MANILA, Philippines—Two senators Monday defended Congress’ move to legislate population control programs, with Sen. Panfilo Lacson describing as “parochial” the Catholic Church’s reading of the reproductive health bills.
Lacson is the author of Senate Bill No. 43 which encourages the adoption of a reproductive health and population management council to oversee the country’s family planning program.
“Advocating population management is not being anti-life. In fact, it is pro-country and pro-people. To claim it is anti-life without carefully studying its provisions would be parochial and downright stupid,” Lacson said in a statement.
He was referring to a pastoral letter by Ozamiz Archbishop Jesus Dosado ordering priests in his archdiocese to refuse communion to pro-abortion politicians.
The unprecedented step, which covers only Dosado’s archdiocese, came as the influential Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines mobilized forces to campaign against birth control proposals in Congress.
Last week, members of the CBCP met with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to stress their opposition to reproductive health bills in Congress.
In the House of Representatives, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman is the principal author of the reproductive health and population management bill, which is scheduled to be calendared for second reading by the rules committee when Congress resumes on July 28.
The bill, coauthored by at least 48 members of the House, includes a provision for “mandatory reproductive health and sexuality education” starting from Grade 5 up to fourth year high school.
While he respected the Catholic Church’s stand, Sen. Richard Gordon did not take too lightly its threat to politicians advocating population control.
Debate
Instead of threatening the lawmakers advocating population control, Gordon suggested that the matter be debated.
He said any Catholic had the right to take communion contrary to the threat in the pastoral letter. In jest, Gordon said that he doubted that a priest would deny a dying politician seeking confession.
Abortion is illegal in the Philippines, where critics accuse Ms Arroyo of contributing to the burgeoning population and crushing poverty by following the Church policy of emphasizing natural family planning methods.
Unwarranted subservience
Former President Fidel Ramos, the only Protestant to have occupied Malacańang, chided Ms Arroyo last week for not having a comprehensive family planning policy due to “unwarranted subservience to the Catholic Church.”
Ramos said “mothers’ lives and health, together with their babies, were being put at risk for political expediency and religious narrow-mindedness.”
About 473,000 abortions, or a third of the estimated 1.4 million unplanned pregnancies, still occur in the country yearly, while two out of five women who want to use contraceptives don’t have access to them, the UN Population Fund has said.
Two children per family
Lacson was unfazed by the Church lobby claiming that his bill rejected abortion.
“My bill still treats abortion as a serious crime but provides for other Christian methods to manage our country’s monstrous population growth rate that has become one of the world’s highest at 2.36 percent,” he said.
The key provisions in Lacson’s bill include encouraging couples to limit the number of children to two per family and initiating young people to sex education.
Reproductive rights and women’s groups said the Church stance on contraceptives was a “huge disservice” to women.
The Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN), a consortium of more than 20 women’s and health groups, said Dosado’s stance not to give communion to politicians who support abortion was “very misleading.”
Beth Angsioco, RHAN secretary general, said the bishop’s statement seemed to equate reproductive health rights with abortion.
“Abortion is not reproductive health,” she said. “I don’t know if the bishop has read the reproductive health bills ... Abortion remains illegal and punishable in the Philippines,” she said.
The Catholic Church recently reiterated its stand against contraceptives and surgical interventions like tubal ligation and vasectomy.
Like abortion, which the Philippine government does not support, the Church considers these measures “anti-life” and immoral.
Angsioco said the Church was making a huge disservice to women by equating abortion with access to reproductive health.
10 die daily
Citing data from the United Nations, Angsioco said 10 women in the Philippines die daily because of pregnancy complications arising from lack of maternal and natal care before, during and after pregnancy.
“Those who can afford contraceptives can buy, but those who are poor are really affected,” she said.
“We are closing our eyes, the Church is closing its eyes to the fact that women are massacred,” Angsioco said. Reports from Gil C. Cabacungan Jr. and Kristine L. Alave
