Enrile labels RH bill as a population control measure

The controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill “is nothing but a population control measure cleverly disguised as a health measure," Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said Tuesday. “I'm sorry but that is my impression," Enrile said during Tuesday's debate on the Senate floor. What Senate Bill No. 2865 or The Reproductive Health Act of 2011 tends to do as a result is a "sustained and deliberate" reduction of the Filipino population through the use of birth control measures and not the advancement of the welfare of Filipino women, he explained. "You constrict the family size in order to reduce the number of people that will divide the present pie. If you say that this will not reduce the population, well that's the data," he said. From the perspective of Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, SB 2865’s principal author, the RH bill is nothing close to how Enrile pictured it. "I actually denounce, at least for myself, deny and reject any implication that this is a population control bill, that this is meant to control the population of the poor among us or even of the idiots among us," she said during the debate. She likewise said that population control is different from birth control, which is being espoused by the RH bill. "This is a bill that gives a woman the freedom to choose how to live her life," she said. Sen. Pia Cayetano, a c0-sponsor of the bill, said the measure does not even specify a number as the ideal size of family. Discrimination against women The core intent of the measure is to address the discrimination against women, specifically when it comes to information on reproductive health. "The people [in] the last — perhaps — decades or centuries who have been dictating health policies, particularly RH policies, are men whose wives can go to OB/GYNs," she said. The Senate has suspended consideration of the RH bill in the meantime. What Santiago fear most is that the debates would drag on until it’s time to consider the proposed 2012 national budget, when all other bills will have to be shelved. "If that is the case, we will never finish it by the end of the year," she said in an interview with reporters Tuesday. She said she thinks that many lawmakers do not want the public to know where they stand when it comes to the controversial RH bill. "One of the factors of this reluctance to be explicit is that elections are just around the corner, and re-electionists are always afraid of the so-called Catholic vote. There is no such thing as a Catholic vote, yet that is going to influence very heavily the length and the duration of the debates on the RH Bill," she said. So far, only Enrile and Senate Majority Floor Leader Vicente Sotto III have engaged Cayetano and Santiago in a debate on the measure. Both Enrile and Sotto are opposing the RH bill. — VS, GMA News