are being piloted as instructional materials in various places as of now. They have no ethically redeeming value, are clearly destructive of the moral character and sexual composure and purity of the young.
Q. Should Catholics oppose the RH bill because it is unconstitutional
or because it goes against the teaching of the Church? What about
non-Catholics?
A. Catholics and non-Catholics should oppose the bill on
constitutional and moral grounds. Both the Constitution and the moral law must be followed at all times. Both are assaulted with equal severity by the RH bill. The moral law is not for Catholics only, and the Constitution binds all citizens. Article II of the Constitution, entitled DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES AND STATE POLICIES, and Article XV, THE FAMILY, speak of “the sanctity of human life; the family as the foundation of the nation; marriage as the foundation of the family and as an inviolable social institution; the right of spouses to found a family according to their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood; the right of the mother to bear a child and the right of the unborn child to be born; the right of parents to be the primary educators of their children; the right of youth and women to achieve their full potential as persons and as citizens; the right of the people to health and to a balanced environment in harmony with nature.”
These policies are not self-enforcing. They need an enabling
law to put flesh and bones into them. The RH bill cannot possibly be that.
The RH bill reads: AN ACT PROVIDING FOR A NATIONAL POLICY
ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD AND
POPULATION DEVELOPMENT. How does it relate to the constitutional policy or policies laid down in Article II and Article XV on procreation and childbearing, responsible parenthood and population development? It has no bearing at all.
The term “reproductive health” does not appear in our Constitution. It is a new coinage, which entered “international” usage only recently. The World Health Organization, the UN Fund for Population Activities, and the various UN agencies, as well as the US and at least G-8 seem agreed that the term includes “access to abortion.” The authors of the RH bill, on the other hand, assure us that the term does not include “access to abortion,” which remains a punishable crime.
Since the bill invokes “international law” as part of the bases of
its proposals, it seems but right that whatever “international term” is used should carry its popularly accepted international meaning. Otherwise, the bill should use univocal and unambiguous terms only, understandable to Filipinos, for whom the proposed law is written. No legal text should have one meaning for a foreign audience and another meaning for the local. The term “reproductive health” should probably be avoided altogether.
Obviously, “reproductive health” is intended to clothe in
bureaucratic Newspeak the health issues related to childbearing. If
that is so, and we detect no evidence to the contrary, then the RH
bill is seeking to introduce a policy where the Constitution has
already formulated a policy or policies. Is that permissible? Not
so. The only thing Congress can do is to propose a law to
implement a non-self-enforcing constitutional policy or policies.
Can the RH bill do that? Not likely. Why? Because its provisions
are headed in the opposite direction. The pro-RH solons need to
craft a new and better bill.
Q. As a Catholic, should I listen to my bishop or to my congressman
and the senators on this issue? Please enlighten me.
A. Listen to all. It is a constitutional and moral issue. So listen to
your bishop because the bill is addressed to your whole person, to
everything that you are, your body and soul, your politics, your
economic and social wellbeing, your relations with everyone in your family, and with others, your salvation above all.
Does the State or Government have the right to intervene in the most
intimate acts that bind a man and a woman in marriage, or are
these not sacred precincts where not even the State may intrude?
Congress can pass no law “abridging the freedom of speech, of
expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.”
Can that same Congress now pass a law abridging a married couple’s
God-given right to exchange seed and substance in the conjugal
act?
The State has no right to tell a journalist, broadcaster, or
legislator what to say on any subject, how to say it, and how much
time to take in saying it. Does the same State have a higher right to
tell a man how to embrace and make love to his wife?
This is a fundamental moral and meta-legal issue, which must be
clear to every adult person, and on which the Church has a right and
duty to pronounce her position on behalf of the whole person;
listen to it. And listen to your congressman and senators, too,
because it is a constitutional issue and every legislation must
conform to the Constitution. You have a right to expect your
congressman and senators to be familiar with the Constitution and
to be faithful to it. And because the legislators are supposed to
represent the people, and you are a part of the people, make sure
they listen to you, too. Above all, they have a specific duty under Section 3 (4), Article XV of the Constitution to listen to families and family associations in the planning and implementation of programs affecting them.
The State is not mandated to act as the official enforcer of Catholic teaching, or the teaching of any church for that matter, but does the State have the right, or the duty, to enact a law that attacks a specific Church doctrine and requires Catholic taxpayers to fund the program that criminally attacks that doctrine of their faith?
That would be entirely unjust in a situation where Catholics were a small minority. But where they constitute the overwhelming majority, it would be more than unjust: it would be rank tyranny. Especially since, while defending their rights, they are not taking anything away from, or imposing any burden on, any religious minority. The injury to the common good would persist even if Catholics were no longer made to pay their taxes and declared exempt from the unjust law.
Q. But not all the parties are agreed on when life begins. One group says
life begins upon fertilization of the ovum, another group says it begins upon its implantation upon the uterus. Who will resolve this conflict, and how can one take a definitive position against contraception or sterilization while this issue is unresolved?
A. Not being a medical doctor, I can only refer to the accepted wisdom of the ages. For as long as memory holds, the medical profession and the rest of humanity have always understood conception as synonymous with fertilization. The records of the 1986 Constitutional Commission show that when they were debating the provision, that “the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception,” they agreed that conception meant fertilization. Now there are attempts to redefine that. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, for one, defines pregnancy as beginning with implantation. But this seems more in line with some political agenda than with any recent discovery of modern science. The new claim therefore has failed to displace or disturb the settled view of the medical profession: pregnancy begins at fertilization.
Nevertheless, the point I am making has nothing to do with that. It is simply this, that when the Constitution says the State shall protect the life of the unborn from conception, it means that at whatever point life begins—whether upon fertilizer or upon implantation---the duty of the State is to “protect the the life of the unborn” from that moment on. It does not change. Therefore the government cannot be part of a contraception or sterilization program, whose purpose is to prevent women from conceiving. We just cannot have an absurd situation where the State, through its RH program, actively prevents babies from being conceived, so that at the end of the day it would be able to say, “Sorry, we have no unborn babies to protect.”
Q. Is it not possible to debate this issue without involving our faith? Doesn’t the Catholic Church realize that it is losing many of its members for speaking out so strongly on this issue?
A. Yes and no.
Yes, if the proponents of the RH bill could but answer three simple questions:
1) Does the State or the government have the right or duty to tell any married couple how to perform their marital rights and duties in the privacy of their bedroom?
2) If the State is the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception, does it have the right or duty to run a simultaneous contraception and sterilization program whose main, if not sole, purpose is to prevent women from conceiving?
3) If the Constitution recognizes parents as the natural and primary educators of their children, does the State have the right or duty to impose a compulsory sex education program on minor schoolchildren, without parental consent?
Religion does not have to figure at all. But wherever and whenever human dignity is attacked, men and women of faith have a right and a duty to speak out. For as De Tocqueville puts it, “despotism can govern without faith, but liberty cannot.” The oft-misquoted “separation” of Church and State does not separate the State from God. That’s why in the first line of the Preamble of our Constitution, we implore “the aid of Almighty God.” And the President’s oath to “preserve and defend the Constitution, execute (the nation’s) laws, do justice to every man and consecrate myself to the service of the Nation,” ends with, “So help me God.”
And as Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, the Archbishop of Cebu, reminds us, why was the intervention of the bishops so welcome and cheered in February 1986 when they said Ferdinand Marcos had lost the moral authority to govern after winning the snap presidential elections, and now, there is every attempt to silence their objection to the RH bill, which threatens to destroy the integrity of the human person, the family and the entire society? Out of pure cussedness, they even cheer the pro-RH boor who tried to disrupt an ecumenical service at the Manila Cathedral.
The Church to whom most of us belong is not out there to win a rigged survey or popularity contest. She will speak the truth as the truth needs to be said, and when all her false supporters have gone, she will be standing there, stronger than the strongest oak, empty of all false pretences and filled to overflowing with the spirit of God.
Q. Are you still hopeful then that the President could finally be persuaded to reconsider his announced position on the RH bill?
A. One has to be. The pressure from abroad is understandably enormous, but it is a question of the Constitution and national sovereignty. The President’s duty is to defend both at all times, from all forces, including our own friends and allies. That is non-negotiable. And he still has some time to study the Constitution and the history of population control, and what it proposes to do and has already done to mankind. It is a great opportunity for conversion and transformation. Especially if he could see that the effort of the global anti-life forces to redefine the human being, the family and marriage is not a smaller matter than the travel advisories against the Philippines that seem to cause him so much anxiety these days.
Q. If what you say is true, that the RH bill is an imperialist ploy, then why is it that the usual “conservatives” are the ones opposing it, while the so-called “progressives” and “nationalists” are the ones pushing for it?
A. That is one of the great mysteries of our time. We should ask our progressive and nationalist friends why. If they are prepared to shout anti-imperialist slogans, burn the American flag to protest the rape of a Filipino woman by a drunken American sailor, and march for the expulsion of the visiting US forces in Mindanao at the slightest excuse, why are they the first ones to abuse those who oppose with conviction a bill that seeks to impose a racist and anti-poor population control policy on their unsuspecting and misinformed countrymen? Not enough nationalism and patriotism seems to be going on there. But we can’t afford to give up on anyone. We continue to pray that they’ll come around. Our greatest enemy is not malice but ignorance.
Q. The surveys seem to indicate the pro-RH group has all the numbers, both inside and outside Congress. Is it not time to throw in the towel, or are you praying for a miracle?
A. We must pray for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to prevail. Let’s not forget that nobody can fool all the people all the time. Until the last elections, the paid pollsters and the conscript media had a good run. So many had been fooled by them.
But we know, and they know we know, what kind of deception they had been foisting upon our people. Soon enough the truth will overtake them. So let’s not play their game. Let us instead try to get everyone to answer the following questions:
1. Do you honestly believe that any government has the right to tell any married couple what to do before, during and after marital intercourse?
2. Do you honestly believe that lawmakers and the President could simply ignore the Constitution and the natural moral law and do what the population controllers and the donor institutions are asking them to do without any cost or consequence?
3. Do you honestly believe that if they did all that, the people would simply do nothing and the government would still have any moral authority to govern?
There cannot be any two ways of reading the moral law and the Constitution. To return to the basic issue:
1) If the State is the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception, it cannot run a program that will prevent women from conceiving.
2) If parents are the natural and primary educators of their chldren, the State cannot impose a mandatory sex education program on minor schoolchildren without parental consent.
3) The State cannot do all these things without abolishing the Constitution and morphing into a totalitarian order.
So it’s not just a numbers game. Legislation must begin with the truth
and justice. Even the foreign population controllers must know this,
otherwise they would just be funding civil disorder.
Q. Is there anything good at all which the Government can do under the circumstances?
A. The best thing the Government can do is simply to follow the Constitution, uphold and safeguard the nation’s sovereignty, and protect the culture of our people. Colonialism is long over. Let us not allow ourselves to become the plaything of those who want to impose their hedonistic ideologies and flawed lifestyles upon our culture. We have so much to teach them, they have very little to teach us, outside of science and technology, which needs to be governed by ethics in any case.
The best policy the Government can adopt is the first thing known to the medical profession: DO NO HARM. NEITHER PROHIBIT NOR PROVIDE CONTRACEPTIVES TO THE PUBLIC, BUT MAKE SURE EVERYONE IS PROTECTED FROM DIRECT STERILIZATION, AND THOSE WHO ARE CONTRACEPTING ARE LIKEWISE ADEQUATELY PROTECTED FROM ANY SIDE EFFECTS OF THEIR CONTRACEPTIVES, AND FROM INTERCEPTIVES, CONTRAGESTIVES AND ABORTIFACIENTS, WHICH SHOULD ALL BE BANNED.
Q. Does it mean there is absolutely nothing in the RH bill worthy of enactment? A paper issued jointly by Loyola School of Theology and the John J. Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues, and specifically attributed to three distinguished Jesuits-----Fathers Eric O. Genilo, S.J., John J. Carroll, S. J., and Joaquin Bernas, S. J. ----says “total rejection of the bill…will not change the status quo of high rates of infant mortality, maternal deaths, and abortions.” What is your take on that?
A. Infant and maternal mortality needs to be adequately addressed, and
the proper medical response is known. It is not contraceptives or sterilization agents. The same with criminal abortion. In fact, the bill contains several good provisions that could be immediately
implemented to address this and other problems. For instance:
• The establishment or upgrading of hospitals with adequate and qualified personnel, equipment and supplies to be able to provide emergency obstetric care. Or the establishment of one hospital for comprehensive emergency obstetric care and four hospitals for basic emergency obstetric care to serve every 500,000 population.
• The proposal that all LGUs, national and local government hospitals, and other public health units conduct an annual maternal death review in accordance with guidelines set by the DOH.
• The proposal that all serious and life threatening reproductive health conditions such as HIV and AIDS, breast and reproductive tract cancers, and obstetric complications be given maximum benefits as provided by PhilHealth programs.
• The proposal that a Mobile Health Care Service in the form of a van or other means of transportation appropriate to coastal and mountainous areas deliver legitimate health care goods and services, minus the controversial ones.
All these could be done right now with a modicum of creativity and political will. They could be made part of the ongoing health program and adequately funded, just as the present DOH-Popcom RH program has been consistently funded over the years, even if it lacks any constitutional leg to stand on. These need not be legislated at all. That they are in the RH bill is probably simply to provide an ornamental function, some window dressing, to make it appear that the bill is not toxic altogether. But the Executive, if it so desires, could implement them now, without delay, and with no legal impediment.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
BUILDING A GLOBAL CULTURE OF LIFE: AN ASIAN PERSPECTIVE
Francisco S. Tatad, Board Member, International Right to Life Federation
Prepared for the International Pro-Life Conference in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada October 28- 29, 2010
(An abbreviated version was read at the Conference on Oct 29 to fit the time alloted to each speaker)
This has been a truly marvelous conference, and may all blessings be upon our gracious hosts, the men and women of Campaign Life Coalition. I wish to thank Jim Hughes and the organizing committee in particular for this distinct service to human life and the family.
A few months ago, in August, my wife and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. The Lord has been most kind, he has taken good care of our marriage. He has gifted us with seven wonderful children, three of whom are now married, with seven children of their own, six in Manila and one in the United States. He has also given us, my wife and myself, a pair of fairly good legs and knees, so we could travel to these big prolife and family conferences whenever we are needed.
We were in Rome a couple of weeks ago for the 5th World Prayer Congress for Life, and with the greatest joy we are here today, in this International Pro-Life Conference in Ottawa, to reaffirm with you our commitment, our covenant really, to build a global culture of life that will once and for all dispel the darkness that threatens to cover our planet with destruction and death.
Like everyone else, we in Asia have our hopes and fears. By purely human standards, the family and life situation in our region is not less wrenching than that obtaining on both sides of the Atlantic and everywhere else. The plague of contraception, sterilization, abortion, homosexuality, broken marriages, pedophilia, etc. ---happily we do not yet have to deal with euthanasia---continues to spread, borne on the crest of the moral depravity that threatens to sweep away the civilization which, in Sheed’s words, was built by looking at man while listening to God.
Abortion remains the biggest threat to that civilization. Although the research arm of the world’s biggest provider of abortion services reports a decline in the annual rate of induced abortions in the Asia Pacific and in the world ---from 26.8 million in 1995 to 25.9 million in 2003 for Asia, and from 46 million to 42 million during the same period worldwide---one in five pregnancies is still said to end in abortion, and Asia is said to account for nearly 50 percent of the total count.
The numbers remain alarming. But it is not a question of numbers alone. The killing of just one innocent and helpless unborn child in the hands of its own mother, with or without the collaboration of any other, is one brutal murder too many, in a society that knows, or ought to know, what the gift of life truly means. That phrase “gift of life” has long become part of our common speech, but its real meaning stretches far beyond than that which we ordinarily attach to it. It means much more than any other gift we have received and may yet receive.
For when God willed to give life to man, the first man that is, he was not yet there to receive it. He began to exist as a person only when God blew life into the clay that was to become his mortal corpus; he began to live only when he received God’s breath. In receiving the gift, therefore, man became the gift himself. The process is repeated each time a new human being is created inside a mother’s womb, except that God no longer acts alone; he allows his creature to participate, and the original act of creation becomes an act of procreation (co-creation, some would say). This transcendent gift is what abortion extinguishes.
Relativists and legal positivists classify abortion as either “legal” or illegal, “safe” or unsafe. It is “legal” when a law allows it even if it denies the natural moral law and is, therefore, unjust and void; illegal, when there is no law, even an unjust and void one, that purportedly “allows” it. And it is “safe” when performed as a regular medical procedure by a trained professional under standard hygienic conditions and the mother of the aborted child survives without any severe complications. It is unsafe when self-induced or performed as a clandestine operation by non-medical or even by medical personnel, under unhygienic conditions, and the mother dies or suffers severe complications.
But whether the abortion is “legal” or illegal, “safe” or unsafe, the unborn baby is invariably and irrevocably killed. In the rarest of cases, an intended victim may survive if it races out of its mother’s womb and arrives in the world before the abortionist is able to work on it. This is said to have happened in the case of the abortion survivor, Gianna Jessen, who has been talking about it on You Tube. But for the unborn victim, there is no such thing as a safe abortion. The total mortality rate is permanently and irrevocably fixed at 100 percent. In fact, were the sexual revisionists more honest in their language, they would be calling it genocide or infanticide, which is what it really is.
China, which maintains its one-child policy to this day, is said to account for 13 million abortions each year, followed by India’s 11 million a year. Yet both countries had begun to worry about the number of female children being aborted just because they are female; they now want their infanticide to be gender-blind. So they have criminalized sex-selective abortion, which has already produced a ratio of 120 boys for every 100 girls born, and by 2020, if the projections prove correct, is expected to give China a preponderance of at least 30 million males with no female counterparts.
Seventeen Asian countries allow abortion for all sorts of reasons, but they impose gestational limitations, with the exception of China, North Korea and Vietnam, which have different regulatory norms. In Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Burma allow abortion to save a woman’s life; Laos allows it for the same reason and to preserve physical health; Malaysia, for the same reasons as Laos and to preserve mental health; Thailand, for the same reasons as Malaysia and in case of rape or incest; Singapore and Vietnam, for all of the foregoing reasons, and in case of fetal impairment, economic and social reasons, and upon request.
The Philippines alone has taken a different course. There, abortion is constitutionally banned and is a punishable crime. Reproductive health/rights groups, however, claim that precisely because it is banned, at least 1,000 poor Filipino women die each year from clandestine and “unsafe” abortion. Whether or not that figure is correct, we cannot say; it is de rigueur for pro-abortion propagandists to exaggerate maternal death figures to justify their call for the legalization of abortion where it remains illegal, and for increased access to abortion where it has been legalized. It was only recently that WHO finally adopted Lancet’s (the medical journal’s) figure of 340,00 as the worldwide total of annual maternal deaths, after putting forward 520,000 for sometime.
No one has been punished or prosecuted for abortion in the Philippines. But precisely because of the constitutional ban, no one has proposed its legalization either. One such proposal could come if and when the Constitution is revised or amended, and the ban is deleted altogether. That, however, has not prevented some compliance committee members of some UN treaty bodies from asking Philippine representatives, from time to time, to change their anti-abortion law.
What threatens to divide the country now is a reproductive health bill that seeks principally to establish a publicly funded program of universal contraception and sterilization and compulsory sex education for minors without parental consent. In principle, the bill grants health workers the right to refuse certain cases on the ground of conscience, but quickly takes away that same right by compelling the same health workers to refer such cases to other health workers who have no such problem of conscience or else face criminal prosecution. If ever enacted as drafted, the law may not be denounced as unjust, unwise or plain wrong, without courting a jail sentence---the most frightening provision not found in any existing law.
An old proposal that had failed to hurdle several past Congresses, the present bill was re-introduced in the Senate and the House of Representatives with trumpets and drums after the new administration came into office in July this year and the Obama administration in the US had begun throwing money to promote reproductive health and abortion activities abroad. The bill is supported on economic and social grounds by “progressive” activists and foreign-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and opposed on moral, constitutional and the same grounds invoked by its proponents by a wide range of Filipinos, including members of the Catholic Church, to whom the large majority of Filipinos belong.
The Church teaches that contraception, sterilization and abortion is evil, consistent with natural law and the good of man. Whether or not this is true can be fully ascertained by reason, even without the aid of revelation; it is not a confessional truth accessible and applicable to Catholics alone. It applies to man as man, and therefore applies equally to all men and women, Catholic or non-Catholic, believer and non-believer alike. One need not be a Catholic to be bound by it, but one cannot be a Catholic without being bound by it. Unless of course one has decided to drop out; in which case they would cause less confusion if they called themselves exactly what they are---“lapsed catholics.” Nonetheless, many of the bill’s proponents and supporters say they are Catholic; some try to wax nostalgic about their having been altar boys or Legion of Mary members. They obviously miss the point. One should not so loudly proclaim that he is Catholic while bragging that he is free to choose and pick which teaching of the Magisterium to accept or reject, any more than one should profess to be a good citizen while bragging that he is free not to pay taxes or obey any law he may find inconvenient.
In any case, there is no State prohibition against contraception and sterilization. Filipino women, including Catholic women, are free to contracept and get themselves ligated, and they have been doing so for years. The result is a national contraceptive acceptance rating of at least 50 percent (and rising). The Church, while asking Catholic men and women to be faithful, does not ask the State to become the official enforcer of its teachings and penalize users of contraceptives and sterilization agents. But neither does the Church expect the State, by legislation, executive or judicial fiat, to tell Catholics not to obey Church teaching and listen instead to what the government and the various anti-population campaigners are saying. The State does not have that right and would be usurping the right of the Church if it did.
However, those who want the State to flood the country with contraceptives and sterilization agents accuse the Church of political interference for proclaiming that contraception, sterilization and abortion are evil and should be avoided. They maintain that the State has the right and duty to enter the family bedroom and tell married couples how to perform the sexual act, and that in doing so, it should be free from any censurious remarks from the Church which should be allowed to teach the faithful about good and evil, right and wrong, only within places of worship but not on the public square.
They accuse the Church of pronouncing contraception, sterilization and abortion as evil, for reasons of her own, and will not grant that the Church says these things are wrong because they are, by their very nature, wrong and will continue to be wrong, even if the Church were silenced, even if the Church did not exist. They insist that, in a democracy, the rightness or wrongness of these acts is decided solely by consensus or by a majority vote, in parliament, congress, or an international body like the United Nations.
Apparently unacceptable to them is the principle, universally upheld, that what gives validity to any law is not merely the number of votes behind it, but above all the constitutive element of justice. Without justice, “the rule of the majority,” otherwise indispensable in a democracy, becomes mob rule, and can only produce the opposite of law, which is violence. Law is law properly understood, only if it is just. “A just law binds as much in a democracy as in a totalitarian state; an unjust law binds in neither,” writes one eminent scholar. (Cormac Burke, Authority and Freedom in the Church, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1988). For as Pope Benedict XVI points out, “there are things that are always wrong and can never be legalized,” just as “there are some things that absolutely always remain legally binding, things that precede every majority decision, things that majority decisions must respect” (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Values in a Time of Upheaval, Ignatius Press, 2006).
That presupposes the rule of law, correctly understood. Where that is absent, democracy is replaced by an autocratic, if not totalitarian order, and truth and reason by the opinion of an ill-informed and therefore misguided majority, or the opinion of those who use their power as the sole criterion in deciding what is right and what is wrong. Human rights, and the rights of God, are set aside, having become completely dispensable. This is what we see in much of the world today, including those countries that had once championed the cause of truth and freedom against an atheistic and absolutist enslavement of consciences in the last century.
Under a genuine rule of law, our Constitution, our Catholic Christian culture, and international law (correctly understood) should suffice to protect Filipinos from the present reproductive health bill in Congress. For our Constitution fully recognizes: “the sanctity of human life; the family as the foundation of the nation; marriage as the foundation of the family and as an inviolable social institution; the right of spouses to found a family according to their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood; the right of the mother to bear a child and the right of the unborn to be born; the right of parents to be the primary educators of their children; the right of the youth and women to achieve their full potential as persons and as citizens; the right of the people to health and to a balanced environment in harmony with nature.”
The same principles we breathe from the social teachings of the Church, and from the text of international declarations, conventions and treaties that have accumulated over the years, including but not limited to, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1976, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women of 1981, the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1990, the Program of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development of 1994, the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development of 1995, the Beijing Declaration of 1995, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998.
The Rome Statute for one restates verbatim a provision of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of Dec. 9, 1948 (adopted one day before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), which classifies as genocide “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group,” including but not limited to, a) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” and b) “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
Genocide seems too harsh a word for our purpose. But what possible Newspeak or UNspeak could better describe the deliberate destruction of millions of unborn who are “unwanted” because their parents simply wanted the pleasure of sex without any responsibility, cost or consequence, and those in control of the affairs of the State do not want to see the poor threaten, by their sheer number, the property rights, privileges and personal comfort of the rich?
In the Nuremberg war trials of 1945-6, as John Smeaton of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children has noted, the Nazis’ effort “to decrease the birth rate in occupied countries by sterilization, castration and abortion, by separating husband from wife and men from women and obstructing marriage” was condemned and punished as a crime against humanity. How could such a crime that had so revolted the human conscience in the last century be celebrated as a service to freedom and human rights in the present? Have we become so inverted that we must now walk on our heads and condemn that which is objectively and intrinsically good as evil, and celebrate that which is objectively and instrinsically evil as good?
The main provisions of the Philippine bill would transform the country into a totalitarian state. They provide the best arguments against its proposed passage. But what is truly frightening is the massive mobilization of forces, internal and external, to proclaim and promote its obvious defects as indispensable virtues and create through the conscript media, the manipulative pollsters and all sorts of fraudulent propagandists a false clamor for its “necessary enactment.” Even before the bill could advance to its next stage, some cities have already been dragooned into signing Memorandums of Agreement with foreign funding institutions to implement part of the highly outrageous reproductive health bill, which the cities do not have the constitutional authority to implement without a national law (even an unjust and void one) “authorizing “ it.
And in the course of his working visit to the United States last September, President Benigno Simeon Aquino III announced in San Francisco that he was ready to start distributing condoms and other contraceptives to Filipinos, after receiving a Millennium Development Goals (MDG)-related grant of $454 million from the US.
No one has found it necessary to ask whether or not Mr. Aquino’s readiness to flood the country with contraceptives and the unexpected US largesse are inter-related. But nobody believes the Philippine president is prepared to disappoint the Obama administration, which has started its vigorous funding of reproductive health and abortion activities in developing countries as its top foreign policy objective. Its aggressive funding of reproductive health outside the US, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says “includes access to abortion,” holds the surest promise that the attack on human life and the family in the Philippines will inexorably escalate.
While coming directly from abroad, the attack will be carried out by local conscripts, according to the pattern prescribed by National Security Study Memorandum 200, otherwise known as the 1974 Kissinger Report, which counsels making the locals assume full responsibility for every foreign-initiated program or project. These could include the usual “progressives” who are ever-ready to shout anti-American slogans, burn the American flag if necessary, and call for the expulsion of the visiting US forces at the slightest excuse, but see nothing wrong in US and UN agencies entering the family bedroom and telling them how to have “a safe and satisfying sex life” as though the country’s greatest problem were the dull and dismal sex life of Filipinos. Also academic and religious groups who are involved in some foreign-funded reproductive health projects, and are eager to propose a “compromise” without disclosing their obvious conflict of interest.
Several things argue against it.
First, the Philippines is not a welfare state. The government has neither the duty nor the means to provide directly for all the people’s needs. Were it otherwise, its first duty would be to supply the people’s basic needs---food, water, clothing, shelter, education and health---but only those basic needs. In the area of health, it would have to provide free hospitalization and medical care to those suffering from the most common ailments, the leading killer diseases, and occasional epidemics, before it could think of throwing money at the prevention of pregnancy, which is not yet a disease.
Second, the Constitution provides that the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from the moment of conception. This is not just a ban on abortion, but also a ban on state-funded or state-run contraception and sterilization. For if the duty of the State is to protect the life of the unborn from conception, it cannot possibly have an equal and simultaneous duty, let alone right, to fund a program whose main, if not sole, purpose is to prevent women, or even one solitary woman, from conceiving a child. That would create an absurdity abhorred by all legislation.
Third, the latest state of research has shown that many, if not most, contraceptives are no longer just contraceptives but actual abortifacients. They do not just prevent conception but rather prevent the initial development of pregnancy even after fertilization. They either intercept the embryo before implantation in the uterus, thus they are called interceptives, or they eliminate the newly implanted embryo altogether, thus they are called contragestives.
Finally, there is as yet no law, even an unjust and void one, that “authorizes” the government to flood the country with contraceptives and sterilization agents. In the past, the Marcos government could distribute contraceptives without running afoul of any law, simply because the constitutional prohibition did not yet exist. But the 1987 prolife and profamily Constitution, promulgated after Cory Aquino succeeded Marcos, changed all that.
That the government, even under Cory Aquino, continued to appropriate public funds and receive foreign donations in cash and in kind for reproductive health, in utter disregard of the constitutional prohibition, is a grave abuse of power, or error at the very least. The new Aquino administration, consistent with its vow to stop all past corruption and abuses, is expected to end rather than perpetuate it.
This---rather than the present bill---is the real question before the Philippine Congress---what to do with the current reproductive health program under the Department of Health and the Population Commission, funded regularly under the General Appropriations Act, despite the constitutional provisions that render it void ab initio. The fact that the proponents of the bill are determined to ram it through, without striking down the unconstitutional program that is already in place and costing the taxpayers a lot of money, even though their bill is still seeking to legislate a policy, shows the vast constitutional disorder and moral disarray. They are determined to legislate against the Constitution and against the natural law.
The ultimate target is man, the family and God himself. The dictatorship of relativism, as Pope Benedict XVI calls it, seeks to empty our corporeal and spiritual lives of the first and last truth about God, man and the human family---the truth that is love---the truth that alone can make men free. The conceit of science and technological progress seeks to abolish man by redefining him into a pure ego, solely responsible for the achievements of technology, forgetting that it is an achievement of the spirit, which science and technology did not create; “a response to God’s command to till and to keep the land (cf. Gen 2:15)” (Caritas en Veritate). This has produced a fashionable madness for political correctness, which insists on the deconstruction of every objective reality and rejects the ethical principles and moral conventions that have since the beginning of time determined the rightness or wrongness of every human act. Emptied of such principles, man is reduced to a purely material and hedonistic being, not totally removed from animalia, something that Caritas en Veritate says he is not, “a lost atom in a random universe.” A self-made universe without transcendence and without God.
For this purpose, the Church as the first and last defender of human life, marriage and the family is systematically vilified. Her rights are routinely and mindlessly usurped; in the most “advanced” societies, those who insist on the public practice of their faith are harassed, prosecuted and penalized. Although the wars of religion that ended with the Treaty of Wesphalia in 1648 have not since recurred, the war on religion is raging everywhere. Not because Godless communism had won, but rather because hedonistic materialism had swallowed the great democracies after the collapse of the Soviet Union and replaced its dreaded venom with something even deadlier. In the rich and “advanced” societies, religion may no longer cast its shadow on the public square unless it be purely secular and promotes the worship of self, sex, the state, power, pleasure, and anything else but God.
What are we to do in the face of all this? The stronger the attack, the stronger too should be our faith. On my way to this conference, my wife and I were privileged to attend a “white mass” for people with “special needs,” offered by the new cardinal-designate, Archbishop Donald Wuerl at St. Matthew’s cathedral in Washington, D.C. These were people with various disabilities, many of whom followed the mass and sang with the choir, using sign language. It occurred to me then that we are all a people with special needs----and the first such need is to be faithful always to our Lord.
We in the Philippines are often compelled to say our country is the last holdout in the global assault of the culture of death. For us “death” is the acronym for divorce, euthanasia, abortion, total fertility control and homosexual union. None of these individual components of death had been legalized, and hopefully none will be. The faith remains vibrant, and on his last visit to the country in 1995, Blessed John Paul II called the Philippines “the light of Asia and the world.”
Christianity first came to the country in 1521 when Magellan completed the circumnavigation of the globe. Thus the faith of the Filipinos came from, or at least through, Europe. With the increasing dechristianization and paganization of Europe today, it is inevitable and certain that as “the last man standing” we would now emerge as the final target of attack. The Philippine Church, however, is determined to mark the approaching 500th year of our Christianization as a strong and vibrant Church. This is why the whole Philippine Church---clergy, laity and religious---stands as one in the defense of human life, the family, marriage and the faith.
Around the world today, there is an unmistakable campaign to terrorize the Church into silence on the all-important issues of life, marriage, the family and the faith. This is obvious from the recent tendency of the media to present certain cases of sexual misconduct within the clergy, as though all priests, rather than just one or two sick ones, were involved, and that the Church authorities were not doing anything at all, even though the guilty ones had been disciplined and the Pope himself had sought out the victims for their healing and forgiveness. Ironically, the over-sensationalization of these cases usually appear in public organs that openly endorse the homosexual agenda, which includes same-sex marriage, and other perversions such as pedophilia. Against these are vast numbers of worse cases in various circles and layers of society which are never reported in the media. The enemies of the Church are determined to use the sins of some of her priests to shame the Church into silence on the most important issues of human existence. But the Lord himself has assured us that the power of darkness shall not prevail against his Church.
My friend Mario from Croatia once told an international family conference in Rome that in most battles, we cannot predict the outcome. But in the war between the culture of life and the anti-culture of death, we know that we have already won, except that we must still fight some more before we complete our victory. For we are fighting God’s battle, and “God never loses any battle,” as St. Josemaria tells us. This is a “crisis of saints,” and God wants a handful of men “of his own” to fight his daily battle for human life, marriage and the family. May we be not wholly unworthy to be counted among such men.
Towards the end of our five-day congress in Rome, Cardinal-designate Raymond Leo Burke, Archbishop Emeritus of Saint Louis, and Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura dwelt on the same point. He said:
“The fundamental presupposition is the victory of life, which Our Lord Jesus Christ has already won. Christ animates the Church in time with the grace of His victory over sin and death, until the victory reaches its consummation, at His Final Coming, in the Heavenly Jerusalem. Notwithstanding the grave situation in our world of the attack on innocent and defenseless human life and on the integrity of marriage as the union of man and woman in a bond of lifelong, faithful and procreative love, there remains a strong voice in defense of our littlest and most vulnerable brothers and sisters without boundary or exception, and the truth about the marital union as it was constituted by God at the Creation. The Christian voice, the voice of Christ transmitted by the Apostles, remains strong in our world. The voice of men and women of goodwill, who recognize and obey the law of God written upon their hearts, remains strong in our world.” (Raymond Leo Burke, Catholic Orthodoxy: Antidote Against The Culture of Death, Istituto Patristico “Augustinianum”, Rome, 9 October 2010)
How will the family, the domestic church and basic cell of society, fare against all the attacks?
Michael O’Brien, the Canadian artist, author and mystic, writes:
“The Church may go on to the third millennium and convert the world, or it may shrink to a small remnant of believers. We do not know. Only Christ knows. But of this we can be sure: the family will remain what it is----an oak flourishing in winter. The family will continue, as it always has, to make the seeds of the second spring that is coming after this present winter. When the tyrants and the propagandists and the experimenters have all gone, when the hatred and hopelessness has exhausted itself, the earth will grieve and be born again. The Church and the family will remain.” (Michael O’Brien, The Family and the New Totalitarianism, 28 April 2005)
The final words on the future of Christ’s Church I leave to the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, the leading moral and intellectual guide of our time. He writes:
“Today, the future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demand upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively: the future of the Church once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality…
“…the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is empty chatter. We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death. The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by a psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist, who does not stand on the sidelines, watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal of men, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future.
“…From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge----a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so will she lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age she will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, she will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly she will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession…But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize her true center and experience the sacraments again as the worship of God and not as a subject of liturgical scholarship.
“The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism of the eve of the French Revolution----when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain----to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.
“And so it seems to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult , which is dead already with Gobel (the archbishop of Paris, who supported the idea of a constitutional national Church during the French Revolution, but later abandoned his priesthood; under Robespierre he was guillotined as an atheist) but the Church of the faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.” (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Faith and the Future, Ignatius Press, 2009).
Prepared for the International Pro-Life Conference in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada October 28- 29, 2010
(An abbreviated version was read at the Conference on Oct 29 to fit the time alloted to each speaker)
This has been a truly marvelous conference, and may all blessings be upon our gracious hosts, the men and women of Campaign Life Coalition. I wish to thank Jim Hughes and the organizing committee in particular for this distinct service to human life and the family.
A few months ago, in August, my wife and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. The Lord has been most kind, he has taken good care of our marriage. He has gifted us with seven wonderful children, three of whom are now married, with seven children of their own, six in Manila and one in the United States. He has also given us, my wife and myself, a pair of fairly good legs and knees, so we could travel to these big prolife and family conferences whenever we are needed.
We were in Rome a couple of weeks ago for the 5th World Prayer Congress for Life, and with the greatest joy we are here today, in this International Pro-Life Conference in Ottawa, to reaffirm with you our commitment, our covenant really, to build a global culture of life that will once and for all dispel the darkness that threatens to cover our planet with destruction and death.
Like everyone else, we in Asia have our hopes and fears. By purely human standards, the family and life situation in our region is not less wrenching than that obtaining on both sides of the Atlantic and everywhere else. The plague of contraception, sterilization, abortion, homosexuality, broken marriages, pedophilia, etc. ---happily we do not yet have to deal with euthanasia---continues to spread, borne on the crest of the moral depravity that threatens to sweep away the civilization which, in Sheed’s words, was built by looking at man while listening to God.
Abortion remains the biggest threat to that civilization. Although the research arm of the world’s biggest provider of abortion services reports a decline in the annual rate of induced abortions in the Asia Pacific and in the world ---from 26.8 million in 1995 to 25.9 million in 2003 for Asia, and from 46 million to 42 million during the same period worldwide---one in five pregnancies is still said to end in abortion, and Asia is said to account for nearly 50 percent of the total count.
The numbers remain alarming. But it is not a question of numbers alone. The killing of just one innocent and helpless unborn child in the hands of its own mother, with or without the collaboration of any other, is one brutal murder too many, in a society that knows, or ought to know, what the gift of life truly means. That phrase “gift of life” has long become part of our common speech, but its real meaning stretches far beyond than that which we ordinarily attach to it. It means much more than any other gift we have received and may yet receive.
For when God willed to give life to man, the first man that is, he was not yet there to receive it. He began to exist as a person only when God blew life into the clay that was to become his mortal corpus; he began to live only when he received God’s breath. In receiving the gift, therefore, man became the gift himself. The process is repeated each time a new human being is created inside a mother’s womb, except that God no longer acts alone; he allows his creature to participate, and the original act of creation becomes an act of procreation (co-creation, some would say). This transcendent gift is what abortion extinguishes.
Relativists and legal positivists classify abortion as either “legal” or illegal, “safe” or unsafe. It is “legal” when a law allows it even if it denies the natural moral law and is, therefore, unjust and void; illegal, when there is no law, even an unjust and void one, that purportedly “allows” it. And it is “safe” when performed as a regular medical procedure by a trained professional under standard hygienic conditions and the mother of the aborted child survives without any severe complications. It is unsafe when self-induced or performed as a clandestine operation by non-medical or even by medical personnel, under unhygienic conditions, and the mother dies or suffers severe complications.
But whether the abortion is “legal” or illegal, “safe” or unsafe, the unborn baby is invariably and irrevocably killed. In the rarest of cases, an intended victim may survive if it races out of its mother’s womb and arrives in the world before the abortionist is able to work on it. This is said to have happened in the case of the abortion survivor, Gianna Jessen, who has been talking about it on You Tube. But for the unborn victim, there is no such thing as a safe abortion. The total mortality rate is permanently and irrevocably fixed at 100 percent. In fact, were the sexual revisionists more honest in their language, they would be calling it genocide or infanticide, which is what it really is.
China, which maintains its one-child policy to this day, is said to account for 13 million abortions each year, followed by India’s 11 million a year. Yet both countries had begun to worry about the number of female children being aborted just because they are female; they now want their infanticide to be gender-blind. So they have criminalized sex-selective abortion, which has already produced a ratio of 120 boys for every 100 girls born, and by 2020, if the projections prove correct, is expected to give China a preponderance of at least 30 million males with no female counterparts.
Seventeen Asian countries allow abortion for all sorts of reasons, but they impose gestational limitations, with the exception of China, North Korea and Vietnam, which have different regulatory norms. In Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Burma allow abortion to save a woman’s life; Laos allows it for the same reason and to preserve physical health; Malaysia, for the same reasons as Laos and to preserve mental health; Thailand, for the same reasons as Malaysia and in case of rape or incest; Singapore and Vietnam, for all of the foregoing reasons, and in case of fetal impairment, economic and social reasons, and upon request.
The Philippines alone has taken a different course. There, abortion is constitutionally banned and is a punishable crime. Reproductive health/rights groups, however, claim that precisely because it is banned, at least 1,000 poor Filipino women die each year from clandestine and “unsafe” abortion. Whether or not that figure is correct, we cannot say; it is de rigueur for pro-abortion propagandists to exaggerate maternal death figures to justify their call for the legalization of abortion where it remains illegal, and for increased access to abortion where it has been legalized. It was only recently that WHO finally adopted Lancet’s (the medical journal’s) figure of 340,00 as the worldwide total of annual maternal deaths, after putting forward 520,000 for sometime.
No one has been punished or prosecuted for abortion in the Philippines. But precisely because of the constitutional ban, no one has proposed its legalization either. One such proposal could come if and when the Constitution is revised or amended, and the ban is deleted altogether. That, however, has not prevented some compliance committee members of some UN treaty bodies from asking Philippine representatives, from time to time, to change their anti-abortion law.
What threatens to divide the country now is a reproductive health bill that seeks principally to establish a publicly funded program of universal contraception and sterilization and compulsory sex education for minors without parental consent. In principle, the bill grants health workers the right to refuse certain cases on the ground of conscience, but quickly takes away that same right by compelling the same health workers to refer such cases to other health workers who have no such problem of conscience or else face criminal prosecution. If ever enacted as drafted, the law may not be denounced as unjust, unwise or plain wrong, without courting a jail sentence---the most frightening provision not found in any existing law.
An old proposal that had failed to hurdle several past Congresses, the present bill was re-introduced in the Senate and the House of Representatives with trumpets and drums after the new administration came into office in July this year and the Obama administration in the US had begun throwing money to promote reproductive health and abortion activities abroad. The bill is supported on economic and social grounds by “progressive” activists and foreign-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and opposed on moral, constitutional and the same grounds invoked by its proponents by a wide range of Filipinos, including members of the Catholic Church, to whom the large majority of Filipinos belong.
The Church teaches that contraception, sterilization and abortion is evil, consistent with natural law and the good of man. Whether or not this is true can be fully ascertained by reason, even without the aid of revelation; it is not a confessional truth accessible and applicable to Catholics alone. It applies to man as man, and therefore applies equally to all men and women, Catholic or non-Catholic, believer and non-believer alike. One need not be a Catholic to be bound by it, but one cannot be a Catholic without being bound by it. Unless of course one has decided to drop out; in which case they would cause less confusion if they called themselves exactly what they are---“lapsed catholics.” Nonetheless, many of the bill’s proponents and supporters say they are Catholic; some try to wax nostalgic about their having been altar boys or Legion of Mary members. They obviously miss the point. One should not so loudly proclaim that he is Catholic while bragging that he is free to choose and pick which teaching of the Magisterium to accept or reject, any more than one should profess to be a good citizen while bragging that he is free not to pay taxes or obey any law he may find inconvenient.
In any case, there is no State prohibition against contraception and sterilization. Filipino women, including Catholic women, are free to contracept and get themselves ligated, and they have been doing so for years. The result is a national contraceptive acceptance rating of at least 50 percent (and rising). The Church, while asking Catholic men and women to be faithful, does not ask the State to become the official enforcer of its teachings and penalize users of contraceptives and sterilization agents. But neither does the Church expect the State, by legislation, executive or judicial fiat, to tell Catholics not to obey Church teaching and listen instead to what the government and the various anti-population campaigners are saying. The State does not have that right and would be usurping the right of the Church if it did.
However, those who want the State to flood the country with contraceptives and sterilization agents accuse the Church of political interference for proclaiming that contraception, sterilization and abortion are evil and should be avoided. They maintain that the State has the right and duty to enter the family bedroom and tell married couples how to perform the sexual act, and that in doing so, it should be free from any censurious remarks from the Church which should be allowed to teach the faithful about good and evil, right and wrong, only within places of worship but not on the public square.
They accuse the Church of pronouncing contraception, sterilization and abortion as evil, for reasons of her own, and will not grant that the Church says these things are wrong because they are, by their very nature, wrong and will continue to be wrong, even if the Church were silenced, even if the Church did not exist. They insist that, in a democracy, the rightness or wrongness of these acts is decided solely by consensus or by a majority vote, in parliament, congress, or an international body like the United Nations.
Apparently unacceptable to them is the principle, universally upheld, that what gives validity to any law is not merely the number of votes behind it, but above all the constitutive element of justice. Without justice, “the rule of the majority,” otherwise indispensable in a democracy, becomes mob rule, and can only produce the opposite of law, which is violence. Law is law properly understood, only if it is just. “A just law binds as much in a democracy as in a totalitarian state; an unjust law binds in neither,” writes one eminent scholar. (Cormac Burke, Authority and Freedom in the Church, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1988). For as Pope Benedict XVI points out, “there are things that are always wrong and can never be legalized,” just as “there are some things that absolutely always remain legally binding, things that precede every majority decision, things that majority decisions must respect” (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Values in a Time of Upheaval, Ignatius Press, 2006).
That presupposes the rule of law, correctly understood. Where that is absent, democracy is replaced by an autocratic, if not totalitarian order, and truth and reason by the opinion of an ill-informed and therefore misguided majority, or the opinion of those who use their power as the sole criterion in deciding what is right and what is wrong. Human rights, and the rights of God, are set aside, having become completely dispensable. This is what we see in much of the world today, including those countries that had once championed the cause of truth and freedom against an atheistic and absolutist enslavement of consciences in the last century.
Under a genuine rule of law, our Constitution, our Catholic Christian culture, and international law (correctly understood) should suffice to protect Filipinos from the present reproductive health bill in Congress. For our Constitution fully recognizes: “the sanctity of human life; the family as the foundation of the nation; marriage as the foundation of the family and as an inviolable social institution; the right of spouses to found a family according to their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood; the right of the mother to bear a child and the right of the unborn to be born; the right of parents to be the primary educators of their children; the right of the youth and women to achieve their full potential as persons and as citizens; the right of the people to health and to a balanced environment in harmony with nature.”
The same principles we breathe from the social teachings of the Church, and from the text of international declarations, conventions and treaties that have accumulated over the years, including but not limited to, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1976, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women of 1981, the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1990, the Program of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development of 1994, the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development of 1995, the Beijing Declaration of 1995, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998.
The Rome Statute for one restates verbatim a provision of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of Dec. 9, 1948 (adopted one day before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), which classifies as genocide “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group,” including but not limited to, a) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” and b) “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
Genocide seems too harsh a word for our purpose. But what possible Newspeak or UNspeak could better describe the deliberate destruction of millions of unborn who are “unwanted” because their parents simply wanted the pleasure of sex without any responsibility, cost or consequence, and those in control of the affairs of the State do not want to see the poor threaten, by their sheer number, the property rights, privileges and personal comfort of the rich?
In the Nuremberg war trials of 1945-6, as John Smeaton of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children has noted, the Nazis’ effort “to decrease the birth rate in occupied countries by sterilization, castration and abortion, by separating husband from wife and men from women and obstructing marriage” was condemned and punished as a crime against humanity. How could such a crime that had so revolted the human conscience in the last century be celebrated as a service to freedom and human rights in the present? Have we become so inverted that we must now walk on our heads and condemn that which is objectively and intrinsically good as evil, and celebrate that which is objectively and instrinsically evil as good?
The main provisions of the Philippine bill would transform the country into a totalitarian state. They provide the best arguments against its proposed passage. But what is truly frightening is the massive mobilization of forces, internal and external, to proclaim and promote its obvious defects as indispensable virtues and create through the conscript media, the manipulative pollsters and all sorts of fraudulent propagandists a false clamor for its “necessary enactment.” Even before the bill could advance to its next stage, some cities have already been dragooned into signing Memorandums of Agreement with foreign funding institutions to implement part of the highly outrageous reproductive health bill, which the cities do not have the constitutional authority to implement without a national law (even an unjust and void one) “authorizing “ it.
And in the course of his working visit to the United States last September, President Benigno Simeon Aquino III announced in San Francisco that he was ready to start distributing condoms and other contraceptives to Filipinos, after receiving a Millennium Development Goals (MDG)-related grant of $454 million from the US.
No one has found it necessary to ask whether or not Mr. Aquino’s readiness to flood the country with contraceptives and the unexpected US largesse are inter-related. But nobody believes the Philippine president is prepared to disappoint the Obama administration, which has started its vigorous funding of reproductive health and abortion activities in developing countries as its top foreign policy objective. Its aggressive funding of reproductive health outside the US, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says “includes access to abortion,” holds the surest promise that the attack on human life and the family in the Philippines will inexorably escalate.
While coming directly from abroad, the attack will be carried out by local conscripts, according to the pattern prescribed by National Security Study Memorandum 200, otherwise known as the 1974 Kissinger Report, which counsels making the locals assume full responsibility for every foreign-initiated program or project. These could include the usual “progressives” who are ever-ready to shout anti-American slogans, burn the American flag if necessary, and call for the expulsion of the visiting US forces at the slightest excuse, but see nothing wrong in US and UN agencies entering the family bedroom and telling them how to have “a safe and satisfying sex life” as though the country’s greatest problem were the dull and dismal sex life of Filipinos. Also academic and religious groups who are involved in some foreign-funded reproductive health projects, and are eager to propose a “compromise” without disclosing their obvious conflict of interest.
Several things argue against it.
First, the Philippines is not a welfare state. The government has neither the duty nor the means to provide directly for all the people’s needs. Were it otherwise, its first duty would be to supply the people’s basic needs---food, water, clothing, shelter, education and health---but only those basic needs. In the area of health, it would have to provide free hospitalization and medical care to those suffering from the most common ailments, the leading killer diseases, and occasional epidemics, before it could think of throwing money at the prevention of pregnancy, which is not yet a disease.
Second, the Constitution provides that the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from the moment of conception. This is not just a ban on abortion, but also a ban on state-funded or state-run contraception and sterilization. For if the duty of the State is to protect the life of the unborn from conception, it cannot possibly have an equal and simultaneous duty, let alone right, to fund a program whose main, if not sole, purpose is to prevent women, or even one solitary woman, from conceiving a child. That would create an absurdity abhorred by all legislation.
Third, the latest state of research has shown that many, if not most, contraceptives are no longer just contraceptives but actual abortifacients. They do not just prevent conception but rather prevent the initial development of pregnancy even after fertilization. They either intercept the embryo before implantation in the uterus, thus they are called interceptives, or they eliminate the newly implanted embryo altogether, thus they are called contragestives.
Finally, there is as yet no law, even an unjust and void one, that “authorizes” the government to flood the country with contraceptives and sterilization agents. In the past, the Marcos government could distribute contraceptives without running afoul of any law, simply because the constitutional prohibition did not yet exist. But the 1987 prolife and profamily Constitution, promulgated after Cory Aquino succeeded Marcos, changed all that.
That the government, even under Cory Aquino, continued to appropriate public funds and receive foreign donations in cash and in kind for reproductive health, in utter disregard of the constitutional prohibition, is a grave abuse of power, or error at the very least. The new Aquino administration, consistent with its vow to stop all past corruption and abuses, is expected to end rather than perpetuate it.
This---rather than the present bill---is the real question before the Philippine Congress---what to do with the current reproductive health program under the Department of Health and the Population Commission, funded regularly under the General Appropriations Act, despite the constitutional provisions that render it void ab initio. The fact that the proponents of the bill are determined to ram it through, without striking down the unconstitutional program that is already in place and costing the taxpayers a lot of money, even though their bill is still seeking to legislate a policy, shows the vast constitutional disorder and moral disarray. They are determined to legislate against the Constitution and against the natural law.
The ultimate target is man, the family and God himself. The dictatorship of relativism, as Pope Benedict XVI calls it, seeks to empty our corporeal and spiritual lives of the first and last truth about God, man and the human family---the truth that is love---the truth that alone can make men free. The conceit of science and technological progress seeks to abolish man by redefining him into a pure ego, solely responsible for the achievements of technology, forgetting that it is an achievement of the spirit, which science and technology did not create; “a response to God’s command to till and to keep the land (cf. Gen 2:15)” (Caritas en Veritate). This has produced a fashionable madness for political correctness, which insists on the deconstruction of every objective reality and rejects the ethical principles and moral conventions that have since the beginning of time determined the rightness or wrongness of every human act. Emptied of such principles, man is reduced to a purely material and hedonistic being, not totally removed from animalia, something that Caritas en Veritate says he is not, “a lost atom in a random universe.” A self-made universe without transcendence and without God.
For this purpose, the Church as the first and last defender of human life, marriage and the family is systematically vilified. Her rights are routinely and mindlessly usurped; in the most “advanced” societies, those who insist on the public practice of their faith are harassed, prosecuted and penalized. Although the wars of religion that ended with the Treaty of Wesphalia in 1648 have not since recurred, the war on religion is raging everywhere. Not because Godless communism had won, but rather because hedonistic materialism had swallowed the great democracies after the collapse of the Soviet Union and replaced its dreaded venom with something even deadlier. In the rich and “advanced” societies, religion may no longer cast its shadow on the public square unless it be purely secular and promotes the worship of self, sex, the state, power, pleasure, and anything else but God.
What are we to do in the face of all this? The stronger the attack, the stronger too should be our faith. On my way to this conference, my wife and I were privileged to attend a “white mass” for people with “special needs,” offered by the new cardinal-designate, Archbishop Donald Wuerl at St. Matthew’s cathedral in Washington, D.C. These were people with various disabilities, many of whom followed the mass and sang with the choir, using sign language. It occurred to me then that we are all a people with special needs----and the first such need is to be faithful always to our Lord.
We in the Philippines are often compelled to say our country is the last holdout in the global assault of the culture of death. For us “death” is the acronym for divorce, euthanasia, abortion, total fertility control and homosexual union. None of these individual components of death had been legalized, and hopefully none will be. The faith remains vibrant, and on his last visit to the country in 1995, Blessed John Paul II called the Philippines “the light of Asia and the world.”
Christianity first came to the country in 1521 when Magellan completed the circumnavigation of the globe. Thus the faith of the Filipinos came from, or at least through, Europe. With the increasing dechristianization and paganization of Europe today, it is inevitable and certain that as “the last man standing” we would now emerge as the final target of attack. The Philippine Church, however, is determined to mark the approaching 500th year of our Christianization as a strong and vibrant Church. This is why the whole Philippine Church---clergy, laity and religious---stands as one in the defense of human life, the family, marriage and the faith.
Around the world today, there is an unmistakable campaign to terrorize the Church into silence on the all-important issues of life, marriage, the family and the faith. This is obvious from the recent tendency of the media to present certain cases of sexual misconduct within the clergy, as though all priests, rather than just one or two sick ones, were involved, and that the Church authorities were not doing anything at all, even though the guilty ones had been disciplined and the Pope himself had sought out the victims for their healing and forgiveness. Ironically, the over-sensationalization of these cases usually appear in public organs that openly endorse the homosexual agenda, which includes same-sex marriage, and other perversions such as pedophilia. Against these are vast numbers of worse cases in various circles and layers of society which are never reported in the media. The enemies of the Church are determined to use the sins of some of her priests to shame the Church into silence on the most important issues of human existence. But the Lord himself has assured us that the power of darkness shall not prevail against his Church.
My friend Mario from Croatia once told an international family conference in Rome that in most battles, we cannot predict the outcome. But in the war between the culture of life and the anti-culture of death, we know that we have already won, except that we must still fight some more before we complete our victory. For we are fighting God’s battle, and “God never loses any battle,” as St. Josemaria tells us. This is a “crisis of saints,” and God wants a handful of men “of his own” to fight his daily battle for human life, marriage and the family. May we be not wholly unworthy to be counted among such men.
Towards the end of our five-day congress in Rome, Cardinal-designate Raymond Leo Burke, Archbishop Emeritus of Saint Louis, and Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura dwelt on the same point. He said:
“The fundamental presupposition is the victory of life, which Our Lord Jesus Christ has already won. Christ animates the Church in time with the grace of His victory over sin and death, until the victory reaches its consummation, at His Final Coming, in the Heavenly Jerusalem. Notwithstanding the grave situation in our world of the attack on innocent and defenseless human life and on the integrity of marriage as the union of man and woman in a bond of lifelong, faithful and procreative love, there remains a strong voice in defense of our littlest and most vulnerable brothers and sisters without boundary or exception, and the truth about the marital union as it was constituted by God at the Creation. The Christian voice, the voice of Christ transmitted by the Apostles, remains strong in our world. The voice of men and women of goodwill, who recognize and obey the law of God written upon their hearts, remains strong in our world.” (Raymond Leo Burke, Catholic Orthodoxy: Antidote Against The Culture of Death, Istituto Patristico “Augustinianum”, Rome, 9 October 2010)
How will the family, the domestic church and basic cell of society, fare against all the attacks?
Michael O’Brien, the Canadian artist, author and mystic, writes:
“The Church may go on to the third millennium and convert the world, or it may shrink to a small remnant of believers. We do not know. Only Christ knows. But of this we can be sure: the family will remain what it is----an oak flourishing in winter. The family will continue, as it always has, to make the seeds of the second spring that is coming after this present winter. When the tyrants and the propagandists and the experimenters have all gone, when the hatred and hopelessness has exhausted itself, the earth will grieve and be born again. The Church and the family will remain.” (Michael O’Brien, The Family and the New Totalitarianism, 28 April 2005)
The final words on the future of Christ’s Church I leave to the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, the leading moral and intellectual guide of our time. He writes:
“Today, the future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demand upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively: the future of the Church once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality…
“…the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is empty chatter. We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death. The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by a psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist, who does not stand on the sidelines, watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal of men, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future.
“…From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge----a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so will she lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age she will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, she will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly she will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession…But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize her true center and experience the sacraments again as the worship of God and not as a subject of liturgical scholarship.
“The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism of the eve of the French Revolution----when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain----to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.
“And so it seems to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult , which is dead already with Gobel (the archbishop of Paris, who supported the idea of a constitutional national Church during the French Revolution, but later abandoned his priesthood; under Robespierre he was guillotined as an atheist) but the Church of the faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.” (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Faith and the Future, Ignatius Press, 2009).
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