Devotees’ lament: Quiapo now hub of abortion drugs

Quiapo Church PHOTO BY DON LEJANO/INQUIRER.net

Expressing outrage against the transformation of the Quiapo area into “a distribution hub of abortifacients,” some 2,000 devotees and parishioners of the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene marched on Friday from the church to City Hall, clamoring for a stop to the illicit sale of the drug Cytotec.

The devotees claimed the sale of the abortifacient drug was rampant in the immediate perimeter of the Quiapo Church by unscrupulous traders.

Cytotec (misoprostol) is a medicine for ulcers whose side effect is that it could cause abortion if taken by pregnant women (less than nine weeks).

The marchers, composed of different church and lay groups led by Church rector Msgr. Clemente Ignacio, made its way slowly to the Manila City Hall, praying the rosary.

Anti-RH  too

Most of the participants were clad in shirts marked “Deboto ng Poong Nazareno Ayaw sa RH Bill.”  They also carried streamers which read: “Stop Cytotec Trade dito sa Quiapo,” and “Kontrolin ang Corruption, Huwag ang Populasyon (Control corruption, not reproduction).”

Ignacio told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that Quiapo has become the hub of the Cytotec trade in the country.

For several years, he pointed out, the sale of the abortifacient was initially curtailed by a task force created in 2008 by Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim.  But this year, he pointed out, the sale has returned and grown more rampant.

“Even some of my parishioners and devotees to the Black Nazarene have informed me that they were being offered Cytotec,” he said, adding that police have started arresting traders of the abortifacient, the peddlers have returned and have resorted to different means of selling their wares.

At the Manila City Hall, the parish pastoral council led by Nick Salimbagat and Ignacio submitted a letter addressed to the Manila mayor.

The letter was received by Lim’s chief of staff Ric de Guzman.

In the letter, the groups said, “We do not understand and we are confused how the Cytotec trade was revived despite your (Mayor Lim’s) creation of a task force against it. The sale of Cytotec is prevalent and rampant here (Quiapo area). We are concerned about would-be mothers who have not been informed of the ill-effects of the abortifacient on the infants and the mothers themselves.”

Ignacio stressed that the city government must focus on and act against suppliers of the abortifacient, pointing out that without supply, there would be no sale of Cytotec.