Sen. Vicente Sotto III wants lobbyists for reproductive health bill known

Is there an invisible foreign hand behind the passage of a reproductive health bill in the Philippines?

Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III sought to unmask on Tuesday local lobbyists affiliated with an international organization advocating for abortion and whose founder was a known champion of “eugenics.”

Eugenics refers to the ideology promoting selective breeding, thereby denying birth for the weak and the useless. Among its chief proponents, Sotto said, was the late Margaret Sanger, who founded the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

Sanger, a radical figure in the women’s rights movement in the United States in the 20th century, once wrote in Women and the New Race: “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

On the second day of Senate plenary debates on the RH bill, Sotto confronted Sen. Pia Cayetano, a co-sponsor of the measure, on the roots of the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP).

In its official website, the FPOP is described as a “member of the association of the world’s largest voluntary family planning organization: the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).”

The IPPF, in its own website, says its facilities offer a total of 10 services, which include “contraception, emergency contraception, (and) abortion-related services.”

“It makes the whole thing complex,” Sotto told Cayetano, referring to the RH bill.

“If the only ones pushing for this were Senator (Miriam) Santiago (the other co-sponsor) and Sen. Pia Cayetano, I would have agreed to this bill as early as yesterday. But there are other groups behind it.”

Cayetano did not immediately reply to Sotto’s query about the FPOP-IPPF-Sanger connection, prompting Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile to remind Sotto on the side to ask her again about Sanger.

Cayetano later agreed to furnish Sotto a “whole list” of groups and personalities lobbying for the RH measure.