Schools as family planning centers
IT HAS been four years since Congress enacted the Responsible Parenthood Law but birth control remains an emotional issue in this country. The wounds from the bitter struggle between the pro and the anti-RH law camps have yet to heal completely.
The Department of Health (DOH) is not helping the healing process with its plan to distribute condoms in schools. DOH officials may be nobly-intentioned but converting our academic institutions into huge family planning centers is an idea whose time has not yet come.
Many of those who supported the Reproductive Health bill trusted its proponents' repeated assurances that it would not encourage promiscuity. We were told that the freedom of choice that the law would promote was meant to save poor couples from being buried more deeply in poverty which was certain to happen if they'd have more children than they could afford to responsibly raise.
The proposal to make condoms available to students in their schools cannot therefore be but a betrayal of that trust. Parents send their children to school with the expectation that they will be taught lessons on cultural and moral values, not to be trained on how to engage in sexual activities without regard to any accountability.
The claim that students would engage in pre-marital sex anyway, whether or not they receive guidance, is not only a sweeping but insulting generalization. But even assuming that to be true, it does not make it right for the DOH to add fuel to the fire.
But I'm not surprised at all by the DOH's position. After all, their core competence is health, not education. May I therefore respectfully suggest that the DOH back off and not interfere with the mandate of the Department of Education?
*** There's nothing wrong per se in placing the country on the highest level terror alert. It would have been criminally imprudent if, being aware of the imminent danger of a terrorist attack, the government refuses or fails to do anything to address it and inform the people accordingly.
Unfortunately, the announcement was preceded by chatter about the possible suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus or the imposition of martial law. Naturally, questions are asked whether the terror alert is a prelude to the exercise of any of the two extraordinary powers of the presidency or, worse, the declaration of a revolutionary government.
Our experience with the late Ferdinand Marcos does not make it any easier for us and, for that mat- ter, President Duterte. Remember that shortly before Marcos declared martial law, then defense secretary Juan Ponce Enrile's convoy was allegedly ambushed near a subdivision in Manila. Enrile would later confess that the ambush was faked to signal the imposition of martial law. (He changed his story later, however).
Duterte has categorically denied any plan to impose martial law. Although he has a record of flip flopping a number of times in the past, I am willing to believe him. Besides, unlike during the Marcos era, it is more complicated to declare martial law now because of the safeguards provided for in the constitution.
And so while we should remain vigilant in safeguarding our civil liberties, we also have the duty to give the president our support or at least the benefit of the doubt. As it is, neutralizing a terrorist threat is already very difficult. Let us not make it even more so by questioning his actions or his motives at every turn. At some point, we have to learn to accept that he is the president of every Filipino.
*** I received last week a "Dearest Frank" letter from former governor and congressman Pablo Garcia, accompanying his position paper on the South Road Properties. Noy Pabling is sure his thesis "will be unwelcome and unsettling to many, especially Mayor (Tomas) Osmeña" but says it has to come out in the interest of truth and transparency, regardless of who gets hurt.
I will discuss Noy Pabling's points in this space next week.