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Reproductive Health Bill rally 2009.

You can find the full text of House Bill No. 5043 here.

PRO:

HB 5043 is pro-life and pro-women: HB 5043 categorically rejects abortion, which it considers a "crime" in consonance with the 1987 Constitution. What it, in fact, wants to do is prevent abortions by offering couples an array of "medically safe, legal, affordable and quality" family planning methods from which they can choose the one that will work best for them.

HB 5043 is pro-poor. Based on a Pulse Asia survey on family planning, an overwhelming majority of Filipinos (92 percent) believe that it is important to plan their families, and most (89 percent) say that the government should allocate funding for modern artificial methods or family planning, including the pill, IUDs, ligation, condoms and vasectomy. And yet only five out of ten married couples use any family planning method whether modern or natural. This reflects a significant unmet need for reproductive health services.

 

HB 5043 is pro-youth. Based on the 1994 and 2002 Young Adult and Fertility survey of the University of the Philippines Population Institute not only did the proposition of youth aged 15-24 who are engaged in pre-marital sex increase (from 17.8 percent in 1994 to 23.4 percent in 2002) but the average age of their first sexual encounter has noticeably declined. The RH bill provides for a mandatory age-appropriate reproductive health education to provide the youth with the much-needed information and values on their reproductive and sexual health.

HB 5043 is pro-informed choice. It is seeking to promote both modern, artificial and natural family planning methods. House Bill 5043 recognizes that couples, especially women, have the right to choose the family planning method they consider to be the safest and most effective for them, provided they are legally permissible. 

While natural family planning, which the Catholic Church promotes offers many benefits, it is a grave injustice to make it the one and only method available to women for whom such method simply cannot work.

CONTRA:

HB 5043 uses wrong means to achieve questionable ends. HB 5043 cannot achieve its stated ends, and that there are more acceptable – and more effective – means of achieving these ends.

HB 5043 promotes abortion by funding and promoting abortifacients. Many studies show that the abortifacient action of many contraceptives cannot be justifiably dismissed. The grave stakes involved (the death of a human being) places the burden of proof on those who would provide such contraceptives to prove that these are in fact non-abortifacient. Until such a conclusive determination is achieved we must err on the side of caution and not place the lives of the unborn at risk. HB 5043, however, explicitly promotes and funds such abortifacients. We also note that there is a safe, modern, and effective alternative to abortifacients: Natural Family Planning.

HB 5043 violates explicit Catholic teaching. Catholic doctrine has always held human life begins at conception. It has also always taught that artificial contraception is a grave evil. HB 5043 promotes and funds abortifacients and artificial contraceptives. The claim, therefore, that HB 5043 is pro-life and consistent with Catholic doctrine is totally false. No Catholic can support HB 5043 without violating the moral teaching of the Catholic Church.

HB 5043 violates the Philippine Constitution. Article II, Section 12, recognizes that human life must be protected from the moment of conception. Since HB 5043 promotes and funds abortifacients, it violates the Philippine Constitution.

HB 5043 is anti-women and anti-poor. The great majority of maternal deaths are caused by the lack of proper medical facilities and care. HB 5043 does not address this lack of basic health care services, and will allow the problem to persist while it wastes funds on abortifacients and other ineffective reproductive health measures.

HB 5043 is coercive and violates freedom of speech. It punishes anyone who “maliciously engages in disinformation about the intent or provisions of this Act”, which can be broadly interpreted as prohibiting the expression of objections to the Bill. It coerces employers to provide for free abortifacients and artificial contraceptives, removing any choice for those who may believe that distribution of such is immoral. Doctors and health workers are also coerced to dispense such abortifacients or to refer those who want to use these to another person who will dispense them. HB 5043 eliminates any choice for conscientious objectors and makes no room for their legitimate concerns.

Reproductive Health Bill rally 2009.

Pro-choice describes the political and ethical view that a woman should have complete control over her fertility and the choice to continue or terminate a pregnancy. This entails the guarantee of reproductive rights, which includes access to sexual education; access to safe and legal abortion, contraception, and fertility treatments; and legal protection from forced abortion. Individuals and organizations who support these positions make up the pro-choice movement.

Pro-choice advocates emphasize their beliefs that having a child is a personal choice that affects a woman's body, personal health, and future. They believe that both parents' and children's lives are better when abortions are legal, thus preventing women from going to desperate lengths to obtain illegal abortions. More broadly, pro-choice advocates frame their beliefs in terms of "individual liberty," "reproductive freedom," and "reproductive rights."

Pro-choice individuals often do not consider themselves "pro-abortion" because they consider abortion an issue of bodily autonomy, and find forced abortion as legally indefensible as the outlawing of abortion. Indeed, some who are pro-choice consider themselves opposed to some or all abortions on a moral basis, but believe that abortion bans imperil women's health. Others have a practical acceptance of abortion, arguing that abortions would happen in any case but that legal abortion under medically controlled conditions is preferable to illegal back-alley abortion without proper medical supervision.

Many pro-choice campaigners also argue that pro-life policies would deny women access to comprehensive sex education and contraception, thus increasing, not decreasing, demand for abortion. Proponents of this argument point to cases of areas with limited sex education and contraceptive access that have high abortion rates, either legal, illegal or de facto exported (i.e., where a high proportion of abortions from a state occur outside that state in another country with a more liberal abortion regime). Irish women who visit the United Kingdom for abortions are one example, as were the Belgian women who travelled to France (before Belgium legalized abortion).

Some people who are pro-choice see abortion as a last resort and focus on a number of situations where they feel abortion is a necessary option. Among these situations are those where the woman was raped, her health or life (or that of the fetus) is at risk, contraception was used but failed, or she feels unable to raise a child. Some pro-choice moderates, who would otherwise be willing to accept certain restrictions on abortion, feel that political pragmatism compels them to oppose any such restrictions, as they could be used to form a slippery slope against all abortions.

Reproductive Health Bill rally 2009.

In 1968, Pope Paul VI issued his landmark encyclical letter Humanae Vitae (Latin, "Human Life"), which reemphasized the Church’s constant teaching that it is always intrinsically wrong to use contraception to prevent new human beings from coming into existence. 

Contraception is "any action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act [sexual intercourse], or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" (Humanae Vitae 14). This includes sterilization, condoms and other barrier methods, spermicides, coitus interruptus (withdrawal method), the Pill, and all other such methods.

Contraception is wrong because it’s a deliberate violation of the design God built into the human race, often referred to as "natural law." The natural law purpose of sex is procreation. The pleasure that sexual intercourse provides is an additional blessing from God, intended to offer the possibility of new life while strengthening the bond of intimacy, respect, and love between husband and wife. The loving environment this bond creates is the perfect setting for nurturing children. 

But sexual pleasure within marriage becomes unnatural, and even harmful to the spouses, when it is used in a way that deliberately excludes the basic purpose of sex, which is procreation. God’s gift of the sex act, along with its pleasure and intimacy, must not be abused by deliberately frustrating its natural end—procreation.

Anno 2009 the viewpoint of the Catholic Church has not changed a bit...

Reproductive Health Bill rally 2009.

This series is about a rally in front of the House of Representatives urging lawmakers to pass the so called Reproductive Health Bill (HB 5043).

Population control is a highly politicized issue in the country, where more than 80 percent of the 90 million Filipinos are Catholics.

Most politicians are afraid to go against the powerful Catholic Church because they are scared to loose votes among the deep religious Filipino people. 

The RH bill seeks to establish a national family planning program that would include sex education and use of birth control, which the Catholic Church considers "immoral." 

The Church has objected on any artificial form of birth control and has been waging a strong campaign to block the passage of the bill.

It should be noted that HB 5043 categorically rejects abortion, which it considers a "crime" in consonance with the 1987 Constitution. What it, in fact, wants to do is prevent abortions by offering couples an array of "medically safe, legal, affordable and quality" family planning methods from which they can choose the one that will work best for them.