In 1971, anyone could have said the following statement, were it not for the fact that it was said by no less than the last of the Kennedy brothers, Edward Kennedy, who was laid to rest only a few weeks ago:

“While the deep concern for a woman bearing an unwanted child merits consideration and sympathy, it is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life.”

Kennedy continued: “Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized—the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old. When history looks back at this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception.”

By the time he died, not only did Ted Kennedy close the curtain on the fabled Kennedy era of American politics, he also died as a dyed-in-the-wool abortion supporter, mourned inconsolably by Naral, the foremost abortion advocacy group in the United States. The familiar acronym for National and Reproductive Rights Action League, the politically active Naral Pro-Choice America once gave Kennedy a 100 percent score on his consistent pro-choice voting record in the US Senate.

We are left with two intriguing questions. What exactly is Naral that it should weep loudly at Kennedy’s death? Its aim is two-fold and it must be understood very clearly how it goes beyond the so-called “pro-choice” advocacy. It engages in political action to oppose restrictions on abortion and then to expand access to abortion. It sponsors lawsuits, donates money to politicians supportive of abortion rights through its political action committee, and organizes its members to contact members of Congress and urge them to support Naral’s positions.

That, plus our memorable images of the Catholic Kennedy family who once donned the mandatory Vatican dress code to pay their courtesy to the Pope at the time when the patriarch Joseph Kennedy was US ambassador to the Court of St. James’s in London, disengages our sense of understanding as to where Edward Kennedy was coming from as one of America’s foremost abortion advocates.

The change of heart, nay call it even a change of persona, that totally unburnished the luster of the magic name that it once prompted in the public mind, is anything but baffling.

At the time Kennedy made sense of his moral moorings, America had only started its “pro-choice” revolution. Abortion was, as yet, a choice of revulsion. By morphing from pro-lifer to abortion advocate, Kennedy was swept with the tide that comes so naturally with the so-called “pro-choice” advocacy.

Studies have repeatedly shown that abortions actually rise with the advent of the contraceptive culture. Contraception and abortion actually operate under the same attitude and lifestyle where sex is promoted as purely utilitarian, a search for pleasure without the consequences and responsibility that should rightly accompany it. Both operate as Siamese twins, conjoined on the principle that sex is separated from openness to life. Children are mere accidents, a disease that can be treated with “essential medicines.”

Where contraception fails, abortion becomes the most convenient backup. Just look at the data in our archetypal model, the United States. Fifty percent of all who have had abortions in the US were those of failed contraceptive use, while 80 percent of those who undergo abortions also use contraception.

One can only impossibly change the record of history: legalized abortion in the US was preceded by the barrage of contraception.

Noynoy Aquino, however, now wants to change what history has taught us. He supports the reproductive rights bill that now would like to nationalize the practice of contraception. It is, of course, a bill that also states it is against the legalization of abortion. But rhetoric compared to record is false reverie.

Cling to his position he may, but Noynoy Aquino is well on the road to becoming a future abortion advocate. Surely by that time, new generations would have been born that would not know Ninoy and Cory Aquino, and that would not have any inkling of the benediction once intoned over the dead body of Cory Aquino as these echoed in the cavernous apse of the Manila Cathedral, on whose wooden coffin was sprinkled the holy water by no less than the cardinal archbishop of Manila.

There is no other path for Noynoy, no matter if Sister Lucia’s rosary remains in the family’s hands. It is the same familiar path that Edward Kennedy and many Catholic politicians before him have also treaded.

He may, however, wish that history look back at him with the same tenderness for his saintly mother. That is, if he chooses the same mea culpa that overwhelmed Edward Kennedy on his death bed: writing a letter to the Pope and expressing his remorse for his failure to commune with the faith. In his final act, Kennedy expressed repentance at promoting health care, to reconcile with Christ and his Church. That should be the Ninoy-Cory legacy that Noynoy can now offer us as presidential candidate.

Unlike Kennedy, he must not wait for a lifetime. The Church’s open arms await him now.

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Comments to monta@cu-cdo.edu.ph