RH bill not among the Senate's priorities in 2011

The controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill will not be among the priority legislations of the Senate in 2011, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile on Thursday. Enrile said the Senate's priorities for next year include the Anti-trust Bill, Power Reduction Bill, and the creation of a national survival fund for climate change adaptation. "As far as my reading is concerned, it’s (RH bill) not a priority for us here," Enrile said during a weekly forum at the Senate on Thursday. However, he admitted that the Senate cannot avoid tackling the bill. "We cannot skirt the issue if it will come to us... if it is reported out by the proper committee (or) if there’s a bill," he said. Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago had earlier filed Senate Bill No.2378 or “An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health and Population and Development." Under this bill, the state shall guarantee universal access to medically safe, legal, affordable, and quality reproductive health services, methods, devices, supplies, and relevant information on the matter. In the House of Representatives, at least six bills related to the RH issue were likewise filed. However, House committee on population and family relations chairman Biliran Rep. Rogelio Espina had said that they do not plan to rush the passage of the measure. "We have to be very very careful in approaching it because even many of the countries now that adopted a population control policy are now reversing themselves," Enrile explained. Congress had earlier scrapped the budget for the P200-million government allocation for the purchase of contraceptives in the 2011 budget. Enrile had earlier said they did not want to approve the budget for the purchase of contraceptives because it might seem like they were in favor of the RH bill. The Catholic Church has consistently opposed the use of artificial birth control methods like condoms and birth control pills, saying it only supports "natural" family planning methods for married couples. President Benigno Simeon Aquino III, however, said couples would be in the "best position to determine what is best for their family" and the methods that they can use. Since then, the Palace and the Catholic Church have been engaged in talks about the issue. 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 woman’s signs of fertility to determine the fertile and infertile times of her cycle) - VVP, GMANews.TV