Business leaders back RH bill with caveats
By DAVID DIZON / abs-cbnNEWS.com | 10/17/2008 8:42 PM
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A majority of local businessmen are generally supportive of the pending Reproductive Health Bill in Congress but oppose portions of the measure that penalize health care service providers who fail to provide family planning services to indigents.
Friday's gathering of business leaders from the Makati Business Club and the Management Association of the Philippines at the Peninsula Manila hotel in Makati City was anything but boring as businessmen shared opinions about conception, the economic effects of overpopulation and even government and religious intervention in the bedroom.
Prof. Felipe Medalla of the University of the Philippines School of Economics started the discussions by saying that he supports the bill but opposes the mandatory teaching of sex education in the classrooms. Under House Bill No. 5043 or the Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008, students from Grade 5 up to 4th Year High School will be taught reproductive health education in the classroom.
Medalla also opposed the imposition of penalties ranging from P10,000 to P50,000 fines and imprisonment from one to six months for violators of the measure.
A former socioeconomic planning secretary under the Ramos administration, Medalla said the bill would directly benefit poor families who want to control unwanted pregnancies but have no money to buy contraceptives or even undergo medical procedures that prevent pregnancy.
He said campaigns to promote Natural Family Planning (NFP) methods generally do not work. He quoted one priest who said that "learning NFP is too difficult. The poor are deprived of so many things and to deprive them of lovemaking is to make their lives even more miserable."
He said data on poor families in Payatas show that 25 percent of women who do not want to get pregnant but only use NFP still get pregnant in a single year. He said that on average, many poor families end up having two more children than what they want. Even worse, he said additional data also show that poverty incidence is less than 10 percent among one-child families and 57 percent among families with nine children or more.
'Criminalizing conscience'
Atty. Ricardo Romulo, a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission, endorsed the RH bill but opposed portions that he said "unneccesarily impinges on a person's right to privacy and freedom of conscience."
"Yes, overpopulated as we are, we need to adopt measures to effectively manage our population if we are to achieve sustainable development. But I disagree with the minor premise that those measures need to include criminalizing acts and conduct that involve sensitive issues of morality," he said.
He singled out Sections 17 and 21 of House Bill No. 5043, which identifies specific violations of the RH bill with the corresponding penalties. Under Section 17 of the proposed bill, employers shall "provide reasonable quantity of reproductive health care services, supplies and devices to all workers."
"Does this mean that employers need to stack up on condoms? There is no provision where employers can object on the basis of religion or moral ground," he said.
Romulo also opposed proposed penalties on health care service providers that, a) withhold information or provide incorrect information on reproductive health programs and services, and, b) refuse to perform voluntary ligation and vasectomy on a person on the ground of lack of spousal consent.
"Shouldn't consent be required or at least notice be given to the other spouse as it affects the most intimate and fundamental relationship between them?" he asked.
He said government doctors will face painful dilemmas if the bill imposes penalties on health care providers who refuse reproductive health care services because of the patient's civil status, gender or sexual orientation, age and religion. "Although the house bill exempts conscientous objectors from following the law, I question whether government health workers can claim exemption," he said.
He said that for the bill to be passed, its proponents should delete Sections 17 and 21 of the bill while giving extra budget allocation to the Population Commission that would be used for a massive information campaign on all aspects of reproductive health.
Big Brother vs Religious Right
Roberto de Vera, Urban Strategies Group director of the University of Asia and the Pacific School of Economics, meanwhile, echoed the Catholic church stand in saying that the RH bill would not reduce poverty, would impinge on the roles of parents and would even lead to an increase in abortions in the country.
A self-confessed Catholic, De Vera said reducing population size through mandatory family planning would lead to a Singapore-like situation where the government offers incentives to couples to have more children because of the small labor force. He also said that oral contraceptives are abortifacient in nature and would prevent the fertilized egg from developing.
"Life begins at the moment of conception. All the elements of a future Beethoven, a John Paul II or even a Hitler is inside the embryo," he said.
His comments, however, were met with opposition most notably by business consultant Peter Wallace who said that life begins "two days after conception."
Medalla also denied that passing a family planning law would allow "government to intervene in the bedroom" by subtly imposing family size on couples. He said that failure to pass the reproductive health bill because of the Catholic church's intervention would mean depriving people of the right to information on all methods of family planning and not just the church-approved natural family planning method.
