Real motive

The sponsors and backers of the RH bill are once more creating some noise on the urgent need to enact it into law. They are again citing statistics provided by the UN Population Fund (UNFA) that “everyday around the world nearly 800 women die of complications from pregnancy and childbirth.” And to solve this problem, they are renewing their advocacy of providing millions of impoverished women with “universal access to reproductive health care services” because reproductive health is crucial to achieving the UNFA vision of a world “where every pregnancy is wanted, every child birth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.” And according to them, this is the very purpose of the RH bill.

As usual, they are raising the same points repeatedly brought up before. They are just confirming that the RH bill is really being imposed on us by the UN using an apparently enticing reason behind a more sinister motive already exposed as anti-life and actually dangerous to the health of women and children that it is ironically supposed to protect and promote.

Indeed, the RH bill appropriates billions of pesos of taxpayers’ money to make artificial contraceptives consisting of all kinds of birth control pills, as well as artificial devices like the intra uterine devices (IUDs) available for free especially to impoverished women should they opt to use them for their reproductive health. These contraceptives however have already been medically proven to cause abortion, more specifically the hormonal contraceptives and injectables like Depo Provera (DMPA), RU 486, Norplant, the Morning after or the emergency contraceptive pills (ECP) and the IUD.

The RH bill is therefore actually promoting abortion even if it expressly provides that abortion is illegal. It is indeed designed to build a world where every pregnancy is wanted and every child birth is safe as envisioned by the UNFA because if the pregnancy is unwanted and the child birth will not be safe, such pregnancy will be terminated through the expulsion of the live fetus in the mother’s womb by the use of these contraceptives. Thus the UNFA vision itself show that its main thrust in pushing for the passage of the RH bill here is to promote abortion worldwide.

There are also documented health problems caused by the pill and other hormonal contraceptives. The World Health Organization (WHO) has labeled several types of hormonal contraceptives as Group 1 Carcinogens — the same category as cigarettes and asbestos. Researchers from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have found that hormonal contraceptives are associated with a significantly increased risk of breast cancer especially DMPA which is found to double the risk of breast cancer. It has also been shown that these hormonal contraceptives specifically the injectable DMPA increase the transmission rate of HIV/AIDS.

All these findings and proven facts are not denied or refuted by the authors of the bill. Senators Cayetano and Santiago, the principal sponsors of the Senate bill who are presently pushing for its passage on second reading have not disproven or refuted these facts for indeed they cannot deny them. Do they really want our women specially the impoverished ones to use these contraceptives? Are they aware of these dire consequences of the bill and despite them are still pushing for its passage?

Of course it can be argued as it has been argued before that the final choice belongs to the impoverished women themselves who are merely being afforded the freedom of choice after being properly informed of the advantages and disadvantages of these reproductive health care products and services. But is it right to give them the freedom to kill the unborn by choosing these contraceptives?

The alarming rise in maternal and child deaths while giving birth has also been cited as reason for the urgent passage of the RH bill. The fact however is that even without an RH bill, maternal and child deaths can be reduced and eventually checked by merely improving the medical facilities and services for pre-natal care. The Department of Health (DOH) is supposed to be in charge here. And if there is really such an alarming rise, it only means that the DOH is not up to its job.

Finally it has also been brought out once again, the UN observation that reproductive health is “an indispensable part” of sustainable development and poverty reduction. One columnist who is a rabid supporter of the bill even cited the exceptional cases of mothers selling their babies; of a 42-year-old mother with 15 pregnancies and 12 children ages 26 to 5 who has a TB ridden husband, of the children and the rugby kids prowling the streets. With the passage of the RH bill, they say that the poor will be able to plan the size of their family by using the contraceptives since family planning is a human right that must be universally enjoyed.

Obviously the bill’s authors and supporters are looking at the poor as the problem and not poverty itself. Instead of tackling the incidence and problem of poverty, they are getting rid of the victims of poverty. The billions of pesos appropriated by the bill can definitely be put to better use in quality education and health services for the poor, countryside developments and other poverty alleviation measures that will help mothers with so many children and that will keep those rugby boys and waifs off the streets. As it is, the bill will just further enrich the multi-national companies selling those reproductive health products and devices.

The issues surrounding the RH bill are therefore legal (abortion), political (corruption) and economic (more equitable distribution of wealth). Blaming the Church for opposing the bill and for not providing its own poverty alleviation program is absurd, way off the mark and absolutely unfair.

* * * Email: attyjosesison@gmail.com; jcson@pldtdsl.net From there and similar seamarks China makes its preposterous nine- dash boundary, effectively encompassing the whole sea. (Among the other seamarks is Panganiban or Mischief Reef, which China also calls an island, by virtue of manmade fortifications.) With Huangyan as base point, China begins to claim an EEZ limit equidistant to mainland Luzon.

Filipinos have an apt name, Panatag Shoal, for the sandbank ringed by rocks and reefs in the shape of a gigantic horseshoe. The Philippines’ 200-mile EEZ, measured from, among others, Zambales in mainland Luzon as base point, embraces the shoal, 70 miles off. Panatag is 900 miles from China’s Hainan island-province.

The UNCLOS that Ben waves about buttresses the Philippine line and demolishes China’s. Article 121, Regime of Islands, states:

“1. An island is a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide.

“2. Except as provided for in paragraph 3, the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf of an island are determined in accordance with the provisions of this Convention applicable to other land territory.

“3. Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.”

Panatag (Huangyan) is submerged at high tide. It is unimaginable how the ancient Chinese could have inhabited and mapped a “territory” that was underwater half of the day. No amount of calling it “island” will make it so — not till many more millennia of natural accretion. (Same goes for Mischief, etc.) Zambales and Ilocos folk have always referred to Panatag as Bajo de Masinloc, a rest stop. Present day fishermen know it is one of many seamarks within the

To surrender them would jeopardize the future of generations of Filipinos. The Philippines would be left with an EEZ that extends a mere 30 to 40 miles to sea, instead of 200. It would lose millions of square miles of exploitable economic zone. Along with it, fuel and food sources.

* * * China can also learn a lesson from Russia’s treatment of Chinese marine poachers. That is, that it cannot just bully its way into neighbors’ territorial seas and EEZs. The Russian coast guard opened fire at and detained, and confiscated the boats of the fish thieves. Neighborhood bullies can get their comeuppance.

China’s Communist Party rulers have been taunting Manila to back up its EEZ with military strength. Through the party’s English-language organ, Global Times, Beijing jingoists have even called for the “economic and military punishment” of the Philippines for standing up to China at Panatag.

China got a taste three days ago of the military clash it has been asking for, courtesy of Russia. Global Times’ only pip was to acknowledge that trespassing is wrong, as is machine-gunning civilians.

* * * For a really good laugh, watch God of Carnage, playing at the Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza, Makati, till this weekend only. The Tony awardee is about two pairs of parents who try to settle their sons’ fistfight civilly — but end up worse. Starring Tony awardee Lea Salonga, Singaporean Adrian Pang, Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo, and Art Acuña.

For tickets, call Atlantis: (02) 8927078, 8401187, or 8919999.

* * * Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).

E-mail: jariusbondoc@gmail.com