ORLANDO P. CARVAJAL:

Artificial contraceptives are legal in the Philippines. These can be purchased anywhere in the country by those who can afford their steep prices. The reproductive health law passed in 2012 simply legalizes their free distribution by government to the poor. Catholic bishops, therefore, who are stalling the law, are in effect only opposing free reproductive health services, among them artificial contraceptives, to the poor. I don’t see them preventing the rich from using contraceptives that they are able to buy legally from private drug stores without recourse to any agency of government.

Artificial contraceptives are legal in the Philippines. These can be purchased anywhere in the country by those who can afford their steep prices. The reproductive health (RH) law that was passed in 2012 simply legalizes their free distribution by the government to the poor.

Catholic bishops, therefore, who are stalling the law, are in effect only opposing free reproductive health services, among them artificial contraceptives, to the poor. I don’t see them preventing the rich from using contraceptives that they are able to buy legally from private drugstores without recourse to any agency of government.

By this logic, if the reason for opposing the 2012 law is that artificial contraceptives promote promiscuity and, in the case of some controversial contraceptives, abortion, it would mean the bishops are okay with promiscuity and abortion being promoted among the rich as there is absolutely no law preventing them from buying artificial contraceptives in private drugstores.

In the case of condoms, for instance, if Catholic bishops are against their free distribution to the poor lest it results in promiscuity, then it means that they are okay with promoting promiscuity among the rich who are not forbidden by any law to buy their own condoms.

Here’s the irony. The comfortable rich, promiscuous or not, are able to prevent unwanted pregnancies, HIV Aids and other diseases by buying condoms while the destitute poor, promiscuous or not, suffer unwanted pregnancies (that often end in crude fatal-to-the-mother abortions), HIV AIDs and other diseases which they could neither prevent nor cure without the law’s or government’s help.

Condoms do not promote promiscuity any more than guns do criminality. People, not condoms, do sex just as people, not guns, kill. Sexual maturity is a function mainly of education and religious upbringing. No amount of condoms, free or bought, will make a sexually mature person promiscuous just as no morally mature Christian will kill no matter how many guns are at his/her disposal.

If contraceptives are immoral as bishops aver, it should be immoral for rich and poor alike. So, why oppose only their free distribution to the poor and not their sale to the rich?

In any case, Catholic bishops have no business imposing the majority religion’s morality on a pluralistic and secular society such as the Philippines. Besides, unlike laws that are imposed, the Gospels are an invitation to follow Christ, never an imposition.

Malacanang is asking Catholic bishops to give President Rodrigo Duterte a break. He is standing up for the poor’s rights to free contraceptives that, without the law, only the rich can enjoy. By giving him a break Catholic bishops would be giving the poor a badly needed break.