Solon calls on ‘women power’ vs reproductive health bill critics

MANILA, Philippines – A female lawmaker will be banking on “women power” in fending off critics of the controversial reproductive health bill now pending at the House of Representatives. In a statement, Akbayan party-list Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel urged other female solons to always be present and active during plenary sessions to counter "dilatory tactics" employed by those against the said measure. "We may not be united in supporting the RH bill, but we must at the very least recognize that reproductive health is a women's issue. Let us not allow a fundamental women's issue to be killed because of something as frivolous as absenteeism," Hontiveros-Baraquel said. The party-list representative is one of the controversial measure's 90-plus co-authors. Hontiveros-Baraquel said women are deprived of the right to choose every time deliberations on the bill are blocked through the questioning of a quorum. Some anti-RH bill lawmakers, including Quezon City Rep. Mary Ann Susano, called for a roll call to determine the existence of a quorum during the plenary debates on the controversial bill for the last one and a half weeks. "Unfortunately, this incessant questioning of the quorum stifles women's voice. It's a dilatory strategy that achieves nothing since no substantial discussion takes place," she said. Hontiveros-Baraquel added that majority of the female legislators in the House are in favor of the reproductive health bill. Last Friday, the bill's main proponent, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, likewise scored anti-reproductive health bill solons for their "long-winding interpellations, baseless procedural objection on the committees' approval of the bill and irrelevant attacks on the funding and motives of NGO (non-government organization) advocates." "Delay is not victory. It is merely postponing the eventual defeat of those opposed to the reproductive health bill," Lagman said in a statement. During the plenary sessions this week, Deputy Speaker Raul Del Mar extensively questioned the bill's merits and raised alleged "technical defects" in the health committee and population and family relations' committee's joint approval of the measure. The reproductive health bill passed the two committees without a dissenting vote and no seasonable motion for reconsideration was filed against its approval pursuant to House rules, said Lagman, adding that the bill likewise got the thumbs up from the appropriations committee and the rules committee. House Bill 5043 or "An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development," is facing staunch opposition from at least 75 solons in the House and the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines. The bill's critics claim that the measure, which espouses the mandatory purchase of contraceptives by state hospitals alongside age-appropriate reproductive health education, is pro-abortion or anti-life. - GMANews.TV