Everything about : RH Bill ( Reproductive Health Bill)

[emem525]

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Dorothea: hello. We don't know each other but I totally agree with all that you've written down. No use debating with mannywheteverhisnameis because it looks to me that he has already made up his mind: PILLS bad therefore REPRO HEALTH BILL bad too. Well, he's entitled to his own opinion.

Manny: Please see bottom page of the link you said. This was copyrighted 2005. That was ages ago! YOu know how fast science evolves nowadays? Im in the business and every month we receive new data of new breakthroughs in the world of contraception. What was believed to be true in 2005 could be false in 2008. If you want to be updated. Check out the world health organization website and check out reproductive health. Go nuts with all the updates. Get back to us after reading those okay?

[mannyamador]

At least we have proofs that contraceptives are not going to make us murderers.

You mean your UNFOUNDED assumptions? Spare me the BS, please.

@emem525

It looks like YOU have closed your mind. The data proves exactly what I have claimed: that these are abortifacients. Open your eyes.

[mannyamador]

Justifying a wrong end
A LAW EACH DAY (KEEPS TROUBLE AWAY) By Jose C. Sison
Monday, October 06 2008 (Philstar.com: Home)

The debate on H.B. 5043 (RH bill) would have been very informative and enlightening to our legislators and the public in general if the issues raised by those against its passage are met head on, directly refuted and clearly shown to be erroneous. Unfortunately however, they have been muddled by evasive, fallacious and misleading arguments or sometimes, by resort to personalities.

Foremost of these issues is the bill's promotion of the use of artificial contraceptives. Scientific tests and actual experience in countries allowing their use have shown that some of these contraceptives (IUD, Depo Provera, Norplant, RHU 486, emergency morning after pills) directly cause abortion or the expulsion and killing of the foetus. Although the bill states that "abortion continues to be a crime" the bill does not however specifically and expressly ban this abortion causing artificial contraceptives. On the contrary, it even penalizes with fine or imprisonment, health care providers who do not administer or promote their use by women with two or more children.

In answer to this scientific fact about artificial contraceptives, the proponents could only cite the U.S. theory that the crime of abortion occurs only from the time of implantation of the ovum in the uterus because that is the only time when life allegedly begins. This theory however even directly contravenes the constitutional provision protecting the life of the unborn from the moment of conception, which takes place before the implantation (usually six days according to international medical experts). Adopting this theory, even shows that the real intent of the RH bill is to legalize abortion as in the U.S.

The use of artificial contraceptives is further justified by diverting our attention to, and pointing out the ineffectiveness of the natural family planning methods to control our growing population since it is allegedly "too difficult, cumbersome and needs much discipline and spirituality" especially for "so many poor and uneducated couples". According to this argument, since these poor are "already deprived of so many things" we should not "make their lives even more miserable" by depriving them of "love-making when they spontaneously feel like doing so". Hence they should be allowed to use artificial contraceptives in lieu of the difficult and cumbersome natural methods.

The trouble with this argument is that: (1) it uses poverty as a justification to commit abortion with the use of these abortion-causing artificial contraceptives; (2) it assumes that these artificial contraceptives are fail safe when the truth is that in countries where they are used, so many unwanted pregnancies nevertheless occur; (3) due to these unwanted pregnancies the poor couples may even resort to clandestine and unsafe abortion thus it even causes the rise in abortion cases that are already so numerous; (4) it exposes the poor couple to serious and more expensive health problems as it has already been proven that these contraceptives result in other more harmful sickness and physical defects of the women and children; and (5) it may unfortunately lead the poor and uneducated couples to believe that few moments of pleasure will make their lives less miserable.

Indeed poverty has been used as an excuse for so many wrongs committed in our society. Now the RH bill proponents are using alleviation of poverty which is allegedly due to overpopulation as the reason for passing the bill that promotes abortion. This argument is misleading because: (1) our population may admittedly be growing since we are inhabited by men and women of reproductive age. But it is not growing unabated since our population growth rate has slowed down and is steadily decelerating as statistics show; (2) poverty is not caused by our growing population but by a combination of many factors particularly greed, government corruption and inefficiency, uneven distribution or misuse of resources, lack of technology, waste and even natural disasters or wars.

The use of these abortion causing artificial contraceptives is also being justified on the ground that it is supposedly based on an informed choice made by women who are merely afforded their freedom to pick out from among a wide range of natural and artificial methods of birth control. It is argued that as long as there is adequate information on reproductive health and services, women should be left alone to choose their own methods based on their well informed and responsible consciences.

The fallacies of this argument are that: (1) conscience guided by information is not a safe guide since the information given may be wrong as what is happening now in some false ads on TV and radio. Indeed "a conscience is a safe guide only when God is the guide of the conscience"; (2) the element of coercion in the bill in the form of penalty on health care providers who refuse to administer or promote artificial contraceptives on women with two or more children already, actually negates this alleged free choice; and (3) opposing a woman's freedom to choose these abortion-causing artificial contraceptives is not opposing a right but opposing a wrong. Indeed any civilized society should restrict the individual's freedom to choose whenever that choice would harm or kill another innocent and helpless human being as in abortion.

Finally, it has been correctly pointed out that 3/4 of Filipino taxpayers are Catholics. So it is thus unfair for the RH bill to appropriate and use their money to purchase and coercively promote and administer these artificial contraceptives which is against their conscience.

Hence if this RH bill is really for the reproductive health of women and their children, it should ban this abortion causing artificial contraceptives. I doubt however if the authors will do that.

[cottonmouth]

Justifying a wrong end

Finally, it has been correctly pointed out that 3/4 of Filipino taxpayers are Catholics. So it is thus unfair for the RH bill to appropriate and use their money to purchase and coercively promote and administer these artificial contraceptives which is against their conscience.

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True, the 3/4 figure is exaggerated but we can accept that majority are catholics. BUT only 1 out of the 3 is dumb and can be fooled by the priests. As the poll above suggested that is 75% of istoryans agreeing with this bill and I bet most of them are catholics, i.e. wise catholics. So what can I say, the claim of the writer is full of fallacy.

The time of Padre Damaso is long gone mannyboy.

[mannyamador]

True, the 3/4 figure is exaggerated but we can accept that majority are catholics. BUT only 1 out of the 3 is dumb and can be fooled by the priests.

In other words, you're even dumber to be fooled by trapos like Lagman. A far worse fate.

Quit regurgitating myths like "overpopulation". You'll choke on them. Why not try coming up with a rational argument? You haven't so far.

[wng]

You mean your UNFOUNDED assumptions? Spare me the BS, please.

@emem525

It looks like YOU have closed your mind. The data proves exactly what I have claimed: that these are abortifacients. Open your eyes.

Unfounded? BS?
What exactly have you proved? You're the one whose mind is closed. An estimated probability of 1.1% (without clinical support) implantation failure and you go ballistic. Our infant mortality rate is >2.5%. Under natural circumstances, implantation failure can be as high as 30% to 60% depending on who did the estimate. And you conveniently forget that the higher estimates are often due to the rhythm method which cause more embryonic deaths than 1.1%.

[wng]

In other words, you're even dumber to be fooled by trapos like Lagman. A far worse fate.

Quit regurgitating myths like "overpopulation". You'll choke on them. Why not try coming up with a rational argument? You haven't so far.

Country-wide survey actually mirrors the poll here: 71% of Filipinos favor RH bill--SWS - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

Don't worry about anyone here choking on "overpopulation". Before that happens, someone will choke on regurgitating "abortifacient" myths first.

[mannyamador]

Unfounded? BS?
An estimated probability of 1.1% (without clinical support) implantation failure and you go ballistic.

Get your facts straight before spewing your garbage. It can happen once in 88 menstrual cycles based on the EVIDENCE (Kippley, J., "The Pill and Eearly Abortion", All About Issues, 8, Aug-Sept 1989, pp22-23). And even assuming it's 1.1%, that's a a few million dead babies every year. Oh but that slaughter doesn't bother you, right? You'd make a great Nazi.

And you conveniently forget that the higher estimates are often due to the rhythm method which cause more embryonic deaths than 1.1%.

Still peddling hogwash? NFP is not the rhythm method. And the so-called "study" you are quoting was totally discredited by the author's peers right on the his homepage.. The fact that you're even citing it shows that you're just trying to fool people. Just like Lagman. Quite typical of the Bill's advocates.

Hogwash in the guise of research
Joan C Clements
http://jme.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/32/6/355#570

'Rhythm Method Killing Embryos' Study is False on Science and Morality
By John-Henry Westen
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06060508.html

Are these results of a study or suggestions only?
Guenter Freundl, Prof. Dr.
http://jme.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/32/6/355#548

Country-wide survey actually mirrors the poll

That's only because the question asked in the survey was NOT NEUTRAL. It was designed to put the Bill in a favorable light. Here's the question that the SWS survey used:

Ang "Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2007" ay isang panukalang batas sa mababang kapulungan ng kongreso na magbibigay ng katungkulan sa gobyerno na magtaguyod ng programa ukol sa responsableng pagpapamilya o responsible parenthood sa pamamagitan ng sapat na impormasyon sa publiko at pagakakaroon ng mga ligtas, legal, mura at de-kalidad na serbisyong na pang-reproductive health sa mga taong may gusto nito. Kayo po ba ay PABOR o HINDI PABOR sa panukalang batas na ito?

The question used in the survey is very misleading. It makes no mention of artificial contraceptives or the fact that doctors and health workers will be compelled to distribute or promote them. It does not mention any of the negative or controversial aspects of the Bill. It only mentions what sounds good about it like "responsible parenthood" and free, high-quality reproductive health services.

If we take the above description at face value, the Bill looks very good indeed and anyone would be in favor if it. Heck, if I had not known that the Bill would favor artificial contraceptives (the Bill classifies them as "essential medicines") and force doctors, health workers, and employers to dispense them, etc., I would have voted in favor. No wonder then that the survey always shows favorable results. The question is DECEPTIVE.

The fact is that CLOSED-MINDED people like you simply ignore the evidence and rely on your own prejudices, make up all sorts of irrational justifications, and try to deceive people just to get your way. That is dishionest and irresponsible. Wake up.

--
No to Reproductive Health Bill (HB5043) Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/xxhb5043/petition.html

Kill Bill 5043
http://www.prolife.cfcinternationalmissions.com/

[Gwynhuever]

@dorothea....quite a read you posted back there...pero bisan ga nosebleed ko basa ...gipugos jud nako ug tiwas oi he he he....ka tropa ta ma'm

anyway ako sad personally i am for the passing of this bill and worse some people might crucify me...kay pro choice man sad ko he he he...na hala lecture ra dayon ko ninyo nga maka sasala ko...di ko maka communion etc etc...kay "pabor" ko ug abortion kay mao man dayon na...if di ka "pro life" ..pro abortion man daw ka...pastilan!

[mannyamador]

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH BILL?
By Francisco S. Tatad
http://www.cfcffl.org/prolife/articl..._kit_tatad.htm
http://prolife.org.ph/article/articleview/1296/1/103

Amid the domestic fallout of skyrocketing food and oil prices world-wide and a tottering international financial system, some lawmakers have embarked on a high-profile campaign to ram through a population control-driven bill that threatens the sanctity of human life, family life and marriage, without regard to their honored place in our Constitution and our Christian culture.

The population has many problems. But population is not itself the problem. Assuming there are problems associated with population growth, the reproductive health bill does not provide any answers. I hope the following will help put this bill to rest and allow the nation to devote its time, energy and resources to its real and more pressing problems.

1. THE BILL IS BASED ON A FLAWED PREMISE.

There is no “population explosion” and the country is not overpopulated.

The population growth rate and the total fertility rate (TFR) have declined. The National Statistics Office puts the growth rate at 2.04 %, the TFR at 3.02. However, the CIA World Factbook (200, for one, puts the growth rate at 1.728%, the TFR at 3.00. Whatever the real numbers are, at least one million Filipinos leave the country for foreign jobs every year. There are at least 12 million Filipinos now living and working abroad.

The country has a population density of 277 Filipinos per square km, with a GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) of $,3400. The Central African Republic has a population density of 6.5 and a GDP per capita (PPP) of $700. At least 50 countries have a much lower population density than that of the Philippines, yet their GDP per capita is also much lower.

Fact: the few are not always richer.

On the other hand, at least 36 countries have a much higher population density than that of the Philippines, yet their GDP per capita is also much higher. Macau has 18,428 people per square km and a GDP per capita of $28,400; Monaco has 16,754 people per square km, with a per capita income of $30,000; Hong Kong has 6,407 per square km, and a per capita income of $42,000; and Singapore has 6,489 per square km., and a per capita income of $49,700.

Fact: the many are not always poorer.

The most critical statistic has to do with the age structure of the population. Worldwide, the median age is 27.4 years. In the Philippines, it is 23 years. In at least 139 countries it is higher than 23; in 73 others, lower. All the developed countries are on the high side. Monaco has the highest (45.5 years), followed by Japan (43., Germany (43.4), Italy (42.9), Sweden (41.3), Spain (40.7), Switzerland (40.7), Holland (40), United Kingdom (39.9), France (39.2), Singapore (38.4), Russia (38.3), United States (36.7), South Korea (36.4). In China, the world’s fastest growing economy, it is 33.6.

This means a Filipino has more years to be productive than his counterpart in the developed world, where the population is graying and dying, without adequate replacement because of negative birth rates. Those who understand this well will tend to be more confident of the future; they will see the need to invest more extensively in the development of this resource.

2. THE BILL IS TOTALLY UNNECESSARY

Except for the purported objective of treating fertility and preventing abortion, which (if government is serious) may be immediately addressed by secondary health policy, the things the bill wants to do are already being done, whether legally or not.

Officially-sponsored contraception and sterilization are ongoing with foreign and local funding, even without a legal mandate. Punishable abortions go unpunished. Certain things that are lawful and necessary (like promotion of breast-feeding, infant and child health and nutrition) can be done easily without legislation. Some truly repugnant things (like mandatory *** education for young children, inclusion of contraceptives and abortifacients in the National Drug Formulary as essential medicines, and making a family planning compliance certificate from the civil registrar a requirement for marriage) should not be legislated at all.

There is free access to information on contraception. No law bars anyone from using contraceptives of their choice, it is a free market. You don’t need the government for it. Consumers however must pay for their own, as they pay for everything else. The Philippines is not a welfare state, nobody gets a free lunch. If the government has the money, it should spend it to save women from killer-diseases, not on trying to cure pregnancy, which is not a disease.

At least 80 women are said to die from heart diseases everyday; 63 from vascular diseases; 51 from cancer; 45 from pneumonia; 23 from tuberculosis; 22 from diabetes; 16 from lower chronic respiratory diseases. This is where the State should provide, if it could, free medicine and medical services.

Now, out of every 100,000 live births, some 107 women are said to die from complications during childbirth. This is 107 too many. But the local executives of Gattaran, Cagayan and Sorsogon City have shown that maternal death during childbirth could be brought down to zero simply by providing women with adequate basic and emergency obstetric care facilities and skilled medical services. Not contraceptives.

On July 29, 2005, the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that after a thorough review of the published scientific literature, it was concluded that oral contraceptives are carcinogenic to humans ---they cause breast, liver and cervical cancer. In light of that, the government should probably ban the carcinogens or at least label them as “cancer-causing,” or “dangerous to women’s health.” But some legislators, some of them doctors too, still want to distribute them as “essential medicines” to our women. Why?

3. THE BILL ASSUMES THAT THE STATE IS OMNIPOTENT. IT SEEKS TO CONFER UPON THE STATE A RIGHT AND AUTHORITY IT DOES NOT, AND CAN NEVER, POSSESS.

No one questions the right of the State to levy taxes, to expropriate private property for public use, to conscript able-bodied young men for its defense. But the State may not enter the family bedroom and tell married couples how to practice marital love.

For while it is a citizen who casts his vote, pays his taxes and fights for his flag, it is a man who embraces his wife and fathers her child. There are certain areas, certain activities of man as man where every individual is accountable only to God, and completely autonomous from the State. These are sacred and inviolate areas where the State may not intrude.

Allow the State to invade our innermost private lives, and it will just be a matter of time before we are told we can no longer breathe unless the State allows it.

4. THE BILL IS PATENTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

a) Article II, Section 12 of the Constitution provides: “The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. The natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the development of moral character shall receive the support of the Government.”

“Sanctity” -- the state of being holy -- is an attribute of God. God is not outside our lives; the very first words of the Constitution proclaim it: “We, the sovereign Filipino People, imploring the aid of Almighty God…” Obedience to God’s laws, therefore, is not only a solemn teaching of the Church, but also an express constitutional mandate.

The government cannot be party to a program that seeks to prevent one married woman from conceiving, without making a mockery of that mandate. That is the necessary implication of the State’s duty to “equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”

b). Article XV recognizes “marriage as an inviolable social institution,” and “the foundation of the family.” Which, in turn, the State recognizes as “the foundation of the nation.” Section 3 (1) of the same Article binds the State to defend “the right of spouses to found a family in accordance with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood.”

Clearly, this does not allow the State to tell members of any faith ---in this case the Catholic faith---not to listen to what their Church teaches on faith and morals, or responsible parenthood, but to listen to the politicians and the population controllers instead.

But this is precisely what the bill seeks to do.

5. THE BILL IS DESTRUCTIVE OF PUBLIC MORALS AND FAMILY VALUES.

It seeks to legislate a hedonistic ***-oriented lifestyle whose aim is to assure couples and everybody else of “a safe and satisfying *** life” (the other term for contraceptive ***), instead of a mutually fulfilling conjugal life, and ultimately change time-honored Filipino values about human life, family life, marriage, in favor of the most destructive counter-values that are wreaking havoc on the morals of many consumerist societies.

6. THE BILL IS PARTICULARLY UNJUST TO CATHOLIC TAXPAYERS, WHO CONSTITUTE THE MAJORITY, AND WHO WILL BE MADE TO BEAR THE COST OF THE PROGRAM THAT WILL ULTIMATELY ATTACK A CONSTANTLY HELD DOCTRINE OF THEIR FAITH.

The same objection would hold even if the affected party were a religious minority. In fact, it should be interesting to find out whether any legislator will dare propose any legislation that is doctrinally and morally offensive to Islam or to any politically active local religious group.

7. THE BILL IS NOT WHAT ITS AUTHORS SAY IT IS. IT IS EVERYTHING THEY SAY IT IS NOT.

Not only is it hedonistic, it is above all eugenicist. It seeks to eliminate the poor and the “socially unfit” while paying lip service to their cause. While it neither mandates a two-child family nor legalizes abortion, it prepares the ground for both.

Its declared objective of population reduction conforms to the global population policy launched by U.S. National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200 in 1974, under the title IMPLICATIONS OF WORLDWIDE POPULATION GROWTH FOR U.S. SECURITY AND OVERSEAS INTERESTS. It targeted the Philippines, along with India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia and Columbia.

NSSM 200, also known as The Kissinger Report, called for a two-child family worldwide by the year 2000, using universal contraception and abortion. “No country has reduced its population growth without resorting to abortion,” the Report said. In 1974, NSSM 200 estimated thirty million abortions worldwide. The annual rate has doubled since.

8. ENACTMENT OF THE BILL WILL ONLY DEEPEN THE IGNORANCE ABOUT THE ISSUES INVOLVED.

Some defenders of the bill claim that nine out of ten women (who must be Catholic) want to contracept, regardless of what the Church teaches about it. Sad, but if the claim is correct, then nine out of ten “Catholic” women need to be instructed more deeply on the doctrines of their faith and on the harmful effects of contraceptives and abortifacients. Not everything an individual wants is good or right; the truth is never the result of opinion surveys. Contraception is wrong not because the Church has banned it; the Church has banned it because it is wrong. No amount of surveys can change that.

The authors of the bill suggest that Catholics need not follow what the bishops are saying because Humanae Vitae, Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on the regulation of birth, is not an infallible document. This is an unfortunate conclusion from an incomplete premise.

Church teaching on contraception did not begin with Paul VI. Onan’s case (Gen 38:8-10) is absolute proof; Pius XI and Pius XII pronounced on it before Humanae Vitae, appealing to Scripture, to the Fathers of the Church, and to tradition. While Humanae Vitae was not infallibly proposed, its teaching has been held definitively by all Catholic bishops. It meets the criteria set forth by Vatican II for an infallible exercise of the ordinary magisterium of the bishops throughout the world. As the theologian Russell Shaw points out, the Church has always taught contraception to be gravely sinful; she has never taught that it is good, permissible, or even only venially sinful.

9. THE NATURAL REGULATION OF CONCEPTIONS DOES NOT OFFEND THE CONSTITUTION OR THE RELIGIOUS BELIEF OF ANY COUPLE; IT IS IN FULL ACCORD WITH THE DEMANDS OF RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD, AND IS NOT CONTRACEPTION AT ALL. NO LAW IS NEEDED FOR THE STATE TO SUPPORT IT.

The Billings Method, which takes advantage of the fertility rhythm of the human body, has been attested by the WHO to be 99% effective. But as there is no money in it, no industry has promoted it like the various contraceptives and abortifacients. State support for it could spell the difference.

(Former Senator Francisco S. Tatad represents Asia-Pacific on the Governing Boards of International Right to Life Federation, Cincinnati, Ohio, and World Youth Alliance, New York, NY.)

No to Reproductive Health Bill (HB5043) Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/xxhb5043/petition.html

Kill Bill 5043
http://www.prolife.cfcinternationalmissions.com/