Alive vs. unborn
SENATE Majority Leader Tito Sotto says the Reproductive Health (RH) bill will clear the Senate but not without significant amendments. Personally, I have no objection to amendments. However, amendments should serve to adjust and advance the purpose of the bill, not destroy and defeat its spirit.
This is why I take particular exception to a provision of the RH bill that Senator Sotto wants removed. This is the provision that mandates government to ensure that all women needing care for post- abortion complications be treated and counseled in a humane, non-judgmental and compassionate manner. Sotto thinks this provision can only encourage more abortions.
I find it rather small- minded of Sotto to view this provision in this light. I cannot imagine any woman jumping to get an abortion simply because she is assured of post- abortion care. Abortion, I imagine, is an agonizing decision for every woman—-a decision perhaps made in the throes of desperation.
This is precisely the point we make. No woman should have to make desperate decisions. She should have the means to safeguard herself from the consequences of unprotected sex. She should have access to information and contraception to prevent unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. Conception should be a choice not a consequence.
Who is truly anti-life? Those who have the courage to choose NOT to bear children or those who recklessly give birth to children they only readily abandon?
The fanatical desire of so-called pro-lifers to save the unborn rings hollow vis-a-vis their blatant indifference to the plight of those who are already born and who wallow in poverty, sickness and neglect. The so-called pro-lifers are hell-bent on saving the unborn yet they don’t care about saving the lives of those who are actually alive.
They don’t care about the plight of women who must risk death with every pregnancy. They don’t care about the plight of babies born without pre and post-natal care. They don’t care about the plight of children running around naked, hungry and without a future. They don’t care about the plight of women compelled to resort to abortion who must now fight to live so as not to render the rest of their children, motherless.
How would giving assistance to a woman suffering from post-abortion complications be construed as encouraging abortion? How could anyone, especially one purporting to be pro-life, even suggest that a woman in need of immediate medical assistance be left unattended simply because she has committed the so-called sin of abortion?
I can only hope that Sotto speaks only for himself and not for the rest who are opposed to the RH bill. While we may be divided on the issue of contraception and sex education, I truly hope that we are all in agreement that lives must be saved. If we fight so hard for the unborn, do the living and breathing human beings deserve any less?
No one is anti- life here. Perhaps, some of us simply believe that those who are already alive must take precedence over those yet to be born.