divorce, rh, same banana
listening to rep. rodolfo farinas ranting against a divorce bill is like listening to the golezes and pablo garcias and bagatsings railing against the rh bill, macho fundamentalists all. puwede ba, referendum na lang?
Category: reproductive health
media complicit in division over RH bill
after ANC’s harapan RH debate last night, i’m really hoping that GMA news and public affairs will rethink its promised “definitive debate” on may 22. is a debate really the way to go? we’ve heard them all before, especially the antis like golez and lina, and those priests and their blind believers. in fact any debate is lopsided in favor of the anti-RH, considering that every sunday for many months now priests and bishops have been ranting against the RH bill from the pulpits. i wonder what ANC thought they accomplished by even holding an online poll a la american idol that had more than 60 percent voting to “ibasura” the RH bill. so is that supposed to have reversed SWS survey findings that have 7 out of 10 filipinos in favor of the RH bill?
priests and bishops and their faithful as well as the media should read the latest column of john j. caroll, sj (via flor lacanilao) who dares disagree with the church on the RH bill:
With all due respect for the position of the Philippine bishops, I do not see that total opposition to the bill necessary. First of all, the bill does not legalize contraceptives; they are already legal and may be purchased in any drugstore.
Neither does the bill legalize abortion; on the contrary it reaffirms the constitutional prohibition. It is highly probable in fact that if contraceptives become more available to the poor, the scandalous number of illegal abortions performed annually will be dramatically reduced.
On whether the IUD and some contraceptive pills may prevent the implantation of a fertilized ovum and so destroy a human life, the current draft of the bill passes the responsibility to the Food and Drug Administration, which should ban any such “contraceptives” from drugstores throughout the country.
The charge is made that the RH bill will destroy the Filipino family. On the basis of more than 25 years of pastoral and social work in Payatas, and some seven years sponsoring natural family planning programs, I can say that the family is already at great risk—and not because of contraceptives.
These are often one-parent families abandoned by the fathers who have gone on to father second and even third families. Or no-parent families abandoned by both father and mother and being raised by grandparents.
If only the effort and resources being now invested in opposition to the RH bill were being used for serious family-life education and family support services, there might be little reason to oppose the bill.
this is a prime opportunity for GMA news tv do ANC better by scrapping the debate format to level the talking field that is dominated by the anti-RH. let mel tiangco be the devil’s advocate, raise the arguments of the anti-RH for the pro-RH to respond to without imposed time limits that do not help the discourse any. this is one of those issues (like the u.s. bases issue in the late 1980s) when the media networks should not stand by as neutral observers but should take a stand, if not expressly pro-RH, at least expressly for a fairer hearing of the pro-RH side. allow the majority sentiment full expression, for a change.
eat bulaga! vs. RH?
Sotto stakes post in anti-RH fight. hmm.
Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III Wednesday said he was willing to risk his position in the chamber if his colleagues would insist on passing the reproductive health (RH) bill, which is said to be on the Aquino administration’s list of priority measures.
… “I cannot guarantee that it will be in the order of business,” he told the Inquirer by phone. “They rather replace me as the majority leader. They might as well find someone else.”
As the majority leader and chairman of the committee on rules, Sotto is instrumental in the preparation of the chamber’s order of business, in consultation with Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile.
ah so. akala ko his post as senator. yun pala his post as majority floorleader and chairman of the committee on rules lang. tipong he’s saying na it’s up to him whether, if at all, the RH bill is ever included in the senate’s order of business. and, reading between the lines, tipong the RH bill gets tabled over-his-dead-body, that is, he would have to be replaced first. aba, naghahamon, ang lakas ng loob, bakit kaya.
“There are many issues and questions to hurdle before the RH bill is even placed in the actual priority list of the Senate,” Sotto said.
Sotto, for instance, rejected the idea that proponents of the measure wanted a national policy that would impose their position on the use of contraceptives even among people not amenable to them.
“Why do they impose their choice on us? Suppose I file a bill banning all contraceptives in the country, would they like that?” he said.
hmm again. who’s talking ba about imposing anything on anyone? the idea is to make all these contraceptive measures available. it’s up to individuals, couples, given adequate information, to decide what kind of contraception they want to use, IF ANY. maybe he doesn’t understand english?
At present, he pointed out that contraceptives were available around the country to anyone who wished to purchase one. A national RH policy would require the use of taxpayers’ money to buy contraceptives and make them available to all, he added.
naku, sounds just like roilo golez of the lower house. so contraceptives are only for those who can afford them? paano na the 80 percent poor, let them multiply and multiply, the better to keep augmenting a cheap labor force?
and what’s wrong with using taxpayers’ money to help out couples who want to plan their families, the better to feed clothe and shelter them? taxpayers’ money is used for obscene pork barrels that build basketball courts and waiting sheds and sub-standard roads, not to speak of the commissions that line their pockets for every government contract they approve, or how else do these public servants get so rich?
what really intrigues me is, who’s behind sotto? who has tasked him to kill the RH bill in the upper house? and in exchange for what? who, what makes him so uncaring of the wishes of 7 out of 10 pinoys who want an RH law? bosslady gma? the bishops? is he katoliko sarado pala? kailan pa?
what about his fellow commedians vic & joey kaya? anti-RH din ba sila? the better for eat bulaga!? ika nga, habang may bata, may eat bulaga!?
simbang gabi RH blues
to get in the christmas mood, for a change, nagsisimbang gabi kami ni katrina. the first dawn we went to st. francis church along shaw blvd., a three-minute drive from the house. the big church was full, all seats taken, standing room only for many late-comers.
to our dismay, merong pre-mass video about RH, complete with a hillary clinton clip equating RH with abortion. the audio was bad, and i was glad. (i wondered if this was regular sunday fare too.)
worse, during the looooong sermon, mga kalahating oras yata yon, at least five maybe ten minutes were devoted to the evils of RH na, sabi daw mismo ni first lady hillary clinton, is the same thing as abortion, all in the context of na contrary to isaiah the prophet’s admonition to “observe what is right, and do what is just”.
nagpanting ang tenga ko. naalaala ko tuloy si carlos celdran. sayang wala akong placard saying, it’s a lie! as if. di ko naman type na umeksena. thought of walking out instead but it didn’t feel like the right thing to do. we wanted to finish the mass more than to make a statement.
over breakfast we wondered if we should find another church. a friend said it might be the same in all parish churches, on order of the bishops. we decided to give st. francis another chance, maybe it would be another priest, maybe it would be another kind of sermon.
hayy. no such luck. same priest. again, this time in the context of joseph’s genealogy, the long string of “begats” tracing his ancestry to abraham, ipinasok na naman ang RH=abortion. this time naalala ko my parents, regular churchgoers all their lives. they would have been so shocked and scandalized to hear such talk in a church, during mass. my ears shut down, my mind wandered, wondering where to next.
day 3 we tried christ the king in green meadows. smaller church, sosyal neighborhood, a 10-15 minute drive away. hallelujah. no pre-mass RH=abortion video. no talk of RH=abortion in the sermon which took 10 minutes or so. on the story of joseph agonizing over what to do when he found out that the virgin mary was pregnant with a child not his, until he was visited in a dream by an angel who told him that the child had been conceived through the holy spirit and to call him jesus. the sermon likened joseph’s travails to what we all go through in life, both dark times and good times, and the choices we all have to make, na naikonekt rin niya sa poverty and ofws. good job.
i can only imagine how the st.francis priest used joseph’s story to again push the RH=abortion line lie. i’m glad i wasn’t there to hear it. thank god for christ the king!