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Corrosive Reproductive Health Bill Takes Center Stage in Philippines

by Mark DeYoung

A battle is on in the Philippines.

In this predominantly Catholic country, a heated debate over the Reproductive Health and Population Development bill (HB 5043) is raging in the Philippine Congress. First introduced several years ago, this bill would require local governments to provide free or low-cost access to condoms, artificial contraceptives (birth control pills, IUDs, etc.) and sterilizations (tubal ligations and vasectomies), while mandating sex education for children from fifth grade through high school.

The bill is gaining significant momentum, with the latest version passing out of the House’s health committee for the first time. While its proponents claim that passage would provide equal access to reproductive services for the poorer classes, the bill would actually create a coercive legal framework on the outdated concept that population growth and poverty go hand in hand.

The bill’s main advocate, Rep. Edcel Lagman, claims that checking population growth is of national interest.

“Unbridled population growth stunts socioeconomic development and aggravates poverty,” he declared in an op-ed, rejecting the prevailing evidence that shows no real correlation between population and poverty.

Even the Guttmacher Institute, a well-funded abortion advocacy think tank, concedes that “family planning alone will not necessarily reduce poverty in developing countries” and that “[family planning efforts] are not the only, or even the most important, factors in poverty reduction.”

Strangely, Lagman seems to be playing an active role in history potentially repeating itself. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the Philippine government invested three billion pesos in aggressive contraception distribution programs (that over time reduced the number of children per family from seven to three), with no meaningful improvement in quality of life or poverty reduction.

HB 5043 adopts this faulty population-poverty correlation en masse, legally declaring that the ideal family size for sustainable development is no more than two children. While the bill states that the two-child standard is neither “mandatory nor compulsory,” it is structured so that only two types of families will be recognized for making informed and responsible parenting choices – wealthy families who can “afford” more children, and poorer families who conform themselves to the two-child standard. Such a legal framework can lead to withholding of basic health care and other services for poor families who refuse to conform. Such “disincentives” are well-documented injustices in countries with legally mandated population targets.

There is a history of such negative reinforcement in dozens of countries, even the Philippines. At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, the nations of the world admitted and agreed that “coercion has no part to play. ... Over the past century, many governments have experimented with ...  schemes, including specific incentives and disincentives, in order to lower and raise fertility. Most such schemes have had only marginal impact on fertility and, in some cases, have been counter-productive.” The passing of HB 5043 could put the Philippines back on a dangerous path.

One facet of the bill that lends itself to abuse is where it directs public hospitals to make tubal ligations available at no charge to indigent mothers following delivery. While the bill suggests that ligation be discussed at the mother’s request, it does not prohibit medical staff from bringing it up. With the two-child ideal set as the framework for the whole program, and with the documented history of past abuses under similar circumstances, one can make a strong case for the problematic nature of this section. Women may be pressured to accept permanent sterilization.

In addition to the disproved population-poverty connection in the bill and the potential for coercion, opponents of the bill cite many other reasons for why it should be stopped:

• The bill directly attacks the Philippine Constitution, which holds that “the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”

• HB 5043 would make abortion-inducing contraceptives (whose action can keep a human embryo from implanting to the wall of the uterus) available on a massive scale. Indeed, Rep. Lagman declared in a House hearing that the bill would protect life “from implantation,” implying a new and non-scientific definition of when life begins.

• Also troubling is the fact that the bill describes these abortifacient drugs as “essential medicines.”

• The bill allows health care workers to opt out of delivery of reproductive services they object to, but makes it a crime if they don’t offer referrals for the very services they object to.

• The bill undermines freedom of speech. Among the bill’s prohibited acts is malicious engagement in disinformation about the intent or provisions of the bill, thus outlawing vigorous debate on these issues.

The Reproductive Health Bill has grave implications for the people of the Philippines and would set a bad precedent for other developing nations. It needs to be defeated.

Last fall, fourteen faculty members at a Jesuit university in Manila presented a position paper detailing why “Catholics Can Support the RH Bill in Good Conscience.”

In response, an international group of over forty theologians, philosophers, lawyers and economists pointed out the deleterious aspects of the bill and why it betrays Catholic social doctrine.
They make a strong case for what constitutes true development:

What the poor need is not contraception and sterilization, but to experience authentic solidarity with those who, in responding to their innate dignity, work with the poor to enable them to develop their skills, improve their circumstances and cultivate lives that are marked by both interior and exterior freedom. This places a much more radical demand on those of us to whom much has been given (Luke 12:48); we must live and work with the poor in order to identify and enable the resources they require to live lives of authentic freedom.

 

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)