• CHALLENGES TO RH
• (Speech delivered by Rep. Edcel C. Lagman during the Launching
• of the Primer on Legal Issues in Reproductive Health
• at the UP Law Center on 09 December 2011)

           The variations of the RH bill have been stalled in the legislative gauntlet for over 12 years now since the first comprehensive bill was filed in 1999 during the 11^th Congress.

            The travails of the RH bill continue despite favorable and enabling indicators like:

            1)          Survey after survey --nationwide, regional and local--document the peoples’ vast and continuing support for the measure with (a) 71% of the respondents saying nationwide that it must be enacted without further delay (with higher percentages registered in areas where the Congressmen are opposed to the bill, like 86% in Manila, 89% in Parañaque and 88% in Cebu); (b) 68% responding that the government has authority to use public funds for family planning, including the procurement and distribution of contraceptives to voluntary acceptors (64% in Manila, 70% in Parañaque and 75% in Cebu); (c) voters prefer candidates who have an agenda on family planning; and (d) the vast majority of the respondents are Catholics.

           2)           The Philippines is a signatory to relevant international conventions promoting and protecting reproductive health, like: (a) the Tehran Convention on Human Rights which upholds the right of parents to freely and responsibly determine the number and spacing of their children; (b) the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action; (c) Convention on the Rights of the Child; (d) Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); (e) Universal Declaration of Human Rights; (f) International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICECSR); and (g) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

               3)          President Aquino has endorsed to the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) and to the Congress the enactment of the RH bill as a priority administration measure.

               In this connection, it is pertinent to ask whether the President is doing enough to assure the passage of the RH bill? Maybe prioritization is not sufficient. The President has to do more to convince his congressional allies that the enactment of the RH bill is imperative as an indispensable tool to achieve sustainable human development.

              The arsenal of the Presidency to rally support for a measure or agenda is legendary. This time, the weaponry of power can be used by the President for the good of the greatest number—the multitude of the marginalized and disadvantaged, particularly women and children who are the direct and immediate beneficiaries of the RH bill.

              The challenges to the RH bill are not cerebral. They are mundane and parochial. They cannot even be elevated to “challenges”. They are just plain “obstructions”, like the following:

              1)  Problem of quorum;

              2)  Repetitive questions or recidivist interpellations and absentee interpelators;

              3)  Political equation; and

              4)  Fear factor

              Quorum – It is a truism that the act of legislation is a numbers game. The numbers could be herded, mob-like, unthinking, ambivalent or sparse. But they are numbers just the same. Numbers are needed to enact. And lack of numbers is useful to delay legislation.

              The lack of a quorum is a convenient excuse to stall legislation. The absence of a quorum can even be contrived or intentional.

              It is for this reason that we have continuously reminded RH authors and advocates to be present at all times. But even they could not subscribe to this strict discipline.

              The solution is for the leadership of the House to take the bold initiative and enforce the rules, including sanctions for absenteeism. Leniency must be jettisoned. It is a bane to policy-making.

              Recidivist Interpellations – After 12 years of debate inside and outside the Halls of Congress, all relevant and irrelevant questions have been asked about the RH bill. There is absolutely no new argument or novel misconception.

              Questions are asked repeatedly not to debate or inform but to cause delay.

              Many registered themselves as interpellators but when their time comes to confront the sponsors, they either conveniently absent themselves or feign not being prepared.

              We call again on the leadership of the House of Representatives to adopt, issue and enforce the rules of engagement which ban repetitive questions and limit the interpellator’s time to not more than one (1) hour in order to foreclose inordinate delay.

              Political Equation – Politics is addition. To a politician, every vote counts, even the vote of the devil. Hence, a politician reaches out to all. Although there is no Catholic vote, an ordinary politician, as much as possible, will not dare displease his Bishop or get the ire of the Church. Consequently, he usually defers or succumbs to the importuning of the clergy.

              The solution is a strong political will and steadfast commitment to a cause. This should be buttressed by a full realization that the RH advocacy is supported by the people and there is popular rejection of the undue interference of the Church hierarchy in secular affairs.

             Fear Factor - The macabre instruments of torture and terror employed for ages by despots and ecclesiastics are merely secondary to the pervasive and malevolent instigation of fear to secure blind adherence and break principled resistance.

             The Catholic Church has long perfected the policy and practice of instilling fear in both the faithful and prospective converts.

            The fear of sin has been conceptualized and propagated by clerics in order to make their ministry continually relevant as they intercede on behalf of sinners for God’s pardon and mercy. The fear of eternal damnation and hellfire has coerced or frightened people to obey Church dogma and has subdued crusading dissenters against the teachings of the faith.

             Nowhere in recent years has the Church’s mastery of the fear factor been put to much exploitative use than in the current debates on the reproductive health bill – fear of contraceptives, fear of a demographic winter and fear of promiscuity, among others.

            The Catholic Church peddles the fear and lie that contraceptives like pills, IUDs and injectables induce abortions or are abortifacients, and will definitely lead to cancer; a demographic winter, which is a scare tactic, will lead to the decimation of the Filipino race; and sexuality education will create a breed of sex maniacs.

             The solution to fear is to foster the truth. Those who capitalize on fear are bankrupt in reason. They cannot compete in the free market of ideas. Fear has to be confronted and dismantled because it is the antithesis of truth and free choice.

            These “challenges”, more appropriately “obstructions”, are not insuperable. They are feeble posturing and mainly dilatory tactics. But delay is not victory. It just temporizes the eventual and certain triumph of a progressive and much-needed RH law.

            In our inevitable victory, we truly count on the unwavering support of the NGO community which prominently includes the ReproCen, and the steadfast advocacy of the academe like the UP College of Law, UP Institute of Human Rights, UP Institute of International Legal Studies and Center for International Law.

             This Primer on Legal Issues in Reproductive Health is a welcome addition to the increasing positive literature on reproductive health. And more importantly, it will be our veritable ammunition when we venture to the next battlefield—the judicial forum where the opponents of RH vow to contest the constitutionality of the RH law.

             Let me underscore that the detractors of the RH bill are the ones going to the Supreme Court. This means that they have conceded that eventually there will be a Reproductive Health Law, whose constitutionality they will challenge, albeit vainly and perfunctorily.

             Whether these “challenges” are real or contrived, your RH advocates inside and outside the Congress are always ready to confront and vanquish the oppositors, now in the Congress and subsequently in the Supreme Court.

“ENACT THE RH BILL NOW”

(SPONSORSHIP SPEECH ON HOUSE BILL 4244

delivered by REP. EDCEL C. LAGMAN on 08 March 2011)

        March is the month we celebrate worldwide Women and Womanhood. The centenary of International Women’s Day falls on March 8 this year. It is only fitting that today, March 08, 2011, we begin the sponsorship and eventual plenary debates on the reproductive health bill – a measure that will help safeguard the future of millions of Filipino women and their families and will have a host of positive multiplier effects on the health of women and children, and enable sustainable human development for our country and people.

         This is the third time in as many Congresses that I have stood before this August Chamber to deliver my sponsorship message on the RH bill. I am confident that the saying, “third time’s the charm”, will abide with us.

         The 15^th Congress will be remembered as the Congress that passed the RH bill.

         The country needs an RH law because:

         First, it will protect and promote the following basic rights:

         (a) It will afford parents the opportunity to exercise their right to freely and responsibly plan the number and spacing of their children as enshrined in the Declaration of Tehran to which the Philippines was a signatory almost 42 years ago. The RH bill is rights-based, and central to the measure is freedom of informed choice.  Consistent with freedom of choice, this bill has no specific demographic targets. It is not a population control measure. The moderation or deceleration of population growth is consequential to the promotion of reproductive health and sustainable human development.

             The bill mandates the access to all forms of family planning, both natural and modern, by women and couples, who are voluntary acceptors as long as they are legal and medically-safe, and truly effective.

             It is important to underscore that neither the Church nor the State has the right to dictate on the faithful or citizens which form of family planning they should use. That choice primarily and ultimately belongs to the couple, but most especially to women who bear the brunt of pregnancy, childbirth and child care.

        (b) It will enhance the right to health as it improves maternal, newborn and child health and nutrition, and reduces maternal, infant and child mortality.

             With all the talk about sex and religion that unfortunately dominates discussions about RH, people tend to overlook the fact that notwithstanding its positive impact on population and development, the bill is also a health measure.

             The death of 500,000 women worldwide annually due to complications related to high risk pregnancies which could be prevented by access to effective family planning, and lack or absence of skilled attendance at childbirth is both an aberration and a gross social injustice.

             Multiparity or having many children is positively associated with maternal mortality because with each additional pregnancy, a woman’s lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes progressively increases.

             Effective contraception leads to better spacing of pregnancies, helps women avoid unwanted pregnancies, reduces the chances of malnutrition for mothers and therefore contributes to their overall well-being.

         (c)  We need an RH law to effectuate the people’s right to sustainable human development.

               It is beyond debate that an exploding population impacts negatively on all indicators of human development like education, health, employment, housing, food security and the environment.

               Development experts affirm that population and development are inextricably linked. The Asian Development Bank, in a 2004 review entitled “Poverty in the Philippines: Income, Assets, and Access,” listed an expanding population as one of the major causes of poverty in the country.

              Local economists have also declared that there is greater incidence of poverty in larger families and that large family size is a significant factor in perpetuating poverty across generations. (Orbeta and Pernia)

             The annual UN Human Development Reports also show that countries with higher population growth invariably score lower in human development.

             The Philippines is the 12^th most populous country in the world and placed 97^th out of 169 countries in quality of life in the UNDP’s latest Human Development Report.

             China, the world’s most populous country ranks 89^th; India, which is on the heels of China, is 119^th; and Pakistan and Bangladesh which rank 6^th and 7^th, respectively, in terms of population, are 125^th and 129^th in human development.

             On the other hand, the top three countries in human development, Norway, Australia and New Zealand, all have extremely lean total populations and low population growth rates.

             Second, an RH law will definitely help lower the incidence of abortion by preventing unplanned, mistimed and unwanted pregnancies – the very unintended pregnancies which are terminated through abortion principally by young, Catholic and married women who could not afford another child.

             (a) There is an inverse relationship between contraception and abortion. Studies conducted by the Guttmacher Institute reveal that correct and regular use of contraceptives can reduce abortion rates by a staggering 85%. Truly, the RH bill is an anti-abortion measure.

             (b) A pregnancy that is planned and wanted will not be aborted. It is therefore only logical to conclude that the more women can avoid unintended and mistimed pregnancies through effective family planning, the less the incidence of abortion will be.

             (c) If the incidence of abortion is considerably diminished by appropriate, legal and effective contraception, it stands to reason that there is no justification for the legalization of abortion. The RH bill will not lead to the legalization of abortion.

         Third, an RH law enhances the ability of the Philippines to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), whose common denominator is reproductive health and family planning.

         Virtually all the MDGs, but especially the goals which pledge elimination of gender-based discrimination; decrease in infant deaths; safe motherhood; and the prevention of the spread of HIV and AIDS, are closely related to reproductive health and family planning.

         Fourth, an RH law will buttress the country’s anti-poverty agenda. The authors of the RH bill do not claim that it is the panacea to underdevelopment or a universal remedy to poverty. It is not a magic pill.

         However, I would like to emphasize that without a clear policy on RH, government’s anti-poverty strategies will continue to be undermined by a ballooning population as an inordinately huge population growth rate aggravates existing poverty.

          The Philippines’ very own Rafael Salas, the first Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund emphasized that there are “crucial links between population and development and (there is) need to take population factors into account in development plans.”

         Fifth, the promotion of reproductive health is cost effective. It is much cheaper than the mega projects of government which have much lesser beneficiaries and riddled with corruption. The improvement of maternal and infant health and reduction of maternal and infant mortality and morbidity also generates multi-billion savings for the government in terms of reduced expenses for maternal and infant medical care which could be channeled to education and other basic services.

         Research by Likhaan and the Guttmacher Institute shows that government allocates a minimum of P5.5 billion in healthcare costs each year for the management of unintended pregnancies and their complications.

         This kind of health management is not a cost-effective public health spending because only P2.0 to P3.5 billion annually is needed to fund a comprehensive range of voluntary family planning services for the entire country according to the same study.

         Investing in family planning services would then mean savings of several billion pesos which can be used for other badly needed social services.

         The UNICEF way back in 1992 asserted that “family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race.”

         Sixth, the RH bill goes beyond family planning. RH is all- encompassing. Aside from family planning information and services, its expansive coverage includes:

• Maternal, infant and child health and nutrition, including breastfeeding;
• Prohibition of abortion and management of  abortion complications;
• Adolescent and youth reproductive health and sexuality education;
• Prevention and management of sexually transmittable infections (STIs), like HIV-AIDS;
• Elimination of violence against women;
• Treatment of breast and reproductive tract cancers and other gynecological conditions and disorders including infertility and sexual dysfunction in both men and women; and
• Male responsibility and participation in reproductive health;

         Seventh, the RH bill is constitutional. It maintains unconditional fealty to Section 12 of Article II on State Policies which pertinently provides: “It (the State) shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”

         The overriding purpose of this provision is to preempt the Congress and the Supreme Court from legalizing abortion.

         House Bill No. 4244 is indubitably against abortion. It unequivocally provides that “nothing in this Act changes the law against abortion”.

        The genesis of the aforequoted constitutional provision shows that the proposal to include in the Bill of Rights that the “right to life extends to the fertilized ovum” was rejected by the Constitutional Commission of 1987. The phrase “fertilized ovum” was never constitutionalized, just like the phrase from “the moment of conception” because the Commissioners were unable to determine when the precise moment of conception is.

         Contraceptives are not banned by the Constitution. This is so because contraceptives like pills, injectables, condoms and IUDs are not abortifacients.

         The principal purposes of contraceptives are: (1) to prevent ovulation, in which case there is no egg to be fertilized and no fetus to abort; and (2) to prevent the sperm from reaching the egg, in which case there is no fertilization and no fetus is formed.

         Medical authorities define abortion as “termination of pregnancy after implantation and before the conceptus has become independently viable.” [International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO)]

         Legal jurisprudence defines abortion as “the expulsion of the foetus before it has acquired the power of sustaining an independent life.” [Philippine Legal Encyclopedia]

         Clearly, there can be no abortion before the onset of pregnancy or conception when the blastocyst is implanted in the uterine lining or the woman’s womb.

         A couple or a woman who uses contraceptives or a physician who prescribes contraceptives cannot be accused of the crime of abortion because contraceptives do not expel or detach the fetus from a pregnant woman’s womb. Contraceptives prevent conception or pregnancy but do not pre-terminate pregnancy. Verily, contraceptives are contra-conception.

         The reason why the issue of RH is almost always linked exclusively with family planning – especially the use of condoms, pills and IUDs – is because the Catholic hierarchy, which is the main critic of the bill, is not against the elimination of violence against women or the treatment of breast cancer or maternal and child health and nutrition and other elements of RH. It is only against making modern family planning methods available to women and couples and the teaching of sexuality and RH education to the youth.

          Therefore, the most vocal critics of the bill conveniently want the issue to be limited to the so-called evils of modern contraception.

           Verily, reproductive health transcends family planning as the full range of RH attests.

           We must be unwavering in the campaign to protect and promote every Filipino’s right to reproductive health, and the right of every woman over her own body and be liberated from unremitting pregnancies.

           We must not allow religious intolerance to consign mothers into early death because family planning services are not available to them so they could avoid high risk pregnancies.

           We will not allow antediluvian precepts to doom a progressive measure which promotes choice, not compulsion or even reward.

           We must all remember that the Catholic hierarchy’s stance against modern contraceptives is not categorized as an “infallible dogma”.

           Immediately after the release in 1968 of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which was based on a minority report of the Papal Birth Control Commission and contrary to the majority position permissive of contraceptive use, Monsignor Fernando Lambrouschini, the then official spokesman for the Vatican, announced: “attentive reading of the encyclical Humanae Vitae does not suggest the theological note of infallibility… It is not infallible.”

           Honorable colleagues, I earnestly entreat you to join and help us pass the RH bill so that every Filipino child will be born wanted and the miracle of life will not mean death for 11 Filipino mothers daily.

           Help us enact the RH bill so that we can give premium to life and make every woman and child truly count.

SPONSORSHIP REMARKS

(Delivered by REP. EDCEL C. LAGMAN, Principal Author of House Bill No. 96, at the public hearing on the RH bills by the Committee on Population and Family Relations on 24 November 2010)

If the oppositors to the RH bills can be true and candid to the public and to themselves, they would admit that they are objecting not because the bills are health measures but because the bills are basically family planning and population measures.

 Verily, the referral of the bills to the Committee on Population and Family Relations is correct and consistent with the jurisdiction of the committee on “all matters directly and principally relating to population growth and family planning” as provided by Section 27 (mm) of the Rules of the House.

 Family planning and population and development are interlinked with reproductive health.

 The RH bills aim to ensure an enabling environment for people to choose freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and the method of family planning best suited to their needs and personal convictions – which are basic human rights. They seek to help women and couples meet their fertility goals and guarantee the reproductive health of all Filipinos.

 Neither the Church nor the State has the right to dictate on the faithful or citizens which form of family planning they should use. That choice primarily and ultimately belongs to the couple, but most especially to women who bear the brunt of pregnancy, childbirth and childcare.

 The central concept of the RH bills is freedom of informed choice. There is neither compulsion or reprisals for non-acceptors nor rewards or incentives for acceptors.

A comprehensive, rights-based, health-oriented and development-driven law on reproductive health and population development will also:

 1.  Improve maternal, newborn and child health and nutrition, and reduce maternal, infant and child mortality, consistent with the Millennium Development Goals whose common denominator is reproductive health and family planning;

2.  Effectuate the people’s right to sustainable human development;

3.  Help lower the incidence of abortion by preventing unplanned, mistimed and unwanted pregnancies – the very pregnancies which are terminated through abortion;

4.  Enhance the success  of the country’s poverty alleviation agenda; and

5.  Enable government to confront the challenges of climate change and environmental despoliation. I am positive that the enactment of a national statute that upholds the right of every woman to safe motherhood; the right of every Filipino to reproductive self-determination; and the right of every child to be born wanted, is nearing its ultimate realization.

 The people have spoken in favor of the RH bills in numerous surveys with consistent results; the leadership of the House is committed to prioritize consideration of the bills and put to a vote a consolidated version; the President is steadfast for responsible parenthood and voluntary contraceptive use; and the Holy Father has moderated the Church’s prior total ban on the use of condoms in favor of their use for health reasons.

I earnestly urge the approval of House Bill 96 together with the five allied bills.