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Voting no to RH bill: an oversimplistic view

Posted on May 24, 2011

Let’s shoot straight by going right to the core of the subject that divides a wedge and results in two diametrically opposed views – the in favor, the against – of the never-ending RH bill.

What on reflection are these points everyone gravitates to?

There are those who tend to push it as a religious issue, is it? Then there are those who claim it an anti-dote to poverty if indeed less is more? And for the purpose of this article, let us arrive at a third point, namely, on whether the purported claim of reproductive health rights do really have two legs to stand on in the present Constitutional or ideological context.

Let us proceed. In so far as the bill impacts on an obvious morality question of whether to accept or reject the whole idea of abortion, let us grant that then it carries a highly religious overtones. Explicitly or implicitly, abortion under the bill, is part of the territory Let us not fail to read from the catch-basin provisions all so repeated stated throughout the bill.

Secondly, we might be pushed to believe in the Malthusian myth long debunked that population results in less food on the table. Simplistically enough, with more mouths to feed, there will be less food. It’s theoretical bias seems flawed given other factors that actually come into play – cycles of birth with cycles of death, et cetera. Sufficient to say, there are ‘equalizing factors’ that cannot be taken for granted.

Lastly, the bill unpretentiously constructs the very Constitutional foundation of a new wave of State policies and principles, that in the first place, have not been written yet nor breathe in the present constitutional order. But in reality, there is no such thing as reproductive rights, or reproductive health rights. Rights for whom – the poor, the unborn, the pregnant, the women?

The bill has, unthinkingly enough, erected the entire edifice of a law that is soon to crumble like a caste in the sand. We hate to believe that some ‘payola or lobby money’ is the prime inducement for pushing hard the bill no matter the grim and dim consequences may be.

Are we beyond redemption? We are saved if we vote no to RH bill or open the gates to hell by voting yes. Certainly, it is one of those bills built on some outworn medical fallacies that have already been disputed as bereft of higher scientific basis.

It is unfortunate that if we look around, it seems that they have already place the cart before the horse. There are LGUs already implementing important provisions of the yet proposed RH bill.

Offhand, the bill made us appear as if we are not better informed if we are to exercise our freedom when in fact, the proponents are let us track the road toward being more misinformed by their constant and uncharacteristic denial that it, in fact and in effect, promotes abortion.

A provision in the bill that states of ‘post-abortion complications’ has to be deleted as a single proof of good intention, if it can. This seems to be the only way to prove that no abortion is even contemplated, but can the authors do so, pray tell?

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