media, priests & abortion

media is plural for mediocre, rene saguisag says in his manila times column on the same day that mark robert b. baldo in a letter to the inquirer editor decries the failure of media to level-up the public debate on the RH bill.

A cursory look on the articles printed in this broadsheet shows this to be a recurring theme: luminaries using the infidelities of some Catholic priests in Europe to discredit the Church; some citing the political affiliations of some bishops; and others, presenting flawed accounts of Church history. This is a mistake because no longer do we hear mention of arguments by both parties.

… Media inevitably shape the public debate. I am not talking here about whether the bill should be passed or not, or whether the media should frame it in such a way that it would be passed or not. I am simply talking about how to frame the debate in such a way that it would stimulate productive discussion rather than a stirring drama about a declining institution in Philippine society.

indeed, na-sidetrack, nagpa-sidetrack, na lang ang media sa rizal vs. damaso drama ni carlos celdran.   easier naman talaga to go with the flow, kahit paatras, than to move on, against the tide, to the more difficult formidable challenging task of helping along the RH discourse toward a clear resolution.

in Some issues about the RH bills fr. joaquin bernas writes:

When does human life begin? We probably are all agreed that man must not destroy human life. Our Constitution protects life “from conception.” There is some indication in the deliberations of the 1987 Constitution Commission that this means “from fertilization.” But there are contrary views. Who will decide which view is correct?

granted, for the sake of no-argument, that the philippine constitution means “from fertilization” and that congress will so concur, what then?   logically, it should mean the end of all debate because as with the natural family planning method (no sex during ovulation), with artificial contraceptives no fertilization happens, which means no life is destroyed, so condoms, pills, and IUDs should be okay-all-right.

and yet and yet and yet, priests and other rabid pro-lifers continue to insist that birth control pills (that prevent ovulation so no egg is produced for sperm to fertilize) are abortifacients.   nakakaloka.   how canyou even begin an intelligent discussion???   for the longest time i couldn’t figure it out.   why the lying.   why the dishonesty.   why the misinformation.   until suddenly it dawned on me, after reading this, still from fr. bernas:

The determination about the beginning of human life will also be relevant to the debate on abortion. Clearly abortion is prohibited and penalized by law. But when does abortion take place? At what stage of the reproductive process will interruption be considered an offense against life? At fertilization or only after implantation? Are there birth control devices or pills which are abortifacient? If so, in what way? There is debate about the abortifacient effect of some birth control means. Who is to settle this debate—Congress? The Courts? Science? the Church? The ralliers? I understand that the various pharmaceutical and medical literature on this are conflictive.

the questions tell me that fr. bernas knows more than he’s telling, much like a parent who has a hard time talking to a teen child about sex because the openness and the info could be misconstrued as license to have sex.   in this case the information, which is most likely new to many many filipino women, rich and poor, young and old, could be misconstrued as license to interrupt the reproductive process by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg, which apparently he equates with abortion.   i totally disagree.

just to make sure i have it right, i emailed my balikbayan brother dr. godofredo “butch” stuart, now based in tiaong, quezon, who is my first resource on contraception.   his response:

REPRO 101

Fertilization occurs when sperm-meets-ovum, 200 to 500 million sperms in the ejaculate, discharged into the vaginal vault, embarking on journey up the vagina, up the cervix. Only less than a thousand survive the swim and make it to the fallopian tube, into the “last lap” of their swim. These sperms have fertilizing capabilities that last only for 72 hours, sometimes 96 hours.

And once a month, normally, one mature egg is released from the ovary, fertilizable only for 24 hours. Into the fallopian tube it begins the journey, where it is met by one of the surviving sperma. So fertilization occurs, resulting in a zygote.

The germinal stage (0 to 2 weeks) begins when the zygote journeys down the fallopian tube to the uterus, reaching the uterus in 4 to 5 days, floating freely in the uterine cavity for several more days, finally adhering to the uterine wall about the 8th day after fertilization. By the 12th the egg is firmly implanted. And by the end of the second week the uterine wall has completely surrounded the newly developing organism.

This is the basic arithmetic on sperm and ovum life spans, and how the implantation happens many days later after fertilization. And how morning-after contraception works in the schemata of the germinal stage and implantation.

check out his website stuartxchange.com where he has a page on emergency post-coital contraception.   between fertilization of the egg and its implantation in the uterus, there’s a 7-day window during which contraceptive pills taken in certain doses effectively prevents implantation, which is how the morning-after pill (banned here) works.

the question is, when a woman resorts to emergency contraception, is that abortion?   i don’t think so.   while it is true that a fertilized egg has life, still it’s NOT A VIABLE LIFE, not until implantation.

DOC BUTCH :  Yes, non-viable until implantation.  Alive, yes, as in in-vitro fertilization, alive in the laboratory milieu, but still needing the uterine implantation to enter a sustaining nutritional environment.

which brings me back to fr. bernas’s questions: when does abortion take place?   answer: certainly not when a woman resorts to emergency contraception “the morning after” sex, because a fertilized egg (if at all there is one) is not yet a viable life-form.   and no, BIRTH CONTROL PILLS ARE NOT ABORTIFACIENTS:  once a fertilized egg has implanted onto the uterine wall, no amount of these pills can dislodge or remove it from the uterine wall.   (only real abortifacients can dislodge, abort, a zygote, but that’s for another blog.)

of course pro-lifers would disagree with me till kingdom come.   but try googling it and you will find that there are as many arguments for fertilization, as there are for implantation, as the beginning of human life.   so fr. bernas asks: who is to settle the debate re the alleged “abortifacient effect of some birth control means” — congress? the courts? science? the church? the ralliers?   answer: NONE OF THE ABOVE.   i say THE WOMAN DECIDES, not the priests or the opus deists.

DOC BUTCH : From opposing ends, it will never be answered or agreed upon. Yes, in the end, it should be the woman’s right, sole and inalienable, unburdened by archaic church edicts and impotent male political will. Too, a daunting responsibility for “educators” with the burdensome task of educating the womenfolk. And how to make the information available and comprehensible to the masa, who still resort to coat-hangers, grapevine pharmaceuticals, and dangerous herbal concoctions.

indeed.   widespread underground procedures kill about 1,000 women each year in this predominantly roman catholic country.

An estimated 560,000 women in the Philippines in 2008 sought abortion involving crude and painful methods such as intense abdominal massages by traditional midwives or inserting catheters into the uterus, said a report by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights.

which brings me back to the media, which have the power and the means not only to shape the debate but to make available the information and educate the womenfolk, thereby “to change the status quo of high rates of infant mortality, maternal deaths, and abortions. It is a moral imperative that such dehumanizing conditions should not be allowed to continue.”

DOC BUTCH :    Media seems to kowtow to the powers that be.  It seems like institutional fear.  No cojones to challenge the church on such matters.  Or perhaps everyone of note in media went to the same church-sponsored Sex Education 101.  Masyadong malakas ang simbahan.

but is it just fear of excommunication and hellfire,  or is it also a lack of critical thinking,  and not caring enough about the issues that matter?   media is plural for mediocre?   yes, all of the above.

revisiting hubert webb

after catching most of cheche lazaro’s Dalawang Mukha ng Hustisya the other night, napaisip naman ako.   impossible not to be touched by the webb family’s stories and how they’ve never let up on loving, caring for, and visiting hubert in jail and believing in, swearing to, his innocence.   what if he IS innocent?

of course nakakadurog din naman ng puso ang nangyari sa vizconde mother and daughters.   impossible not to sympathize with the aggrieved husband and father and to understand why he agonizes over the webbs’ continuing appeal for reconsideration — if hubert et al are innocent, then who violated and massacred his loved ones, and why are they walking free?

so i was googling the case all day yesterday to refresh my memory and here are some worthy links:

pinoyexchange.com  forum december 30 1999 to january 8, 2000 :
The Vizconde Verdict

The Manila Times’ 2005 Special Report :
Questions linger in Vizconde case, Part I
Huberts main defense: ‘I was in California’ Part II

solita “winnie” monsod’s 2007 Inquirer column :
Hope for Hubert Webb

Sunday Inquirer Magazine’s 2008 feature :
The Vizconde Case

The Manila Times april 2010 report :
High Court reopens Vizconde massacre case

ramon tulfo’s april 2010 Inquirer column:
I Swear on Hubert Webb’s innocence

ramon tulfo’s may 2010 Bandera column :
Bakit ako atat na atat sa Vizconde Massacre?

winnie monsod’s june 2010 Inquirer column :
The case of the missing semen sample

cesar m. de los reyes’s letter to the editor, response to winnie :
Deprived of chance to prove innocence

alex magno’s july 2010 philippine star column :
DNA

pinoyexchange.com forum in reaction to cheche’s docu : The Vizconde Massacre: Do you believe that Hubert Webb is guilty?

also i found two links with information new to me.   the first from a pdf doc. “A Son, a Father and a Terrible Night” by Tamara de Guzman (google “When I first followed this crime, I believed Hubert Webb was guilty…”) where Freddie Webb is quoted as saying:

Partly because of my being in politics, my son got caught in the middle,” he finally said. “There were Indian nationals who were developing drugs in Las Piñas City, They were caught by the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) and were locked up. I accidentally discovered a plan to free them and I exposed it. The investigation led back to their financier who has connections high up in the government. They got back at me through Hubert.

which was never reported by mainstream media (if memory serves), but was confirmed seconded by a commenter on ellen tordesilla’s blog:

Mike – February 12, 2010 1:27 am

With regards to Hubert Webb, I don’t think he is guilty of the crime (Vizconde massacre). Napaginitan si Senator Webb ng NBI coz pinakialaman niya yung kaso ng mga Indian drug traders who were in the custody of the NBI then and pinatakas. I think there were 12 of them Indian nationals. It was then Rep. Webb who asked for the investigation of the incident.

the second link is more recent.   a feb 2010 gmanews.tv report of senators probed for unethical/questionable conduct has this interesting detail:

In 1996, during the 10th Congress, Senator Freddie Webb was investigated for alleged abuse of authority and probable violation of laws in the employment of his son Hubert Webb in the Senate Electoral Tribunal.

This was after Webb claimed that his son, a suspect in the celebrated Vizconde massacre, was in the United States from March 9, 1991 to October 28, 1992 when his daily time record showed that he went to work, from 9 am to 6 pm.

The younger Webb was found guilty of the murder.

so.   senator webb was not found guilty.  i suppose it was punishment enough that his son was found guilty in the vizconde case?   the  senator must have soooo regretted falsifying time records (okay, if in fact he did), lalo na if these time records were known to the prosecution and the judge who rejected all evidence that hubert was out of the country.

just the same.   i find it strange that the court found alfaro, biong, his mistress, and the two webb housemaids more credible than the u.s. state department, immigration, the fbi, etc.   kasi daw the latter’s documents could have easily been faked.   really?   all of them?  wasn’t it much much easier to bribe the so-called witnesses into concocting that wild story of drugs, sex, and crime?

what i remember most about the 2000 verdict was that it was more sensational than surprising.   thanks to two carlos caparas films — The Vizconde Massacre: God Help Us! in 1993 starring kris aquino as carmela, and The Untold Story: Vizconde Massacre Two – May The Lord Be With Us in 1994 starring vina morales — the public was just oh-so-primed to see hubert hang.

no laws broken, no heads rolling

heard national anti-poverty commission chief joel rocamora in a bbc interview saying that no laws were broken by top officials in the august 23 bus hostages bloodbath.

eight hong kong chinese died needlessly violently in the hands of a mentally unstable discharged policeman yet no laws were broken?

nato reyes points out that in the end what (not who) gets blamed is the government’s crisis manual:

Malacanang has kept accountability for the August 23 incident at the lower levels of government. It has invoked the vague provisions of a government crisis manual as a convenient excuse for the shortcomings and incompetence of the national leadership. The section of the IIRC report on National or Local Crisis says:

It appeared that at no point was the elevation to the status as a national crisis considered even while practically all the hostages were foreign nationals and even while representatives from foreign embassies or consular offices were already involved.

The Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) on Crisis Situations does not have clear parameters on when, or under what circumstances, should a crisis be elevated to national status.

Aquino’s repeated reference to the vague provisions of the government manual has served as a firewall for the national leadership. Malacanang insists that since there are no guidelines which will allow them to assume command of a particular crisis, they cannot be blamed for anything. It’s like saying that it is the manual’s fault, not theirs.

as for command responsibility, here’s what malacanang’s review of the iirc report says under III. Applicable laws, rules and regulations, and jurisprudence:

2. A person may be held criminally liable only for his own actions or omissions. However, he may be held administratively or civilly liable for the consequences of the actions or omission of his subordinates or wards when the principle of command responsibility and the rules/laws on subsidiary, solidary and vicarious liability under the Revised Penal Code and the Civil Code are applicable.

3. In Rubrico v. Arroyo (G.R. No. 183871, February 18, 2010), the Supreme Court defines Command Responsibility as “the responsibility of commanders for crimes committed by subordinate members of the armed forces or other person subject to their control in international wars or domestic conflict.” While there are several bills on command responsibility, there is still no law that provides for criminal liability under that doctrine.

there we go.   no law that provides for criminal liability for command irresponsibility.

so the president is not liable (even if he took responsibility for the fiasco some 10 days later) , nor usec puno, nor then pnp chief versoza.   if we took them to court, their lawyers would get them off easily.   waste of time and money, ika nga ni presidente.

yesterday the president also again explained why neither he nor his bff dilg usec puno showed up and took charge: the hostage-taker might have escalated his demands if faced with such high officials.   i wonder where they got that notion.    has it ever happened before?   meron bang precedent to justify such a fear?   i wonder who he was listening to, who was advising, what was influencing, him that long long afternoon and evening.   i wonder what they were all up to after the oathtaking of, among others, gina lopez and conrado de quiros’ brother…   to surface only deep in the night when the shooting was over.

also i don’t understand why tulfo and rogas got off scot-free, even if vergel santos of the center for media freedom and responsibility is actually happy about it.   i heard an unapologetic maderazo saying again that if they hadn’t done what they did, then we the public would not have known what was going on.   heh.   if they hadn’t done what they did, then mendoza wouldn’t have snapped they way he did and possibly nothing so bloody terrible would have gone down.

at the very least i hoped to see four heads rolling: puno’s, because he was incompetent and unqualified, versoza’s because he didn’t care enough to stay around and stay on top of things, and rogas’s and tulfo’s for agitating mendoza and driving him off the edge.   unfortunately the president loves puno and versoza, and coddles media, to a fault.

update:

From Day 1, P-Noy wanted
to save Lim, Puno, Verzosa
by Malou Mangahas

sex, love, joy

I was reading a book on the evolution of the human brain and then I stumbled upon the irony of the Filipino Catholic clergy’s position against contraceptives. They insist that the only function of sex is to make children. Whoa! That’s exactly what animals do! The savage beasts in the jungles mate only to breed. In the entire animal kingdom, human beings are one of the few species that mate for emotional reasons and long-term bonding. Sex for love and joy, it turns out, is uniquely human, and our local venerables would insist  that we forswear what is human and revert to what is primitively animalistic.

Make up your minds, guys. If we were made in the image and likeness of God, why insist that we act like animals? We can express love in poetry, music and paintings and, yes, through sex. Apparently you guys don’t care what is being expressed (namely, love) because you are so fixated on the “how”(namely, sex). In fact, by opposing divorce, you actually insist that couples remain together even after the love has faded, and presumably have sex even in the absence of love. Don’t you think that that’s the real sacrilege?

read the whole essay by Raul Pangalangan