PROCREATIVE RIGHTS AND REPRODUCTIVE WRONGS[1]

Part I-

INTRODUCTION

Despite the alarms and doomsday bells touched off worldwide by the crash
of the global financial system, the Philippine political system has managed
to give its undivided attention to something completely unrelated --- House
Bill 5043, otherwise known as An Act Providing For A National Policy On
Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development
And For Other Purposes. This is a consolidation of four reproductive health
(RH) bills originally filed in the House of Representatives. Six other like-
minded bills had been filed in the Senate, but are still with six committees.
They have yet to be consolidated into a single text.[2]

The public debate has been passionate and polarizing, a puzzle to

both sides. To the proponents, the question is, why should anyone be so
squeamish about "reproductive health" when nearly the entire world has
come to terms with it, and freely practices contraception, sterilization and
even abortion? Some countries have even legalized euthanasia. What has
happened to the exceptional ability of Filipinos to adapt to the latest fads
and fashions coming from the West? To its opponents, the question is, why
on earth are we being force-fed with RH when the world is about to blow
up, and only our dynamic and vibrant population can possibly save us?

In this paper, we shall examine the real issues involved, and why
the bill has proved so divisive.

WHAT IS "REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH"?

In its plain meaning, reproductive health (RH) refers (or ought to

refer) to a person's health in both body and mind, in the mature and
responsible use of his or her reproductive organs and faculties; its primary
concern is the safe, licit and natural generation and proper upbringing of a
new human being (a child).

But as a United Nations' verbal construct, "reproductive health" or

"reproductive rights" refers to what an individual wants to do with his or
her body and sexuality, including but not limited to the "right to abortion."
This language was formally incorporated into official U.N. usage at the
1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in
Cairo; it has gained wide official currency since.

Thus, when some women, who had been victims of China's "one male
child policy," heard it for the first time at the 1995 Fourth World Conference
on Women in Beijing, they literally danced for joy, believing they would
finally be able to bear as many children as they wanted ---- only to be told
promptly that the phrase meant "the right not to reproduce at all."
 As used in HB 5043, "reproductive health" is not concerned with the
safe, licit and natural generation and moral upbringing of any new human
being. Its main thrust is the very opposite ---- how to prevent pregnancy
and reproduction through contraception and sterilization. The bill, strictly
speaking, is an anti-reproduction bill.

WHAT ARE THE MAIN PROPOSALS IN HB 5043?

1. A State program of contraception and sterilization that will

require married couples to contracept or sterilize themselves before
engaging in marital intercourse, and make contraceptives and
sterilization devices available as "essential medicine" even to
unmarried individuals. Tubal ligation, vasectomy, and other family
planning methods requiring hospital services shall be made available
in all national and local government hospitals;

2. Mandatory sex education for children from Grade V until high

school, without need of parental consent;

3. Mandatory reproductive health care services, upon demand, for

"abused minors" and "abused pregnant minors" without parental
consent, even when there is no showing that the parents are the ones
abusing the minor concerned;

4. All collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) to provide for free

delivery of a "reasonable quantity of reproductive health care
services, supplies and devices to all workers" by the employer. The
employer shall have the same obligation where there is no CBA or the
workers are unorganized;

5. An amendment to the law on marriage requiring couples to obtain

a certificate from the local family planning office certifiying that they
had "received adequate instructions and information on family
planning, responsible parenthood, breast feeding and infant
nutrition" before they could get a marriage license;

6. A State program promoting the two-child family as the ideal

family size for all;

7. The Commission on Population (Popcom), with an expanded

board of 14 commissioners, mostly department heads, and as an
attached agency of the Department of Health (DOH), to act as the
"central planning, coordinating, implementing and monitoring body
for the comprehensive and integrated policy on reproductive health
and population development, which includes, among other things, "a
massive and sustained information drive on responsible parenthood
and on all methods and techniques to prevent unwanted, unplanned
 and mistimed pregnancies"; "prevention of abortion and management
of post-abortion complications; and provision of information and
services addressing the reproductive health needs of the poor, senior
citizens, women in prostitution, differently-abled persons and women
and children in war crisis situations";

8. A Mobile Health Care Service (MHCS) van to deliver health care

goods and services to every congressional district;

9. An "intensified" multi-media campaign "to raise the level of public

awareness on the urgent need to protect and promote reproductive
health and rights."

There are two distinctly positive provisions, but they are not mandatory:

1. "Every city and municipality shall endeavor to employ adequate

number of midwives or other skilled attendants to achieve a
minimum ratio of one for every 150 deliveries per year, to be based
on the average annual number of actual deliveries or live births for
the past two years;

2. "Each province and city shall endeavor to ensure the

establishment and operation of hospitals with adequate and
qualified personnel that provide emergency obstetric care. For every
500,000 population, there shall be at least one (1) hospital for
comprehensive emergency obstetric care and four (4) hospitals for
basic emergency obstetric care."

WHAT ARE THE PROHIBITED ACTS?

It shall be unlawful for any health provider to:

1. Knowingly withhold information or impede the

dissemination thereof, and/or intentionally provide incorrect
information regarding reproductive health programs and
services, including the right to 'informed choice,' and access to a
full range of legal, medically-safe and effective family planning
methods;

2. Refuse to perform voluntary ligation and vasectomy and

other legal and medically-safe reproductive health care services
on any person of legal age on the ground of lack of spousal
consent or authorization;

3. Refuse to provide reproductive health care services to an

abused minor, whose abused condition is certified by the proper
official or personnel of the Department of Social Welfare and
Development (DSWD) or to duly DSWD-certified abused pregnant
minor on whose case no parental consent in necessary;
 4. Fail to provide, either deliberately or through gross or
inexcusable negligence, reproductive health care services as
mandated under this Act, the Local Government Code of 1991,
the Labor Code and Presidential Decree 79, as amended; and

5. Refuse to extend reproductive health care services and

information on account of the patient's civil status, gender or
sexual orientation, age, religion, personal circumstances, and
nature of work: Provided, That all conscientious obections of
health care service providers based on religious grounds shall be
respected: Provided, further, That the conscientious objector
shall immediately refer the person seeking such care and services
to another health care provider within the same facility or one
which is conveniently accessible: Provided, finally, That the
patient is not in an emergency or serious case as defined in RA
8344 penalizing the refusal of hospitals and medical clinics to
administer appropriate initial medical treatment and support in
emergency and serious cases.

It shall likewise be unlawful for:

1. Any public official to prohibit or restrict personally or

through a subordinate, the delivery of legal and medically-safe
reproductive health care services, including family planning;

2. Any employer to discriminate against a female applicant or

employee for reasons of reproductive health or compel her to
undergo sterilization or any other form of contraception as a
condition for her employment or continued employment;

3. Any person to falsify the certificate of family planning

compliance required for the issuance of a marriage license;

4. Any person to maliciously engage in disinformation about

the intent or provisions of this Act.

WHAT ARE THE PENALTIES?

Offenders shall suffer a jail term of one to six months, or a fine

ranging from P10,000 to P50,000 or both. An alien offender shall be
deported upon completion of his prison term; a public officer or employee
shall suffer the accessory penalty of dismissal from government service.

HOW MUCH PUBLIC MONEY IS BEING APPROPRIATED?

The amounts appropriated in the current General Appropriations Act

(GAA) for reproductive and family planning under the DOH and Popcom,
together with ten percent (10%) of the Gender and Development budgets of
all government departments, agencies, bureaus, offices and
instrumentalities funded in the annual GAA in accordance with RA 7192 and
EO 273 shall be allocated and utililzed for the implementation of this Act.
Future appropriations shall be included in subsequent GAAs.

JUSTIFICATIONS FOR THE BILL

Proponents of the bill say the measure is needed to prevent maternal

deaths during pregnancy and childbirth, and to check the "population
explosion" where the poor continue to multiply without chance of sustaining
themselves.

Let us now look into these.

THE QUESTION OF WOMEN'S HEALTH

The proponents claim that ten (10) poor women die everyday from
complications during pregnancy or childbirth. This may or may not be
correct. If correct, experience has shown (as in Gattaran, Cagayan and
Sorsogon, Sorsogon) that the incidence of maternal death arising from such
complications could be fully mitigated and brought down to zero simply by
providing adequate basic and emergency obstetrics care and skilled medical
personnel.

It appears, however, that the proponents are not interested in

addressing the complications. They seem particularly bent on curing child-
bearing, which is not a disease. The bill's two positive provisions concerning
an adequate supply of midwives and basic and emergency obstetrics care
are not even mandatory, but merely recommendatory to local governments.
Of course, this could also be tacit admission that these things can be done
quickly even without legislation. Ironically, our RH politicians show no
palpable concern for the women who are dying everyday from all sorts of
diseases in far greater numbers.

THE REAL KILLERS

According to the 2007 updated DOH statistics, at least 17 out of every

100,000 women die every day from accidents alone. So many more die
from the major killers. The daily toll, per every 100,000 women, is as
follows:

1. Heart diseases, 80

2. Vascular diseases, 63

3. Cancer, 51

4. Pneumonia, 45

5. Tuberculosis,23
 6. Diabetes, 22

7. Lower chronic respiratory diseases, 16

Women (and men) suffering from these diseases do not get free
medicines or medical services from the State, with the exception of
tuberculosis where the government program has been significantly
influenced by the death of the President of the Commonwealth, Manuel L.
Quezon, from the disease. If the State, which is not a welfare state, is to
provide free medicines for the sick, should priority not be given to these
cases? Our RH politicians, however, seem solely interested in curing
childbearing with all sorts of contraceptives and sterilization devices, even
though the World Health Organization (WHO) has already determined these
to be carcinogenic (cancer-causing) to humans.

THE CLAIM OF "OVERPOPULATION"

What are facts about the country's population growth? The present
population is estimated at 88 million. According to the National Statistics
Office (NSO), the population growth rate is down to 2.04%. The total
fertility rate (TFR), or the number of children a woman of reproductive age
can have in her lifetime, is down to 3.02. According to the CIA World
Factbook, 2008, however, the birth rate is down to 1.72%; the TFR down
to 3.00. The U.N. Population Division projects that by 2020 the TFR will drop
to 2.29 -- just a breath away from the replacement level of 2.1. Thereafter,
it will all be downward until the rate falls below replacement level.

A SHRINKING POPULATION?

Despite the falling birth rate and the steady toll exacted by the
leading killers on both men and women, the average Filipino today has a
lifespan of 70.8 years, longer than his counterpart of the last generation.
So the population continues to grow, at a moderate pace.

The forecast is different for the rich countries. Precisely because of

contraception, abortion and in some cases euthanasia, coupled with
negative birth rates, some highly developed populations are soon projected
to shrink. According to U.N. estimates, by 2050, at least 30 European
countries and nine others will have smaller populations. Germany and Japan
will lose 14% of their present population; Italy and Hungary, 25%; Russia,
Georgia and Ukraine, 28 to 40%. Some 170 out of 187 countries will have a
fertility level of 2.1 or less. [3]

At that point, fully one-third of the population of the developed

countries and 20% of the population of the developing countries will be
above 60 years. There will be at least 2 billion such seniors alive, and 379
million aged 80 and above. The implosion will be characterized by what
Prof. Gerard-Francois Dumont of the University of Paris-Sorbonne calls
gerontocroissance (gerontogrowth).[4] Europe, which used to account for
22% of the world population as against Africa's 8% before World War II,
will shrink to one-third the population of Africa.[5]
INCENTIVES FOR MORE BABIES

For this reason, some governments have started offering incentives

to families to have more babies. These include the following countries:

•Russia, which has increased the monthly allowance for a first baby
from 700 roubles to 1,500 roubles, and 3,000 roubles for the next
child;

•Germany, which allows a parent who stops working after the birth
of a child to claim as much as $2,375 a month for 14 months;

•France, which offers 16 weeks maternity leave plus 36 months

parental leave and a monthly child benefit of 390 euros for three
children;

•Sweden, which offers parents 18 months leave and 335.74 euros a

month for three children;

•Ireland, which offers 26 weeks maternity leave plus 14 weeks

parental leave and a monthly child benefit of 280.6 euros for three
children;

•United Kingdom, which offers 26 weeks maternity leave plus 26

weeks parental leave, and a monthly child benefit of the equivalent
of 252 euros for three children;

•Ukraine, which offers mothers about 1,000 euros for a new child;
South Korea, which offers parents $670 a month from their
employment insurance plus up to one year of unpaid leave per
parent;

• Singapore, which offers government-paid maternity leave for 16

weeks and cash bonuses to parents with more than two children.

So while many countries are spending money to encourage families to

have more children, our RH politicians want to spend billions of pesos out of
our meager resources to stop women from bearing children. This does not
make sense.

NO NEED TO PANIC

They try very hard to panic the public with scare scenarios about the
country's population doubling in 30 years, and everything else getting
worse. The projection assumes that all variables will remain constant.
Which never do. Assuming the population does in fact double, then
population density would also double, from the present 290 inhabitants per
square km. to 580. That would be nearly one/thirty-third of Macau's present
density, one-thirtieth of Monaco's, and a little over one-tenth of Singapore's
and Hong Kong's. If we have not by then discovered the real causes of our
poverty, and mobilized our human and material resources accordingly, then
perhaps we would not even have a prayer. But if we could correct our
mistakes, and put good governance in place, then there is much hope. How
people conduct themselves is the critical issue, not how many they are.

CARRYING CAPACITY

There is no agreed figure on the country's (or, for that matter, the
world's) "carrying capacity" --- or just how many people it can hold or
support. Garrett Hardin sees the planet as a small lifeboat that can hold
only 100 million people; the poor should not be allowed to board or should
be thrown out into the water in a triage. The Cambridge statistician Colin
Clark, however, believes the entire world population could fit inside Texas,
with garden space left for each one.

We normally look at the total population, total land area and

population density (how many inhabitants per square kilometer of land,
assuming an even distribution of the population) to see if a given territory is
sparsely, moderately, or densely populated.

Thus, one study suggests that if the United States with its 9,629,091
square km. were to take in the population density of Japan (339), instead of
its own 31 inhabitants per square km., it could hold about 30 billion people,
with a total GDP of at least $71 trillion.[6]

For now, this is part of what we see:

1) China has 1,323,324,000 people in a land area of 9,596,961 square

km,. Population density is 138 inhabitants per square km.—nearly one-
fourth that of South Korea, nearly one-half that of Belgium, Japan, Israel or
Guam. Is it overpopulated? So it would seem, when we look at the total
population. But not quite, when we look at the population density.

2) India has 1,103,371,000 people, in a land area of 3,287,263 square

km. Population density is 336 inhabitants per square km. --- lower than
that of South Korea, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Japan. Overpopulated?
Just like China.

3) Macau has 538,100 people in a land area of 29.2 square kms..

Population density is 18,428 inhabitants per square km. – the highest in the
world. Overpopulated? So it seems. But given its GDP per capita (PPP) of
$28,400, which is higher than most, we hear no strident complaints.

4) Monaco has 32,671 people in a land area of 1.95 square km..

Population density: 16,754 inhabitants per square km --- the second
highest in the world. Overpopulated? Like Macau. Given its GDP per capita
(PPP) of $30,000, which is higher than most, the kingdom seems content.

5) Singapore has 4,588,600 people in a land area of 707.1 square km,

Population density: 6,489 inhabitants per square km. ---the third highest in
the world. Overpopulated? So it seems. But given its GDP per capita (PPP)
of $49,700, the highest in all of Asia, its leaders are asking young people
to marry and procreate and married couples to have more children.

6) Hong Kong has 7,040, 885 people in a land area of 1,099 square
km., Population density: 6,407 inhabitants per square km. – the fourth
highest in the world. Overpopulated? So it seems. But given its GDP per
capita (PPP) of $42,000, the second highest in Asia, it does not mind adding
more migrant workers to its native population.

THE FEW AREN'T ALWAYS RICHER

The Philippines has a population density of 290 inhabitants per

square km., a GDP per capita (PPP) of $3,400. Urbanization has
concentrated the bulk of this population in the cities, suggesting
maldistribution rather than overpopulation. Manila alone has a population
density of 66,428 inhabitants for every one of its 25 square kms., as against
the sparsely populated provinces all over the country. Foreign migration has
also taken some 12 million Filipinos out of the country, with a million more
leaving every year for foreign jobs, before the onset of the global financial
crisis.

The per capita distribution is, of course, only a mathematical notion,

unrelated to reality. Those listed by Forbes magazine among the world's
dollar billionaires, and those not listed but who are as rich if not richer,
could be earning several million times more than those among the bottom
million, who could each be earning less than $500 a year.

But they are not uniformly poor because of their children. They were
born poor, and have remained poor; their poverty precedes the birth of their
children. The causes of poverty lie elsewhere. There are other explanations.

Mainly because 80% or more of the population shares 20% or less of

the nation's wealth, while 20% or less of the population shares 80% or
more of the nation's wealth, coupled with a humungous foreign and public
debt, unbridled corruption, and low investments in education, health care,
and scientific research, the families are poor, and will remain poor, unless
something bright and beautiful happens to any of their children. This has
been the experience of many of our poor.

Nonetheless, at least 30 other countries with more inhabitants per

square km. than that of the Philippines have a much higher per capita
income.[7] And at least 57 other countries with a lower population density
than that of the Philippines also have a much lower per capita income. One
striking case is Central African Republic with only 6.5 inhabitants per square
km., and a per capita income of $700.[8]

DOMESTIC STATISTICS
Within the Philippines itself, official statistics (as of 2003) show that the
more densely populated regions like Calabarzon and Central Luzon have a
much lower poverty incidence than the less densely populated ones, like the
Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), Caraga, and Bicol. This
does not mean that a region has to have a high population density in order
to have a lower poverty incidence. It simply means that there is no direct
correlation between the size of the population and poverty incidence. What
seems to have direct correlation is the educational qualification of the head
of the family and poverty incidence, as shown by the following table:[9]

2003 Poverty incidence (income below P11,605/a)

Household population density

(h/sq m)

Share of labor force with no HS diploma

NCR

4.8%

3,632

23.7%

CAR

25.8%

15
46.3%

I- Ilocos

24.4%

68

36.5%

II- Cagayan Valley

19.3%

22

51.1%

III- Central Luzon

13.5%

84

41.2%

IV- Calabarzon

14.5%

135

39.8%

IVB- Minatropa

39.9%

18

59.9%

V- Bicol

40.6%

54

56.8%
 VI- Western Visayas

31.4%

62

48.6%

VII- Central Visayas

23.6%

82

52.9%

VIII- Eastern Visayas

35.3%

35

59.9%

IX- Zamboanga Peninsula

44.0%

40

59.0%

X- Northern Mindanao

37.7%

44

53.7%

XI- Davao

28.5%

41

57.3%

XII- Soccsksargen
 32.1%

37

53.7%

XIII- Caraga

47.1%

22

54.2%

ARMM

45.4%

40

73.5%

CONVINCING PROOF

There can be no clearer and more convincing proof against the claim
that poverty in the Philippines is the inescapable and direct result of having
more people than some eugenicists and neo-Malthusians would care to see
around. No rich couple has suddenly become poor just because they chose
to have children. On the contrary, so many poor families lifted themselves
from poverty because of their children.

It is so much easier to show that we are many because we are poor

than that we are poor because we are too many. Poor and unemployed
couples tend to have more time to spend together and procreate, while
working couples tend to be busier and endure more work-related stress.
Thus, the poor tend to have larger families, on the average. Clearly poverty
is more a cause than a consequence of faster population growth.

WHAT IF THE BIRTH RATE DROPS?

Were the birth rate to drop to zero, and half or more than half of the
country's population to evaporate into the ether, would it alter the ratio of
80% or more of the people sharing 20% or less of the nation's wealth while
20% or less of the people share 80% or more of it?

Would it automatically eliminate the notoriously bad governance, the

unbridled official corruption, the humungous and ever ballooning foreign
and public debt, the unmitigated conspicuous consumption and rampant
smuggling and cheating on taxes among the predatory elite?

Would it allocate more resources to quality education, reputable

health care, environmental protection, socialized housing, basic public
infrastructure for transport, communication, energy, and food production?

Would it provide greater public access to technology, and greater

attention to scientific research and development?

Would it transform the Philippines into a welfare state? Would it

make people more morally upright, less pleasure-seeking, self-indulgent
and selfish?

Not likely.

POPULATION CONTROL: A DISEASE

The problem of extreme poverty is real. But population control is not

the solution, or even one of the solutions to it. The solution lies in the
effective mobilization of human and material resources, and the just sharing
of the burdens and benefits of development.

This implies a social order that recognizes man as its first and
ultimate resource; that allocates quality investment in the optimum
development of that resource; that measures progress not simply in terms
of material wealth but rather according to its moral, cultural and spiritual
development and its common conception of justice.

This will be achieved by transforming our dynamic population growth

into the nation's primary asset, instead of making it the perpetual scapegoat
for all our ills.

THE REAL RESOURCE

The age structure of our population reveals our real strength. Its
median age is 23 years, younger than that of 139 other countries,[10] and
older than that of 73 others.[11] This means that while those older ones
are phasing out of the workforce, and those younger ones are not yet ready
to join it, our workers are already at their most productive. Assuming the
average worker is retired at 65, this means the average Filipino worker has
42 productive years more to go as against the Chinese worker's 31.4 years,
the American's 28.3 years, the Singaporean's 26.6 years, the Canadian's
24.9 years, and the Japanese's 21.2 years.

HUMAN CAPITAL

If Pope John Paul II is correct when he says in Laborem Exercens

that human labor is what creates capital[12]; if Gary Becker, the 1992
Nobel Prize economics laureate, is right when he speaks of the value of
human capital, and the role the family and education play in developing that
capital[13]; if Julian Simon is right when he asserts that the human being's
capacity to invent and adapt is the planet's "ultimate resource,"[14] then
we are sitting on top of a priceless resource that may not have been given
to everybody else.

All we need to do is to invest properly in its development. But our RH

politicians would rather destroy it at its root. It is a recipe for suicide, and
must be avoided at all cost.

POPULATION FOLLIES EXPOSED

The present collapse of the global financial-monetary system has

exposed, among other things, the folly of population control. Demographic
and economic power has begun to shift from West to East, and with it,
economic and social power. We can benefit from it. But we need to stay
awake.

In one Senate committee hearing, one Senator suggested that we

avoid using the term "population control" and use "population
management" instead. It was an attempt to defend an ideology that has
failed, but which many still continue to defend.

They believe the most horrid things about population control could
still be hidden under deceitfully enticing language. It is the dark side of
Wittgenstein's "meaning is use," of Heidegger's "language is the house of
Being." It is "verbal engineering" in pursuit of an ideological agenda, the
result of which is what some people call "U.N.-speak", the U.N. version of
George Orwell's "Newspeak" (in the novel Nineteen Eighty Four) in which
the Ministry of War is called the "Ministry of Peace."

Outside of Orwell's novel, readers of children's literature encounter

the same thing in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice
Found There, where Humpty Dumpty tells Alice: "When I use a word, it
means just what I choose it to mean---neither more nor less." [15]. This
explains what happened to those innocent women in Beijing bursting with
so much joy the first time they heard of "reproductive rights."

BRIEF HISTORY OF POPULATION CONTROL

Population control is a racist and eugenicist idea whose real objective

is to eliminate the poor and others who are deemed "socially unfit," while
purportedly trying to help them. To be fair, it did not begin with the
proponents of the present bills.

They may not even be fully aware of the real inspiration behind their
proposals, which appear to have been drafted not by them or their staff, but
by the technical staff of the "Philippine Legislators' Committee on
Population and Development" (PLCPD), a foreign-funded pressure group.

Nevertheless they have a duty to know it before they start talking

about it on the floor of Congress or on public television.

EARLIEST BEGINNINGS

Population control began in antiquity. In ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh

ordered every newborn male to be thrown into the Nile to prevent the fast-
growing Israelites from outnumbering the Egyptians and taking over the
kingdom (Ex 1:15). In Judea, King Herod ordered the slaughter of the
innocents in order to get rid of the child who had been prophesied to deliver
his people from bondage (Mt 2:16). In both cases, the reason had nothing
to do with looking after women's health or easing the burden of the poor; it
was pure and simple politics.

MALTHUS

In 1798, the Anglican clergyman, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-

1834), in his "Essay on Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of
Society" theorized that population would grow geometrically while food
supply would increase only arithmetically, thus creating unavoidable food
shortages. Malthus favored exposing the poor to famine and disease to
reduce their numbers, but he did not advocate any State action against
population growth. "Leave every man to his own free choice and responsible
only to God for the evil which he does in either way; this is all I contend for;
I would on no account do more…" [16] Before he died, Malthus modified his
views, but his fear of excessive population growth was what endured in the
minds of his disciples. It set in motion the early engines of population
control.

GALTON

Malthus's ideas eventually converged with eugenics, the pseudo

science of "good birth", developed by the statistician Sir Francis Galton
(1822-1911), a cousin of Charles Darwin, the English naturalist who
developed the theory of evolution and proposed the principle of natural
selection in his book, On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural
Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
(1859). To Darwin is often attributed authorship of the phrase "survival of
the fittest", which was in fact coined by Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), a
Social Darwinist whose work Social Statics held that competition is good
because it eliminates the unfit. Galton believed "blacks were genetically
inferior, that Jews were parasitical, and that poverty was transmitted in the
genes."[17] He believed in controlled breeding to ensure the propagation
of good genes and check the transmission of bad ones.
 The most rabid of Galton's disciples advocated the physical
segregation of the "unfit" from the rest of the population. This meant the
poor, the handicapped, the mentally retarded, the ugly, the ignorant, etc.
One such disciple, Karl Pearson (1857-1936), favored "the sterilization of
those sections of the community of small civic worth."[18]

COMPULSORY STERILIZATION

Such was the influence of eugenics that in 1907 the state of Indiana
passed the world's first compulsory sterilization law, aimed at "confirmed
criminals, idiots, rapists, and imbeciles." Thirty states and Puerto Rico soon
followed, using a model law that would eventually influence the Nazi
compulsory sterilization laws.[19]

In 1912, the First International Congress of Eugenics was held in

London, attended by such notables as Winston Churchill, Charles Eliot
(president emeritus of Harvard) and David Starr Jordan (president of
Stanford University), and with the theme: "prevention of the propagation of
the unfit." In 1932, three congresses later, the eugenics congress included a
call for the sterilization of 14 million Americans with low intelligence-test
scores.[20]

SANGER

One of the most highly driven eugenicists at this time was Margaret
Sanger (1883-1966), owner of the magazine Birth Control Review and
founder of the American Birth Control League, which later became Planned
Parenthood, from which in turn sprung International Planned Parenthood
Federation (IPPF), the world's biggest supplier of abortion. Her project was
to create "a race of thoroughbreds" and attracted the support of names of
great wealth like Rockefeller, Duke, Scaife, Lasker, Sulzberger and
Dupont.[21] In 1932, through her magazine, Sanger called for "a stern and
rigid policy of sterilization and segregation of those persons already tainted
by their heredity." She proposed that those individuals be paid to get
sterilized, but those who refused should be sent to farmlands and
homesteads and taught how to work by competent instructors. An
estimated fifteen to twenty million Americans suffered from this.[22]

HITLER

During World War II, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) took eugenics to a

new level altogether. In his bid to create lebensraum (living space) for
Germany and a superior Aryan race to propagate Nazism, he had six million
Jews executed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka,
Sobitor, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Dachau and so many others. Hitler's
defeat in war, which reduced the Third Reich into ashes, somehow tempered
the headlong march of eugenicist ideas. But it did not go into eclipse.

STERILIZATION FOR THE VANQUISHED

 In 1945, the book Population Roads to Peace or War by the eugenicist
Guy Irving Burch, founder of the Population Reference Bureau, called on the
peace negotiators to impose compulsory sterilization on all biologically or
socially inadequate persons in the conquered countries.[23] In Japan,
General Douglas MacArthur had no problem persuading the prostrated
enemy to legalize abortion, not because Japan's devastated enemy could
not support the birth of more children but more likely because the U.S. was
determined to win the next war "in utero, as it were."[24] This was
America's first successful population control program, employing abortion.

In 1946, Sir Julian Huxley, the English biologist whose father Thomas
Huxley, also a biologist, had coined the word "agnostic," was made head of
UNESCO. He who was known to favor the sterilization of the mentally
handicapped and "those society doesn't know what to do with."[25]

THE POPULATION BOMB

In the early 1960s Burch and his friends launched the "Campaign To
Check The Population Explosion, " based on the theory of a "population
bomb." In 1954, "The Population Bomb" appeared as a pamphlet written by
Hugh Moore of the Dixie Cup fortune, and circulated first among one
thousand leaders in business and the professions and subsequently to a
million and a half others. Moore also gave the young entomologist from
Philadelphia, Paul Ralph Erlich, permission to use The Population Bomb for
the title of his book, which would appear in 1968. This book introduced its
doomsday scare with the opening lines: "The battle to feed humanity is
over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines---hundreds of millions of
people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs
embarked upon now."

HUMANAE VITAE

That same year Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae, his encyclical on
the regulation of birth. It declared that:

•The direct interruption of the generative process already begun

must be totally rejected as a legitimate means of regulating the
number of children. Especially to be rejected is direct abortion---
even if done for reasons of health…

•"Direct sterilization of the male or female, whether permanent or

temporary, is equally to be condemned;

•Similarly, there must be a rejection of all acts that attempt to

impede procreation, both those chosen as means to an end and those
chosen as ends. These include acts that precede intercourse, acts
that accompany intercourse, and acts that are directed to the natural
consequences of intercourse.
 While The Population Bomb predicted famines and deaths from
overpopulation and food shortages, Humanae Vitae predicted that:

•the widespread use of contraception would "lead to conjugal

infidelity and the general lowering of morality";

•"the man" will lose respect for "the woman" and "no longer care for
her physical and psychological equilibrium" and will come to "the
point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment,
and no longer as his respected and beloved companion;

•the widespread acceptance of contraception would place "a

dangerous weapon in the hands of those public authorities who take
no heed of moral exigencies"; and

•lead man to think that he had limitless dominion over his own body.

None of Erlich's predictions ever materialized. In 1970, the Nobel

Prize Committee awarded the Peace Prize to the American microbiologist
and agronomist Norman Ernest Borlaug for developing high-yielding
varieties of wheat and other grain crops to launch the "Green Revolution"
around the world. In 1980, Julian Simon won a bet against Erlich who had
predicted that the prices of a certain group of metal would go up over a
certain period of time because of scarcity driven by population growth. In
1992, the Nobel Peace Prize for Economics went to Gary Becker for his work
on the economics of human capital. But each one of Paul VI's prophecies
unhappily came to pass.

ENLISTING THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

Hugh Moore and his group got the wealthiest patrons to support their
anti-natalist campaign. They blamed population growth for the degradation
of the environment; and for Earth Day in 1970, they launched a slogan
contest among students on over 200 campuses where the winner was,
"People Pollute."[26] It sounded like a quote from the founder of Earth
First! Dave Foreman himself who said, "We humans have become a disease,
the Humanpox."

But the most important part of the work of Moore's group was to get
the United States government actively involved in population control. And
succeed they did.

In 1961, U.S. Foreign Assistance Act took up population control as

one of the activities U.S. development assistance would support in recipient
countries.

POPULATION CZAR

In 1966, the Office of Population was created within the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID) and a doctor named Reimert
Thorolf Ravenholt became its first director. He became the "Population
Czar."

Ravenholt was an epidemologist who looked upon pregnancy as a

disease to be eliminated like smallpox or yellow fever; and he once told the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch that one-fourth of all the fertile women in the world
should be sterilized to maintain "the normal operation of U.S. commercial
interests around the world." [27]

He handed out business cards printed on condoms, and for the U.S.
bicentennial celebration in 1976 he thought of producing stars and stripes
condoms in red, white and blue colors, for worldwide distribution.
Ravenholt flooded the developing world with condoms, birth control pills,
and other contraceptives through a network that linked his office with IPPF,
the Population Council, and the Association for Voluntary Sterilization
(AVS), now known as Engender Health. [28]

Ravenholt stayed in office until 1979. During his watch, he shipped

out tons and tons of the cheapest contraceptives to the developing
countries, without regard to their side effects. These included a high-
estrogen pill bought from the pharmaceutical firm Syntex after it had been
declared unsafe by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and container
loads of Depo-Provera (a hormonal contraceptive) which he distributed to
developing countries a decade before FDA approved its use in the US.[29]

In 1967, the U.S. Congress amended the Foreign Assistance Act to

finance family planning and population programs in countries receiving U.S.
foreign aid.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson appointed a Commission on

Population and Family Planning, and allocated more funds for birth control.
At the same time, Robert McNamara became president of the World Bank,
and decided to impose anti-population policies on countries getting loans
from the bank.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon constituted the Commission on

Population Growth and the American Future and named as its chairman,
John D. Rockefeller III, grandson of the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller Sr
and one of the wealthiest men in the world. John III was known to be a
dilettante who never had a steady job, but his travels to Asia and Africa
after the war had convinced him he had a mission to check the runaway
population of the poor continents of the world. He funded a global network
of population experts and funded research to find easier, more reliable and
more permanent ways of contracepting and sterilizing the poor. He set up
national family planning programs in South Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong and
Sri Lanka, and regional centers for demographic training in Mumbai,
Santiago and Cairo. [30]

ABORTION IS LEGALIZED

In 1973, the United States legalized abortion through the U.S.

Supreme Court ruling in Roe vs. Wade.
13 MOST POPULOUS LDCs

In 1974, Dr. Henry Kissinger as National Security Adviser to the US

President authored a crucial study entitled, "Implications of Worldwide
Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests." Kissinger's
group studied 13 less developed countries (LDCs)---the Philippines, India,
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Thailand, Egypt,
Turkey, Ethiopia and Columbia --- which were said to provide 47% of the
increase in the world's population growth.

NSSM 200

This study, known as U.S. National Security Study Memorandum

(NSSM) 200, or The Kissinger Report, was kept as a top secret U.S
document from 1974 until 1989, when it was officially declassified by the
White House.[31] It created the template for the global population action
plan, which none of three previous international conferences on
population---the World Population Conference in Rome in 1954, the Second
World Population Conference in Belgrade in 1965. and the World Population
Conference in Bucharest in August 1974 (four months before NSSM 200)----
had been able to create.

LDCS THREAT

The study saw that if the population of the 13 and other LDCs
continued to grow, after the population of the United States and the First
World had stabilized, the developing countries would end up using their
own natural resources, to the utter deprivation of the First World. It also
saw that if the developing countries acquired the technology of the First
World, a reversal of roles could follow---today's masters would become
tomorrow's slaves. It also saw that the arrival of every new population
carried in its train potentially destabilizing values.

Therefore, the continued population growth of the LDCs presented a

threat to "U. S. security and overseas interests." It had to be moderated.

TWO-CHILD FAMILY FOR ALL

This prompted the U.S. to launch its World Population Plan of Action
"to achieve (worldwide) a replacement level (a two-child family on the
average) by about the year 2000."

"This will require the present (1974) 2% growth to decline to 1.7%

within a decade and to 1.1% by 2000, compared to the U.N. medium
projection; this goal would result in 500 million fewer people in 2000 and
about 3 billion fewer in 2050. Attainment of this goal will require greatly
intensified population programs," the Kissinger Report said.
 Since the Action Plan was not self-enforcing, it required vigorous
efforts on the part of the LDCs, the U.N. agencies and other international
bodies to make it effective ---"under U.S. leadership."

FOCUS ON THE LDCS

The Report urged primary focus on the 13 LDCs. Population programs

had to be integrated into their development planning; conditions created to
bring about fertility decline, including "developing alternatives to children
as a source of old age security; education of new generations on the
desirability of smaller families."

USING LOCAL LEADERS

The Report urged the U.S. President and the Secretary of State to
"treat the subject of population growth control as a matter of paramount
importance and address it specifically in their regular contacts with leaders
of other governments, particularly LDCs."

The Report urged them to "encourage LDC leaders to take the lead in
advancing family planning and population stabilization both within
multilateral organizations and through bilateral contacts with the LDCs."

However, the Report cautioned the U.S. government "not to give the
appearance to the LDCs of an industrialized country policy directed against
the LDCs…Third World leaders should be in the forefront and obtain the
credit for successful programs," the Report said.

(Egyptian President Anwar Saddat, Indian Prime Minister Indira

Ghandi, and Indonesian President Suharto were among those honored by
the U.N. for their work on population in their respective countries. Sadat
and Ghandi were both assassinated in office, while Suharto was forced to
resign on charges of corruption, and other reasons. In the Philippines, the
U.N. awarded Senator Leticia Ramos Shahani a plaque for her advocacy of
population control before and after the Cairo conference where she was a
delegate.)

THE MASS MEDIA

The Report assigned a special role to the mass media and satellite
communications technology, particularly in dealing with "large and illiterate
rural communities." This is reflected in the disproportionate time and space
devoted by media to population control, using individuals who may not
always understand what they are talking about.

MASSIVE FUNDS

From 1965 to 1974, according to the Report, USAID obligated $625

million for population activities. From 1968 to 1995, the Office of Population
alone spent more than $1.5 billion to buy, test, store, ship and deliver
contraceptive and abortifacient devices. These included 10.5 billion
condoms, over 2 billion cycles of abortifacient birth control pills, more than
73 million IUDs, and over 116 million vaginal foaming tablets to the
LDCs.[32]

USAID supported population control programs in 70 LDCs, and quickly

became the biggest contributor to the UNFPA. WHO, UNICEF, ILO, UNESCO,
World Bank, Asian Development Bank quickly signed up.

Among the private donors, the Report identified Pathfinder Fund,

International Planned Parenthood Federation, and Population Council. David
and Lucile Packard Foundation and many others have since been added to
the list; so have some of the world's richest individuals---Bill Gates, Warren
Buffet, Ted Turner, George Soros, etc.

In Cairo, it was agreed (although the agreement was to be "non-

binding") that the LDCs and economies in transition would appropriate $17
billion in 2000, $18.5 billion in 2005, $20.5 billion in 2010, and $21.7 billion
in 2015--- for reproductive health.

ABORTION NECESSARY?

While NSSM 200 does not specify abortion as a preferred family

planning method, reduction of the population growth remains the objective.
The Report maintains that "no country has reduced its population growth
without resorting to abortion."

Thus, from the August 1984 international population conference in

Mexico through the June 1992 UN Conference on Environment and
Development in Rio de Janeiro, the September 1994 ICPD in Cairo, the
March 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, the
September 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, the June 1996 U.
N. Habitat conference in Istanbul, the November 1996 World Food Summit
in Rome, the 2002 U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg, etc. there has been a sustained effort to push abortion as the
one, true solution to the "population growth" and other related "problems."

BARRIER TO UNIVERSAL ABORTION

The proposal to make abortion a universal family planning method

has not prospered, thanks to the sustained vigilance of the Holy See, the
Islamic and some Latin American countries. For its part, the Philippine
government tends to follow the position of JUSCANZ (Japan, U.S. Canada,
Australia, New Zealand) and the Europeans on this issue, rather than that of
its own predominantly Catholic population.

Still, the number of countries legalizing abortion has grown. So has

the number of abortions. In 1974, NSSM 200 estimated the annual
abortions worldwide at 30 million. That figure has apparently doubled since
– nearly equal to the entire population of Britain.
 In the Philippines, reproductive health advocates tend to inflate the
number of criminally induced abortion in order to provide the pro-abortion
lobby a twisted argument for perversely advocating the legalization of
abortion. Despite the fact that no one appears to have been prosecuted for
abortion, certain groups are able to offer an exact count of the abortions
that are supposed to have taken place. On the basis of their own data, pro-
abotion advocates first try to show that the incidence of the crime has risen
and continues to rise; that it can no longer be stopped; and that the only
solution is to decriminalize or completely legalize it.

Many countries have followed this egregious and morally ruinous

path.

PRESSURE FROM THE U.N.

In the United Nations, the CEDAW[33] Committee has been trying to

pressure party nations to legalize abortion or to increase access to abortion
if they had already legalized it. Between 1995 and 2008, sixty-five
countries were subjected to such pressure, including the Philippines.[34]

To the credit, of the Philippine delegate (Health Undersecretary

Nieto), she resisted the pressure, pointing out that the Philippine
Constitution bans abortion and that a specific statute criminalizes it. To
which the CEDAW members from Croatia, China and Ghana said that since
no one was being prosecuted for abortion, the government should now
legalize it.

However, the pressure continues, through various channels, and in

various forms.

A PERSONAL NARRATIVE

Let me contribute a personal testimony.

In 1992, I sat in a workshop for newly elected senators in Tagaytay

prior to the opening of Congress. Out of the blue appeared Mahar Mangahas
of Social Weather Station, with the alleged results of an alleged survey
claiming that if a senator did not support the government's family planning
program, he would never get reelected. He was that subtle.

Then he said, ""You see, Senator Tatad, there is no such thing as a

Catholic vote."

To which I replied, "In a Catholic country where most candidates are

Catholic, there is no such thing as a Catholic vote. But try running a
candidate whose program is to destroy the Catholic faith, and you'll have a
Catholic vote against that candidate."

That was the first time I saw the menacing presence of the
population control lobby.

DIPLOMATIC PRESSURE

Not long thereafter, I got invited to lunch with a European

ambassador. The invitation did not say why or how many others would be
there. But as soon as I arrived I realized I was the only guest. A great
honor, but why?

We dined on English beef, national politics and world affairs. Finally,

he dropped his tiny bomb: "Why can't you ever support family planning?" It
was then I saw the reason for the lunch.

"I'd like us to learn from Europe, Excellency. What's happening there

today could happen to us here tomorrow," I said.

My host looked at me long and hard without a word. I thanked him

for lunch and left. It was the last time I ever got a social invitation from
that diplomat.

PRESSURE ON THE SENATE

In the runup to the Cairo conference, I saw the menace again. The
Senate had just been reorganized, but the Committee on Women had been
left headless, None of the three women-senators---Macagapagal Arroyo,
Shahani, Coseteng---had wanted to chair it. Nobody else wanted it. The
Senate President asked me to chair it temporarily so it could at least
operate. I was not interested in the committee, but I could not turn down
the Senate President. As soon as I accepted, demonstrations erupted
outside the Senate, asking me to drop the committee. The gender feminists
feared the job would give me a ticket to Cairo, where I could speak against
the radical feminists' "right to abortion." When I refused to budge, they
unseated the Senate President so that in the ensuing revamp I lost the
committee to Sen. Shahani. Shut out of the official ICPD delegation, I had to
go to Cairo as a guest of the Egyptian Parliament.

PRESSURE IN STRASBOURG

In 1996, I visited the European Parliament in Strasbourg as part of an

ASEAN parliamentary group. On our first day, I sat for lunch with a Member
of the European Parliament who was the son of a former president of
France.

As soon as we were introduced, he said: ""So you are from the

Philippines, where you have 60 million people and still have large families."

"I'm sorry," I said, "we are more than 70 million now, but not
everyone has a large family like me. I'm one of the few who have seven
children."

"That's alright," the MP said, obviously sensing a counter-attack. "I

also have five children."

Then I continued. "You know, before I left for France, I thought of

refreshing my limited French, so I could at least order my café au lait in
French. But then I heard that in France today, you may not be able to get a
good cup of coffee unless you spoke Arabic."

His expression changed abruptly, as though he was actually glad to

have found his match.

"C'est vrai, c'est vrai," he said, "in many parts of Paris today, you find
so many Arabs who refuse to speak French."

"Well, I think it simply shows the problem is yours rather than mine,"
I said. "In my country, we still produce Filipinos, not migrants."

He suddenly became the soul of friendliness, offered to book me in

the best hotel next to his aparment next time I came to Paris.

PRESSURE IN BONN

In Bonn, a group of German parliamentarians lectured us on human

rights and the environment. They accused Asians of having double
standards on human rights, and of not doing enough for the environment.
Our group leader did not speak a word of German or English, and did not
want to respond. Neither did anyone else. I asked to speak for the group,
and they agreed.

I began by thanking our hosts for their hospitality, and expressed

our admiration for what they had done to the ecology. I spoke of how they
had cleaned up their rivers---the Thames in London, the Seine in Paris, the
Rhine in Germany, and how they had kept their forests, their hunting
lodges, and their wild game. I said this was something we in Asia would
like to imitate, as soon as we had the means to do so. I reminded them that
our forests had been denuded by others who had preserved their own.
Perhaps there should be a system of indemnification,

As for human rights, I told them Asians thought it's the Europeans
and Americans who were practicing double standards. How, for instance,
could they readily denounce "genital mutilation" in Africa while proclaiming
fetal mutilation as a woman's right in Europe and America?

Suddenly the conversation became more personal and relaxed, and

they tried to smother us with offers of personal amenities.

PRESSURE FROM FOREIGN-FUNDED NGOs

Recently, the pressure appears to have become more

institutionalized, through the foreign-funded NGOs. They are in the
forefront of the RH campaign.

In Congress, there is open and casual talk that the anti-reproduction

bills had been drafted by the PLCPD staff, rather than by the authors
themselves or their respective staffs. Even HB 5043, which consolidates
four component bills into one after only one public hearing, is unofficially
attributed to this group, instead of having been put together by the Joint
Committees on Health and on Population and Family Relations, to which the
original bills had been referred, or by a Technical Working Group appointed
by the same committees, as is the usual practice.

ILLEGAL PRESENCE?

The PLCPD declares on its website (http//:plcpd.org.ph) that it was

established in December 1989 as "a non-stock, non-profit foundation
dedicated to the formulation of viable public policies requiring legislation on
population and management and socio-economic development." It lists
several senators and congressmen as members. Its donor agencies include
UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. All
these donors are actively engaged in promoting population control. PLCPD's
executive officer is a scholar-grantee of Packard Foundation.

A press statement appearing in the July 25, 2008 issue of the

Philippine Daily Inquirer quotes the Foundation as complaining that the
Philippine government had not been buying contraceptives for sometime.
To which the principal author of HB 5043, in his capacity then as chairman
of the House appropriations committee, promptly responded by approving a
P3.4 billion funding for RH and family planning. And the DOH announced it
would soon start distributing condoms as a prophylactic against HIV/AIDS
and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs),

Political lobbying requires the PLCPD to register as a "foreign agent"

pursuant to Batas Pambansa 39, otherwise known as the Foreign Agents Act of
1979. This is a law I authored in the interim Batasang Pambansa, together
with then Minister (now Senator) Juan Ponce Enrile.

Why foreign agent? Because foreign agent is "any person who acts or
agrees to act as political consultant, public relations counsel, publicity
agent, information representative, or as agent, servant, representative or
attorney for a foreign principal or any domestic organization subsidized
directly or indirectly in whole or in part by a foreign principal."
 But what PLCPD is doing goes far beyond the legitimate activity
contemplated in BP 39. It constitutes actual interference in legislation,
which should be abjured and penalized by Congress.

However, in one forum hosted by the Philippine Bar Association

(PBA), the bill's principal author said PLCPD is an organization of senators
and congressmen sharing a common legislative agenda. This statement is
not supported by the PLCPD website. Indeed, some senators and
congressmen are listed as PLCPD members, but this raises a very serious
question: can legislators legally accept foreign funding to work on bills
openly advocated by foreign funders? Is it not contrary to law, or at least
to the ethical standards of Congress?

LGUS AS CONDUITS

Moving on a parallel track but faster than the bills in Congress are
anti-reproduction ordinances. These are being pushed with exceptional zeal
by the same foreign lobby through the local councils. They are clearly
unconstitutional as HB 5043 is unconstitutional, and additionally because
the ordinance-making power of local councils is limited to local matters
within their respective jurisdictions and competence.

The first council to succumb was that of Olongapo City, which passed
the unconstitutional ordinance without any serious public consultations,
publicity or debate. Many other cities and provincial governments have
since tried to follow suit.[35]

BLINDSIDED NATIONALISTS

In all this, the most aggressive campaigners are brand "nationalists"

who are normally quick to shout "imperialism" and burn a foreign effigy or
flag whenever they suspect any undue alien intervention in the nation's
internal affairs. Apparently blindsided by the high rhetoric about "women's
rights," they have become the most ardent and zealous supporters and
spokesmen of this most vicious intervention in the innermost lives of
Filipino individuals and families. It is imperialism of the worst kind, and the
customary anti-imperialists are the ones openly championing it.

THE CENTRAL ECONOMY PLANNERS

Not far behind are free market economists who ordinarily like to talk
of "liberalization, privatization and deregulation" but who appear ready to
discard their basic philosophical orientation in order to do central economy
planning, the ideological opposite of what they profess, except that the
subject of their central planning is not just the economy, but rather the
private lives of the Filipino poor.

Instead of trying to see how our limited resources could be used

more equitably and effectively to benefit the poorest sectors of the society,
these economists seem determined to see how the poor could be allocated
according to the meager resources available. It is not economics, but
population engineering. Many of the economists have subsisting ties with
some of the international agencies involved in population control.

SOME CATHOLIC "PROFESSORS"

The latest entrants are a group of 14 "individual faculty" of the

Ateneo de Manila University, a Catholic university, who argue that HB 5043
"adheres to Catholic social teaching" and that Catholics "can support it in
good conscience." While disclaiming any attempt to bind Ateneo or the
Society of Jesus to their most surprising reading of Church teaching, they
did not seem to mind cashing in on Ateneo's Catholic reputation. And
Ateneo itself has not found it necessary or prudent to make a pointed stand
on the issue, just to assure the public, especially parents and grandparents
of young Ateneans, where the Catholic university stands on matters of
Catholic doctrine, or even simply of the Constitution.

BUCKING CATHOLIC TAXPAYERS

Members of the vast Catholic majority have argued ---not unfairly, in

our view----that the State cannot and should not impose upon them a
program that assaults their moral values and religious beliefs. In the same
manner the State cannot, and most likely will not, enact a law that will
offend the faith of the Muslims, who constitute 5% of the population, the
Evangelicals, who constitute 2.28%, the Iglesia ni Cristo, who constitute
2.3%, the Aglipayans, who constitute 2%, or the other Christian
denominations, who constitute at least 4.5% of the population.

The 14 "professors" appear to have found a way of dealing with this

objection on behalf of the RH proponents, simply by saying: It is all right for
Catholics to believe the opposite of what their Church teaches, so the State
could impose upon Catholics the burden of funding a program that assaults
the moral teaching of their Church. It is pure tosh.

A LESSON MISSED

Reading the texts of the 14 "professors" makes one wish they had
been listening when Pope Benedict XVI met with Catholic educators at the
Catholic University of America on April 17, 2008. There he said, among
other things, the following:

"The dynamic between personal encounter, knowledge and Christian

witness is integral to the diakonia of truth which the Church exercises in the
midst of humanity. God's revelation offers every generation the opportunity
to discover the ultimate truth about its own life and the goal of history. This
task is never easy; it involves the entire Christian community and motivates
each generation of Christian educators to ensure that the power of God's
truth permeates every dimension of the institutions they serve. In this way,
Christ's Good News is set to work, guiding both teacher and student
towards the objective truth which, in transcending the particular and the
subjective, points to the universal and absolute that enables us to proclaim
with confidence the hope which does not disappoint (cf. Rom 5:5). Set
against personal struggles, moral confusion and fragmentation of
knowledge, the noble goals of scholarship and education, founded on the
unity of truth and in service of the person and the community, become an
especially powerful instrument of hope…

"The same dynamic of communal identity---to whom do I belong?---

vivifies the ethos of our Catholic institutions. A university or school's
Catholic identity is not simply a question of the number of Catholic students.
It is a question of conviction---do we really believe that only in the mystery
of the Word made flesh does the mystery of man truly become clear (cf.
Gaudium et Spes, 22)? Are we ready to commit our entire self --- intellect
and will, mind and heart --- to God? Do we accept the truth Christ reveals?
Is the faith tangible in our universities and schools? Is it given fervent
expression liturgically, sacramentally, through prayer, acts of charity,
concerns for justice, and respect for God's creation? Only in this way do we
really bear witness to the meaning of who we are and what we uphold.

"From this perspective, one can recognize that the contemporary

'crisis of truth' is rooted in a 'crisis of faith.' Only through faith can we
freely give our assent to God's testimony and acknowledge him as the
transcendent guarantor of the truth he reveals."

RIGGING THE SURVEYS

Propaganda for HB 5043 is unequivocally backed by opinion surveys

claiming popular support for the bill on the basis of patently deceitful
questions which the entrepreneurial pollsters have not been embarrassed to
publish on their website. It is an obvious ploy calculated to give the
impression that a standing-room majority supports the bill, no matter how
morally and execrable it is; an undisguised effort to indulge the theory that
whatever the lynch mob shouts the loudest should prevail.

The proponents appear to have forgotten that, as Rawls says, truth is

the first virtue of systems of thought and justice that of social
institutions.[36] In any political system a law carries authority and is
binding upon conscience not because it is enacted by a majority but because
it is based on truth and justice. No landslide majority can ever dispense with
this indispensable requirement; "a just law binds as much in a democracy
as in a totalitarian state, an unjust law binds in neither."[37]

The wonder of it all is that, given the way they have "fixed" the
questions, the pollsters have failed to report a 100-% endorsement of the
highly unconstitutional bill.

Repeatedly quoted by RH propagandists is

an alleged survey, so far unpublished, which
repeats the same hokum the SWS chief pollster
had tried to use on me in 1992----that
politicians who oppose the RH bill would lose in
the next election. This is completely belied by
the fact that the biggest vote-getter among the
party-list parties in the 2007 election was
Buhay (Life) whose pro-life, pro-family
program won for it three seats in the House.
THE SPECTER OF CORRUPTION

There are ominous signs, however, that certain parties, not

necessarily domestic, are determined to exploit the built-in weaknesses of
the most vulnerable members of Congress, for their own ends. Their interest
is not in the passage of a just law which the population would welcome as a
boon, but any law at all that would affirm their ideological position on
population control. This challenges the opponents of HB 5043 to expose the
alien interests driving the RH bill and to make sure any attempt to corrupt
even the corruptible fail.

Part II-

HB 5043 MUST BE DECLARED VOID

The proposed law is based on a preponderance of egregious errors.

 Based on an ideological misreading of demographic data, the
proposed law is neither a health measure nor an anti-poverty one. It is
neither pro-women nor pro-poor. It has nothing to do with the objective
common good. It is a naked attempt to foist a hedonistic sex-oriented
lifestyle upon individuals and families -- one in which marriage is reduced
into a State-mediated partnership between two individuals whose primary
purpose is to engage in a mechanical State-supervised exchange of carnal
sensations while doing everything to avoid its most natural consequence,
the possible conception of a child. It is the opposite of what its proponents
say it is. Amid a collapsing global order that has exposed the folly of putting
material progress on top of the moral dignity of man it seeks to pursue the
very same principles that have failed. It is a criminal attempt to give
arsenic to a victim the proponents purportedly want to save.

The bill must be rejected for the following specific reasons:

1. It does not have sufficient moral basis;

2. It is contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution;

3. It is unnecessary;

4. It is technically defective.

NO MORAL BASIS

Every just law has a moral basis. For that reason, we cannot discuss
the validity of HB 5043 without first taking into account the moral principles
concerning marriage and the marital act, upon which the bill impinge.

Marriage is the permanent and exclusive union of one man and one
woman for the procreation and rearing of children. The marital act
completes and perfects that union. The conjugal act is physical, but it is a
love experience rather than a mere physical one. Although invested with so
much pleasure, it is not a mere exchange of sensation or pleasure, but the
deepest 'knowing' of one's self by the other, of one's union with the other.
The spouses do not merely bind themselves; rather they give themselves---
their seed --- to each other; they thereby share with each other the highest
power within their nature, to become the means of transmitting new life
from the Creator. The conjugal act itself is short and transient, but its
significance is lasting. Through this gift of self to each other, husband and
wife attain the fulness of their sexuality and are raised from mere subjects
of the Divine Maker to working partners in the noblest enterprise of giving
life to a new human being. The decision to make the conjugal union fruitful
belongs solely to the Creator, but this fruit will not come about without the
couple's cooperation. The separation of the procreative aspect of the sexual
act from its unitive aspect, through contraception or sterilization, destroys
any opportunity for the union to be fruitful. It destroys fertility, and this
reduces the marital union into a mere exchange of physical sensations. The
act of procreation becomes mere recreation; the love duet is reduced into
something lower than a pantomime. [38]
 For this reason, it is not licit for the spouses to deprive the marital act
of its procreative aspect. Since it is the Creator who decides whether a
conjugal act will bear fruit, the creature's duty is to submit. There is no
justification whatsoever for the creature usurping the Creator's authority
and power.

This does not mean that married couples have a duty to breed like
rabbits, or even to have sexual intercourse at all times, whatever their
physical condition or the possible consequences. Precisely man is gifted
with intellect and will so he can control his appetites and concupiscence;
and woman has only a week-long period of fertility every month for
childbearing. This allows couples to reserve marital intercourse during the
wife's infertile period, without having to reinvent the morality of the sexual
act.

This matter is strictly within the domain of moral law, and completely
outside the scope of State legislation. Why? Because this involves rights
and duties that precede the existence of the State and transcend the rights
and duties of citizenship. The State has the right to define the duties of the
citizen and the duty to recognize his rights. It may tax him to its heart's
content, expropriate his most valued piece of land for public use, and send
him to war in defense of the flag. But it may not tell him how to live the
truth of his personhood or how to manage his personal relationship with
God.

In the same manner that the State may not tell a citizen how to
think, how to feel, how to worship, how to hope, how to believe, it may not
tell him how to love, and be loved, how to embrace his wife, or father her
child. The State may neither promote nor prohibit the private use of
contraceptives, without violating the absolute privacy of the most intimate
aspect of a couple's family life. This is the clearest reason why the State
cannot be a party to a program of contraception and sterilization.

But while contraception and sterilization are habitually mentioned

together as though they were of the same class, contraception is usually
temporary while sterilization is permanent. Sterilization also entails some
bodily mutilation, and is one of the atrocities associated with the worst
forms of despotism in the dark and bloody pages of human history. HB
5043 now proposes to deliver it as a "service." There is no moral basis for it.

PATENTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

The Constitution is the basic law of the land. Congress cannot pass
any law that is in conflict with the Constitution. HB 5043 is totally in
conflict with the Constitution.

The bill is titled, "An Act Providing For A National Policy on

Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood, and Population Development
and For Other Purposes."

Article II of the Constitution, "Declaration of Principles and State

Policies," already provides such a policy. Article XV, "The Family", further
strengthens it. Congress can no longer propose a new policy. It can only
implement the constitutional policy, except that almost everything in HB
5043 contradicts the constitutional policy.

1. Section 1 of Article II provides: "The Philippines is a democratic

and republican State. Sovereignty resides in the people and all
government authority emanates from them."

In such a state, the government does not plan the citizens' private
lives. No organ of the State enters the bedroom to tell married couples
how to make love.

2. Sec. 9 provides: "The State shall promote a just and dynamic

social order that will ensure the prosperity and independence of the
nation and free the people from poverty through policies that
provide adequate social services, promote full employment, a rising
standard of living, and an improved quality of life for all."

Is that not a clear constitutional policy on population development?

3. Sec. 10. "The State shall promote social justice in all phases of
national development."

Does this not strengthen the constitutional policy on population

development?

4. Sec. 11: "The State values the dignity of every human person
and guarantees full respect for human rights."

Is this not a clear constitutional policy on reproductive health and a

further restatement of the policy on population development?

5. Sec. 12: "The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and
shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous and
social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and
the life of the unborn from conception. The natural and primary
right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic
efficiency and the development of moral character shall receive the
support of the Government."

Can there be a clearer statement of policy on reproductive health,

responsible parenthood, and population development?

6. Sec. 13: "The State recognizes the vital role of the youth in
nation-building and shall promote and protect their physical, moral,
spiritual, intellectual, and social wellbeing. It shall inculcate in the
youth patriotism and nationalism, and encourage their involvement
in public and civic affairs.
 Is this not yet another restatement of the policy on reproductive
health and population development?

7. Sec. 14: "The State shall recognize the role of women in nation-
building, and shall ensure the fundamental equality before the law
of women and men."

Does this not proclaim the policy on the empowerment of women,

which includes reproductive health, responsible motherhood, and
population development?

8. Sec. 15. "The State shall protect and promote the right to health
of the people and instill health consciousness among them."

What else is this if not a clear constitutional policy on the total health
of men and women, and population development?

9. Sec. 16. "The State shall protect and advance the right of the
people to a balanced and healthful ecology in accord with the
rhythm and harmony of nature."

Is this not a clear constitutional policy on our people's right to an

ecological approach to reproductive health, in accord with the rhythm and in
harmony with nature?

10. Sec. 17. "The State shall give priority to education,

science and technology, arts, culture and sports to foster patriotism
and nationalism, accelerate social progress, and promote total
human liberation and development."

Is this not a clear constitutional mandate for the total liberation and
development of our people from the insidious dictates of racial imperialist
forces who want to dictate the conduct of our most intimate personal lives
as a people?

Is the Constitution wrong in declaring these as "State policies?"

MORE PRO-FAMILY PROVISIONS

If these are not sufficient, will it help to read the whole of Article XV
entitled The Family? It provides:

Section 1. The State recognizes the Filipino family as the foundation

of the nation. Accordingly, it shall strengthen its solidarity and
actively promote its total development.

Sec. 2. Marriage, as an inviolable social institution, is the foundation

of the family and shall be protected by the State.

Sec. 3. The State shall defend:

 (1) The right of spouses to found a family in accordance
with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible
parenthood;

(2) The right of children to assistance, including proper

care and nutrition, and special protection from all forms of
neglect, abuse, cruelty, exploitation, and other conditions
prejudicial to their development;

(3) The right of the family to a family living wage and

income; and

(4) The right of families or family associations to

participate in the planning and implementation of policies and
programs that affect them.

HB 5043 is a shotgun attack on all the above quoted provisions.

In various forums, the principal author and now sponsor of HB 5043

has proudly claimed that his bill finds support in paragraph 16 of the
Proclamation of Teheran, adopted by the International Conference on
Human Rights at Teheran on May 13, 1968. He never quotes the paragraph,
but it reads as follows:

"16. The protection of the family and of the child remains the concern
of the international community. Parents have a basic human right to
determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their
children."

The paragraph repudiates and rebukes, rather than supports, the

position of HB 5043 on the proposed usurpation by the State of the sacred
and inviolable right of parents to determine the number and spacing of their
children.

POLICE POWER OR POLICE STATE?

The same author and sponsor also proclaims, even in learned

company, that the State has a right to intervene in the most intimate aspect
of the family life of married couples, by virtue of its "police power."

The simplest definition of "police power" by Black's Legal Dictionary

says: "The power of the State to place restraints on the personal freedom
and property rights of persons for the protection of the public safety, health
and morals or the promotion of the public convenience and general
prosperity," or, "the exercise of the sovereign right of a government to
promote order, safety, security, health, morals and the general welfare
within constitutional limits…"

There is nothing in HB 5043 that remotely resembles what is said

here; the power HB 5043 seeks to confer upon the State is quite simply the
power of a police state.
 In the Philippine Bar Association forum, the author tried to point out
that the bill does not violate Sec. 12 of Article II of the Constitution because
under a State program of contraception and sterilization none of the actions
of the State would be directed at any unborn fetus, which it is its duty to
protect. He made it pointedly clear that the precise purpose of the State
program is to prevent conception.

That's all that's needed to seal the coffin and lower HB 5043 to its
grave.

In the most simple, understandable language, this is what the author

of the bill is saying:

He recognizes that the State shall "equally protect the life of the
mother and the life of the unborn from conception." So he is determined
that the State not harm any fetus that has already implanted upon the
mother's womb, for that would be abortion. But the bill is determined that
the State, through contraception and sterilization, prevent any fetus from
reaching implantation stage, which to the author is the beginning of
conception.

THE FERTILIZATION-IMPLANTATION MUDDLE

What we are hearing here is an ideological revision of the medical

consensus on the beginning of life. It begins at conception, says the
Constitution, and medical science has long held this means fertilization.
Fertilization is completed within 24 hours; four days later, the multicellular
human embryo known as blastocyst moves across the uterus for two days
and anchors itself to the surface lining (epithelium) of the endometrium
(the mucous membrane lining the womb which thickens during the
menstrual cycle in preparation for the possible implantation of an embryo.

At least seven medical textbooks agree on this definition.[39]

However, the anti-reproduction lobby says it begins upon implantation. The
obvious intention is to allow the use of abortifacients without being seen to
commit abortion, even after "fertilization" has been completed.

THE PROTECTOR AS DESTROYER

But whether life begins at fertilization or upon implantation is not the

issue here. The only issue here is that the State, whose constitutional duty
it is to equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from
conception, is even more committed to prevent any unborn from being
conceived at all. The author has admitted as much, and with great panache
too, obviously because he does not realize the necessary implication.

QUALIFIED GENOCIDE
 There exists a very real danger that, with sufficient coercion, a State
program of contraception and sterilization could succeed well beyond the
proponents' expectations. That could render the government criminally
liable under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide
of Dec. 9, 1948.

That convention classifies as "genocide" measures intended "to

prevent births" within a certain group of people.

In this case the poor constitute the target group; it is to prevent their
continued reproduction that the proponents have filed their bill. They want
to cure poverty by eliminating the poor.

COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY

According to the proponents, they want the bill passed because they want
women to have free access to all contraceptives and sterilization devices.
This is less than honest.

What they purportedly want to give our women, our women already
have. They have long appropriated it for themselves without having to get
any permission from the Church or the State.

Access to contraceptives and sterilization is free and unrestricted.

Despite the WHO cancer-research finding that oral contraceptives cause
breast, liver and cervical cancer, none of these items are banned or even
restricted by law.

No oral contraceptive is labeled "cancer-causing" or "hazardous to

women's health." Even abortifacients (drugs that induce abortion) are
openly sold as plain contraceptives, without any warning about their
abortive qualities. And no one is barred from getting sterilized, through
tubal ligation or vasectomy, if they want it.

Neither is there need for a government program to be put in place,

assuming there were no insurmountable moral and constitutional objections
to it. The program is already there. It was initiated in the 1970s and has
never been disturbed, despite the promulgation of the pro-life and pro-
family Constitution in 1987, which rendered the official population control
apparatus illegal.

In 1976, while I was in the Cabinet, my wife gave birth to our fourth
child in a well-known hospital. As I prepared to go near my wife, a nurse
presented me with a form to sign. I asked what it was, and she said it was
a consent form for my wife's tubal ligation. I blew my top and spoke to the
hospital chief. There I learned that the DOH was paying nurses for every
tubal ligation.

As a senator on the Congressional Health Commission during the

Ramos presidency, I saw that in many hospitals and clinics they did not
even have the merest alcohol or cotton to dress a wound, but they were up
to their ears in pills and condoms.

At the 1994 ICPD in Cairo, then DOH Secretary Johnny Flavier, as chief
Philippine delegate to the conference, overwhelmed his audience of NGOs
when he told them how he had been able to distribute tons and tons of
condoms and pills throughout the country just by piggy-backing on CARE,
while it was distributing food relief. He became a bigger hero to his
audience when he told them that he had found a very effective way of
dealing with priests and clerics---make them mad by making fun of them.
And the program simply continued from one DOH Secretary to another.

The only thing that has probably changed is the ratio of funds coming
from the foreign population controllers as against those being squeezed out
of the national government. This year's P2 billion for reproductive health
and family planning in the General Appropriations Act (GAA) is quite a hefty
sum; the proposed P3.4 billion for 2009 is even heftier.

No RH law was ever needed to put in these continuing appropriations

for RH and family planning. Clearly, HB 5043 is not necessary for anything,
including those programs which appear to be completely unobjectionable,
like the hiring of more midwives and setting up of basic and emergency
obstetrics care facilities in every barangay, the promotion of breastfeeding
and better nutrition for infants and nursing mothers, which need no
legislation at all.

HB 5043 is one outstanding example of a proposed legislation that is

completely suspect, simply because its apparent purpose is to legalize an
illegal operation that has been going on for years.

In place of this bill, what is needed is an enabling law that will

implement the constitutional policy discussed earlier, abolish the population
control apparatus imbedded in the government structure, beginning with
Popcom and related offices at DOH and the various LGU offices that have
proliferated at grassroots level; and replace it with a genuine pro-people
anti-poverty program that provides real health care and out-of-school
training for youth and adults alike.

What is equally needed is a law that will prohibit the unmonitored

and unregulated entry of funds from foreign sources in pursuit of
ideological causes that are inimical to the common good, the national
culture and the Constitution.

The defeat of HB 5043 should provide a good starting point.

TECHNICALLY DEFECTIVE

We have thus far shown that HB 5043 is unnecessary and lacks any
moral and constitutional leg to stand on. There may be no real need to
discuss its flawed provisions. But just to complete the analysis, we shall
proceed to examine the technical aspects of the bill.
WHERE DID THE BILLS COME FROM?

This question has to be asked without any intent to cast aspersion on

anyone, for a very simple reason. Several RH bills were filed in both Houses
of Congress at about the same time, by various authors. Despite this fact,
the bills tended to sound alike, in content and in style, as though they had
been produced by one particular source.

They are, in fact, casually and openly attributed to the technical staff
of the PLCPD, mentioned earlier. PLCPD is not a formal creation of
Congress, but "a non-stock, non-profit foundation dedicated to the
formulation of viable public policies requiring legislation on population
management and socio-economic development."

In plain language, PLCPD has assigned itself the task of "formulating

viable public policies on population" for the government, and coursing its
proposed legislation through members of Congress.

This is beyond the contemplation of the Constitution when it

conferred legislative powers upon Congress. Under the provisions of the
Foreign Agents Act of 1979, the representatives of PLCPD must first register as
foreign agents before they could lobby Congress on any issue. There is no
showing that they have done so.

But "formulating policies" for the government, and drafting the

pertinent bills go far beyond lobbying. This raises certain questions of
accountability on the part of the parties, but this also seems to raise a
question about the bill itself. Does this not vitiate the integrity of the bill?

WERE THE CONSTITUTION AND THE RULES OF THE HOUSE FOLLOWED IN HEARING THE BILL?

Section 3 (4), Article XV of the Constitution provides: "The State shall

defend the right of families or family associations to participate in the
planning and implementation of policies and programs that affect them."

Sec. 34 of the Rules of the House likewise provides that "the

committees or sub-committees, through their respective Committee
Secretariats, shall undertake measures to ensure that public notices and/or
announcements regarding the conduct of any of its meetings of public
hearings are issued at least three (3) days before said meeting, conference
or hearing. They shall undertake measures and establish systems to ensure
that constituencies, sectors or groups whose welfare and interests are
directly affected by measures to be discussed are able to participate in
these meetings or public hearings. Meetings and public hearings shall be
open to the public subject to reasonable regulations in the interest of
security, order, and the safety of persons in attendance."

On April 29, 2008, the House committees on Health and on Population

and Family Relations heard three RH bills. They announced a second
hearing for May 21, 2008. On such date, the committees met as scheduled,
but instead of allowing representatives of various organizations to
participate, the chairman announced that all three bills, plus a fourth one,
had been consolidated into a substitute bill, which would now be reported
out.

There was no prior motion, or instruction from the Joint Committees

to consolidate the bills. The substitute bill simply surfaced at the May 21
meeting, and approved for transmittal to plenary on Second Reading. Upon
interpellation on the Floor, the sponsor said the authors of the component
bills did the work of consolidating, instead of the usual Technical Working
Group, which is normally created by the Committee or Committees for that
purpose. No one questioned this statement. But there is nothing on record
to show that the Joint Committees, which had assumed control of the bills,
ever directed the authors to do this work. The open talk in the House is that
the PLCPD staff crafted hb 5043.

The lack of sufficient hearing was brought to the attention of the Speaker of
the House and the Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Majority Leader
in a letter dated June 2, 2008 by Most Rev. Angel Lagdameo, Archbishop of
Jaro, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP)
and Most Rev. Paciano Aniceto, Archbishop of San Fernando, Pampanga and
chairman of the CBCP Commission on Family and Life.

That letter was never answered despite the clear provision of Sec. 5 (a) of
Republic Act 6713, otherwise known as the Code of Conduct and Ethical
Standards for Public Officials and Employees, requiring the officials
concerned to reply to that communication and inform the authors thereof of
the action taken relative to their complaint "within fifteen (15) working
days from receipt thereof." Violation of the law carries a penalty of a fine
not exceeding the equivalent of six months' salary or suspension from office
not exceeding one year or outright removal, depending on the gravity of the
offence.

The author of the bill has since explained that HB 5043 had been filed
and heard in several previous congresses, which had however failed to
enact it into law. Assuming that to be true, it still does not comply with the
constitutional requirement. Every bill that fails to get enacted during a
particular Congress dies at the end of that Congress, and if filed again in the
next Congress, must start all over again as though it had never been filed
before.

So much for the procedural question. Let us look at the major proposals:

•We have commented sufficiently on the lack of moral and

constitutional support for the proposed State program of
contraception and sterilization. The proposal is void ab initio.

•We have likewise commented on the mandatory sex education of

children from Grade V until high school. This is a usurpation of the
right of parents to be the primary educators of their children. Also
void. But the program is already in place, without a legal mandate,
and with highly alarming initial results. Must be scrapped altogether.
•The bill seeks to make reproductive health products and services
available to everyone who wants them, without regard to age or civil
status, and without need of parental consent, in the case of minors.
This is contrary to public morals.

•While the bill concedes the constitutional ban on abortion, it compels

health providers to provide reproductive health services to an
"abused pregnant minor" without need of parental consent, even
though there is no showing that the parents are the abusers, and to a
reproductive health patient "in an emergency or serious case." What
reproductive health care service can possibly be contemplated in
these situations, except abortion?

•While the law on abortion and prostitution stands, the bill talks of
managing post-abortion complications and treating and counseling
those who have undergone an abortion in "a humane, non-
judgmental and compassionate manner," without any obligation on
the part of the health provider to determine whether the abortion was
spontaneous or induced, and to report to the police any indication of
a crime.

•In proposing to make reproductive health services available to

"women in prostitution," the bill seeks to give effective recognition to
prostitution as a legal profession, contrary to the law which punishes
it as a crime.

• Requiring CBAs to provide reproductive health services for

employees could prove deceptively attractive to women employees,
but could be used by employers to make sure no women employees
get pregnant and avail of maternity benefits during their employment

•Requiring couples to obtain a certificate of compliance from the

family planning office before they could get a marriage license
subjects marriage, whose sanctity is guaranteed by the Constitution,
and which is protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
to unnecessary and capricious administrative requirements.

Under the Civil Code, the requirement of a marriage license is waived

and the marriage is solemnized without such license, if the residence
of either party is so located that there is no means of transportation
to enable such party to appear personally before the local civil
registrar. This shows how the law tries to make it easier for couples
of legal age to get married. This proposal takes the law in the
opposite direction.

•A two-child family proposal –even without any overt coercive action

--- has no place in a democratic society. Each couple decides the
ideal size of their own family. This is an internationally protected
right. The proposal is anathema.
 •The Popcom should be abolished rather than enlarged. Its legal
mandate has lapsed, having been overtaken by the pro-life and pro-
family provisions of Articles II and XV of the Constitution.

•A health delivery van for every congressional district does not need
any special legislation; it could be provided for under the Congress'
generous pork barrel system.

•An intensified multi-media campaign to raise the level of awareness

about reproductive health will subject young and old to even more
intense brainwashing about counter-cultural values which have
brought about so much materialism and hedonism. It will not help
the media recover their lost integrity and independence.

• The bill contains a draconian penal section for every possible

violator, but is completely silent about pharmaceutical firms which
may distribute harmful contraceptives, and medical practitioners who
may prescribe the same or intentionally or accidentally injure any
person's reproductive health.

•The bill fails to make a distinction between abortifacients and

contraceptives, and fails to take a stand against bodily mutilation as
a necessary element of sterilization.

SALVAGING THE INVALID BILL

However, if the House wants to salvage the awesome effort that has
been expended in trying to pass a highly unconstitutional bill, it could at
this point consider replacing HB 5043 with a morally and constitutionally
sound bill which could propose the following:

1. That married couples be free to practice family planning according

to their moral and religious beliefs, using methods that are safe, legal
and not contrary to public morals, without any coercion or
intimidation from any third party;

2. That the State neither prohibit nor promote any specific family
planning method, but make sure that only such methods which are
safe, legal and not contrary to publilc morals be used by duly licensed
health providers;

3. That to safeguard and protect the health and wellbeing of women,

the government require contraceptives manufacturers to disclose all
possible side effects of their products, and to label those that could
induce cancer and other diseases accordingly;

4. That the State impose a strict distinction between abortifacients

and contraceptives and prohibit the manufacture, distribution, sale
and use of abortifacients anywhere in the Philippines;
 5. That the government establish basic and emergency obstetric
facilities in every barangay and promote breast-feeding and proper
nutrition especially for women and children nationwide, even without
need of legislation;

6. That the State encourage and support community-based and

family-initiated programs for the adult education of men and women
on parenting and the development of the moral and civic character of
their children. The State has a duty to make sure that more and more
men and women acquire a basic knowledge of their reproductive
systems so that they could plan their own families more confidently in
a natural way, by taking advantage of the woman's fertility cycle,
rather than by resorting to artificial methods that are physically and
morally harmful.

By Francisco S. Tatad

http//:franciscotatad.blogspot.com

25 October 2008

[1] This is a revised and updated version of the article which first appeared in
September 2008 under the title, "The Truth and Half-Truths About Reproductive
Health." The new title takes off from "Human Rights and Reproductive Wrongs," the
title of a chapter in Steven Mosher's book, Population Control, Transaction
Publishers, New Brunswick, US, and London, 2008

[2]IHBl 5043 consolidates H.B. 17, Responsible Parenthood and Population

Development Act of 2007, H.B. 812, The Reproductive Health Care Act, and H.B.
2753, The Women's Right to Know, HB 3970, An Act Providing for Reproductive
Health Care Structures and Appropriating Funds Therefor.

The Senate bills include: SBN 40, An Act Providing for Reproductive Health Care
Structures and Appropriating Funds Therefor; SBN 43, An Act Creating a
Reproductive Health and Population Management Council for the Implementation of
an Integrated Policy on Reproductive Health Relative to Sustainable Human
Development and Population Management and for Other Purposes; SBN 187, An Act
Establishing an Integrated Population and Development Policy, Strengthening Its
Implementing Mechanisms and for Other Purposes; SBN 622, An Act to Protect the
Right of the People to Information About Reproductive Health Care Services; SBN
1258, An Act Granting Women the Right to Know Work Conditions Affecting their
Health; SBN 1299, An Act to Protect the Right of the People to Information about
Reproductive Health Care Services.

[3] Michael Schooyans, Birth Control and Demographic Imposion, in Lexicon, Human
Life International, Front Royal, Virginia, 2006
[4] Gerard-Francois Dumont, Les evolutions demographiques dans le monde, Paper
read at Pastoral and Theological Congress, World Meeting of Families, Valencia,
Spain, July 2006

[5] Cited in Michael Schooyans's Birth Control and Demographic Implosion, Lexicon,
Human Life International, Front Royal Virginia, 2006

[6] Estimates are based on monetary values before the 2008 breakdown of the
global financial-monetary system.

[7] These include American Samoa, Aruba, Bahrain, Barbados, Belgium, Bermuda, El
Salvador, Gibraltar, Guam, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Lebanon, Macau,
Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Mayotte (France), Monaco, Nauru, Netherlands,
Netherlands Antilles, Puerto Rico, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines,San
Marino, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Virgin Islands (US)

[8] These include Afghanistan, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia,
Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Cote D'Ivoire, Djbouti, Gambia, Gaza Strip, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,
Guyana, Kenya, Kosovo, North Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Liberia,
Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nepal,
Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Saint Helena (UK), Sao
Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan,
Tajikistan, Tanzania, Timor Leste, Togo, Tokelau (NZ), Uganda, Zambia,
Zimbabwe

[9] De Vera, Roberto, Economic Paper, 15 Sept. 2008

[10] Among the rich countries, Monaco has the highest median age, 45.5 years, the
United States the lowest, 36.7 years. Japan has 43.8 years; Germany, 43.4; Italy,
42.9; Finland, 41.8; Sweden, 41.3; Spain, 40.7; Demark, 40.3; Canada, 40.1;
Netherlands, 40; United Kingdom, 39.9; France, 39.2; Norway, 39; Singapore, 38.4.
China, the world's fastest growing economy, has 33.6.

[11] Illustrative are Uganda with 15 years; Mali, 15.8; Democratic Republic of the
Congo, 16.3; Sao Tome and Principe, 16.3; Chad, 16.4; Niger, 16.4; Yemen, 16.7;
Zambia, 16.9; Mozambique, 17.4; Somalia, 17.5; Sierra Leone, 17.5; Tanzania,
17.8; Swaziland, 18; Togo, 18.6; Rwanda, 18.7; Nigeria, 18.7; Sudan, 18.9; Oman,
18.9

[12] Laborem Exercens, Encyclical on Human Work, 14 September 1981

[13] Gary Becker, Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special
Reference to Education, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993 3rd ed

[14] Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource, Princeton University Press, 1998 Revised

[15] Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There,
Macmillan, London, 1872, p. 124
[16] Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principles of Population, as quoted by
Jacqueline Kazun, The War Against Population, Revised and Updated Edition, Ignatius
Press, San Francisco, 1999

[17] Kazun, The War Against Population, quoting Galton, Karl Pearson and Allan
Chase

[18] Ibid

[19] Ibid

[20] Ibid,

[21] Steven Mosher, Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits, Transaction
Publishers, New Brunswick, US, and London, 2008

[22] Kasun, The War Against Population

[23] Ibid

[24] Mosher, Population Control

[25] Schooyans, Birth Control and Demographic Implosion in Lexicon, Human Life
International, Front Royal, Virginia, 2006

[26] Mosher, Population Control

[27] Ibid

[28] Ibid

[29] Ibid

[30] Ibid

[31] This writer first stumbled into the contents of this secret document and gave an
interview to a U.S publication and a radio program, long before it was officially
declassified.

[32] Mosher, Population Control

[33] CEDAW stands for the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women.

[34] These include Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Eritrea, Ethiopia,
France, Ghana, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya,
Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico,
Moldova, Morocco, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama,
Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent & the
Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Suriname, Sweden, Syria, Togo,
Turkey, United Kingdom, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Zimbabwe

[35] These include Quezon City, Antipolo, and General Santos; the provinces of
Aurora, Ifugao, Mountain Province, Sulu and Lanao del Sur; the municipalities of
Tinoc, Sagada, Lagawe, Asipulo, Bontoc and Paracelis in Luzon; Talibon, Ubay and
Carmen in Bohol, Llorente and Maydolong in Eastern Samar, Lebak and Kapatagan in
Mindanao.

[36] John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, The Belknap Press of Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass, 1999

[37] Burke, Cormac, Authority and Freedom in the Church, Four Courts Press,
Dublin, 1988

[38] Cf. Cormac Burke, Marriage and Contraception, in Why Humanae Vitae Was
Right, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1993

[39] Butterworths Medical Dictionary, 2nd ed; Gould Medical Dictionary, 4th ed;
Stedman's Medical Dictionary, 26th ed; Harrup's Dictionary of Medicine and Health;
Mellon's Illustrated Medical Dictionary; Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary; Pearce
Medical and Nursing Dictionary and Encyclopedia.