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[Today, I am giving my column up to a better writer,
former senator Kit Tatad, whose article contains exactly what I
think of the RH bill.
— Rene Q. Bas]
The “culture of death” issue
is once again in the headlines, after the Catholic bishops denounced
a reproductive health bill which two standing committees are trying
to steamroll in the House of Representatives, in violation of the
Constitution and the Rules of the House.
Using painfully faulty data,
former President Fidel V. Ramos has criticized President Gloria
Arroyo for reportedly listening to the bishops, at the cost of her
birth control program, which the international repro health lobby is
vigorously trying to push.
This is one issue where Ramos and
his friends are dead wrong, and Arroyo is refreshingly right. The
bill is an abomination, and the effort to ram it through, without
observing the process guaranteed by the Constitution and the
House’s own rules, makes it even worse.
Women’s health, like everybody
else’s, is and should be a permanent concern. But the repro health
bill is not about this. It is an attempt to use women’s health to
advance an ideology that does not recognize the sanctity of human
life or family life, which occupies such a high place in our
Constitution, our culture, and our hierarchy of moral values and
religious beliefs.
The bill –An Act Providing For
A National Policy On Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and
Population Development and For Other Purposes —is a consolidation
of four bills. Three of the bills were heard once on April 29, 2008
by the House committees on Health and on Population and Family
Relations; the fourth was not. On May 21st, the two committees met
again purportedly for a second hearing, but declared after a few
minutes that the bills had been consolidated into one unnumbered
substitute bill, which would now be reported out on second reading
for floor debates.
The offense is procedural but
fatal. 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.” Likewise, Sec. 34 of the
Rules of the House requires the committees to “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.”
Such steamrolling cannot result
in any valid legislation. That the proposal had allegedly been filed
and heard in the previous Congress, which chose not to act on it,
has no effect on the present Congress, which has a different
membership altogether. It must go through the mill as if it had
never been filed before, and was being heard for the first time.
While the bill purportedly seeks
to “uphold and promote responsible parenthood, informed choice,
birth spacing and respect for life,” it limits these to those that
are “in conformity with universally recognized international human
rights.” This denies the unborn the right to life, which is sacred
to the Constitution, since so many governments have legalized the
killing of the unborn.
The bill seeks full official
funding for artificial birth control methods, which the Church
condemns as unlawful; which the World Health Organization has
determined to be carcinogenic and hazardous to women’s health; and
which make a mockery of the constitutional guarantee of “equal
protection for the life of the mother and the life of the unborn
from conception.”
It is a blatant attempt to
circumvent that core constitutional provision. Equal State
protection for the life of the mother and the life of the unborn
from the moment of conception leaves no room for the State to
support a program that prevents mothers from conceiving. But this is
exactly what the bill proposes to do —to reduce the solemn words
of the Constitution into a mere shell game.
The controversy has grown ever
since Ozamiz Archbishop Jesus Dosado reportedly issued a pastoral
letter saying his archdiocese would deny holy communion to
church-going pro-abortion politicians. The Code of Canon Law (Can.
1398) provides that “a person who actually procures an abortion
incurs a latae sententiae excommunication.” That is to say,
automatic excommunication, without anyone pronouncing sentence.
While advocating abortion may not
necessarily be the same as procuring one, “the Church has its own
and exclusive right to judge cases which refer to matters which are
spiritual or linked with the spiritual; and the violation of
ecclesiastical laws and whatever contains an element of sin, to
determine guilt and impose ecclesiastical penalties” (Can. 1401).
The separation of Church and
State has been invoked. This, however, means the State’s
non-interference in the affairs of the Church, which does not owe
the State its existence. The Pope has no armed divisions, as Stalin
once said, while the State has vast coercive powers. But since the
State is not the source of truth, it has no authority or competence
to legislate outside of the moral law on the whole complex being of
man.
[Send comments to http://franciscotatad.blogspot.com.]
rq_bas@yahoo.com rqb@manilaimes.net
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