Neophyte solons to meet with bishops on RH bill

Published December 7, 2010 5:52pm

Neophyte members of the House of Representatives and Catholic bishops are set to meet next week to discuss the controversial reproductive health (RH) bill. San Juan Rep. Jose Victor Ejercito, who initiated the meeting, said is it important for new House members to understand the issue comprehensively. Aside from the meeting with bishops on December 14 at Club Filipino, the neophyte lawmakers will also be having a dialogue with pro-RH bill groups. â€œIt will be a dialogue, for us neophytes to understand the issues better. We will be listening to both pro and anti RH bill groups to guide us in our decision," Ejercito said in a text message to GMANews.TV. Negros Occidental Rep. Alfredo Benitez, one of the neophyte congressmen who will be joining the dialogue, said he wanted to hear first hand the arguments of the Catholic hierarchy. â€œAs neophytes, it would allow us to hear first hand the issues involve with RH bill from the bishops and give us a better understanding of their concerns," he said in a separate text message. At present, at least six bills are pending before the House population and family relations committee pushing for a comprehensive reproductive health policy. The committee has so far conducted two public hearings on the matter. One of the most prominent bills is Minority Leader Edcel Lagmanâ€™s House Bill 96 or An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population and Development. The bill states that the government should provide accessible, affordable and effective reproductive health care services. The bill adds that the government should promote all modern natural and artificial methods of family planning that are medically, safe, legal and effective without bias. RH bill advocates, including Lagman, have repeatedly argued that the RH is measure is not for abortion. Lagman said the bill promotes human development because it will help couples and parents achieve their desired family size, improve reproductive health of individuals by addressing reproductive health problems. The bill will also help decrease maternal and infant mortality rates, reduce incidence if teenage pregnancy and enable the government to achieve a balanced population distribution, Lagman said. Alternatives to RH bill Meanwhile, a group of Catholic lay people on Tuesday expressed their objection to the RH bill and urged government to implement alternatives to it. The Sangguniang Laiko ng Pilipinas (Laiko) said the RH bill would make legal government funding for population control measures "found scientifically harmful and hazardous to womenâ€™s health by the World Health Organization." In an article posted on the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) news site, Laiko urged the government instead to:

increase the budget for existing government hospitals and health centers; and

provide the necessary medicines and equipment for indigent patients;

construct more government hospitals and health centers in the rural areas;

train a work force in the barangay level for health care and sanitation services;

raise the salaries and benefits of government health care workers, and

providing the necessary security of tenure to doctors, nurses, and other staff. Contentious issue The RH bill has been a contentious issue in the country because it pits two powerful sectors against each other: prolife groups (such as Catholic and Muslim groups opposing the RH bill) and prochoice groups (led by non-government organizations supporting the RH bill). It is estimated that 80 percent of the country's population are baptized Catholics. According to the National Statistics Office, there were 88.57 million Filipinos as of August 2007. The projected population for 2010 is 94.01 million. The Catholic Church promotes only natural family planning and is opposed to the use of artificial birth control methods such as condoms and birth-control pills, saying these could lead to promiscuity and a rise in abortion cases. However, RH advocates say natural family planning methods have not proven to be as reliable as artificial means of birth control. The Catholic Church accepts only natural family planning (NFP) methods. The NFP has two distinct forms: Ecological breastfeeding (a form of child care that normally spaces babies about two years apart on the average) Systematic NFP (a system that uses a womanâ€™s signs of fertility to determine the fertile and infertile times of her cycle) â€“ VVP, GMANews.TV

Tags: congress, rhbill, reproductivehealth