Negros groups set rally vs RH bill on Feb. 22

Pro-life activists will hold a rally in Bacolod City in Negros Occidental on February 22 to express their opposition to the reproductive health (RH) bill. The Citizens Alliance for the Protection of Human Life (CAPHL) will also hold a province-wide caravan after the rally, the news site Visayan Daily Star reported on Wednesday. CAPHL secretary general Fr. Greg Patiño said the rally will be at the Bacolod Public Plaza, where participants will call for the junking of the consolidated RH bill, the report said. Members of the CAPHL signed a manifesto against the RH bill during a meeting at the San Sebastian Cathedral Rectory in Bacolod City on Tuesday. Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra, who was at the gathering, called on Negros residents to join the crusade for life and know the “evils" of the RH bill. The manifesto called on members of the legislative and executive branches of government to stop pushing for the measure, which they described as unconstitutional because it allows the killing of the unborn at the conception stage. Patiño said they will provide copies of their manifesto, signed by those opposed to the RH bill, to President Benigno Simeon Aquino III and members of both houses of Congress. “We are very much aggrieved by the mentally dishonest attempts by certain elements of our House of Representatives to circumvent the Constitutional protection of the life of the unborn at conception by introducing bills, whether called reproductive health bill or responsible parenthood bill,…designed to control or prevent pregnancy but many of the means of which terminate the life of the unborn at conception," the manifesto said. They also said they were saddened by the support of the President for the bill, who certified it as urgent. “We are gravely concerned that if the bill becomes law, or if government adopts this as its executive policy as well, abortifacient drugs will become common over-the-counter drugs, encouraging promiscuity, weakening marriage, subverting the family, not to mention endanger the health of women," the manifesto said. The manifesto called on doctors to remember their Hippocratic oath and protect human life at conception, and on other sectors of society to rise up against the bill. If government persists in the passing the bill, it will lose the moral right to govern, the CAPHL said. The group also called on local government officials not to allow themselves to be instruments of what it called an “unconstitutional and immoral program". The CAPHL members said they will do everything legal, moral, Constitutional, and peaceful to express their vehement opposition. CAPHL chairman Lyndon Caña and Bacolod Rep. Anthony Golez also aired their opposition to the RH bill, saying it violated the Constitutional provision that guarantees the protection of life at conception. Earlier, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) issued a pastoral statement calling the RH bill "a form of moral corruption." The Catholic Church officials have been against the RH bill, which promotes artificial contraceptives, because the Church accepts only natural family planning methods. On Tuesday, Church officials in Laguna bared plans to hold a province-wide pro-life march dubbed "A Walk for Life" on March 26. – VVP, GMANews.TV