Forum Stirs Renewed Interest in Population Policy

Scene in a publlic debate regarding the Reproductive Health Care bill.

Liberal Philippines, the country’s newest political quarterly, sponsored a public debate on reproductive health care in the Philippines. Entitled “Who’s Afraid of the Reproductive Health Care bill?” the debate brought together staunch opponents and major allies of the controversial House Bill 4110. The activity was held Thursday morning, 26 July 2003 in Century Park Hotel in Manila.

House Bill 4110, also known as the Reproductive Health Care bill, wants to create an integrated national policy and program on reproductive health (RH) that will ensure universal access to RH services, information, and education.

The Catholic Church has strongly opposed the proposed measure, saying HB 4110 threatens life, promotes promiscuity among the youth, undermines marriage and family, and endangers women’s health, particularly through encouraging widespread contraceptive use.

The pro-HB 4110 panel was composed of Bukidnon Rep. Nereus Acosta, one of the authors of the bill, columnist Rina Jimenez-David, and Ramon San Pascual of Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development (PLCPD).

On the anti-HB 4110 side were Dr. Ricardo Boncan of Defensores Fidei, Celia Villanueva of Daughters of Mary Immaculate, and Atty. Dominador Chipeco of the Ligaya ng Panginoon community. The three belong to Catholic lay organizations.

Rep. Acosta, who had flown in from a reproductive health seminar in the US the same morning, said in his opening speech that, “the reality is, women are dying from motherhood every day. One out of ten women die during childbirth.”

David, a journalist and women’s party-list representative, supported this claim and cited the ill effects and dangers to women’s health when they have poorly planned births.

“Motherhood can kill,” added David to underscore why HB 4110 needs to be passed in Congress. She said, “Women’s bodies are not machines,”

adding that women should have the right to decide how many children they want to have and the space between births.

Armed with statistics on global trends in population control, Boncan, who is the secretary of Defensores Fidei, claimed that those who were for HB 4110 were “treating pregnancy as a disease.” Boncan also said that if society is sincere in empowering women, instead of focusing on RH it should fight the “culture of pornography” that is prevalent in media today.

Villanueva, National Chair for Pro-Life of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate, stated, “HB 4110 is anti-life, anti-family, anti-child, and anti-marriage.” If the bill gets passed into law, she said, parents will lose “stewardship” over their children, because as young as 13 years old they can have access to contraceptives.

Advocacy officer of Ligaya ng Panginoon, Chipeco warned that other than encouraging promiscuity, the bill was “not what it seemed,” saying the public should look beyond the “impressive language and nice words.”

Chipeco explained the bill was a product of international conventions in Beijing and Cairo. Documents arising from these meetings, he said, have been circulated among governments around the world. Chipeco said that, as stated in these documents, among the ways to curb population growth was abortion.

PLCPD’s Deputy Director San Pascual countered this by saying HB 4110 does not legalize abortion. He added that enemies of HB 4110 were “reading too much into the bill.” “I just hope they actually read the bill and won’t deal with imagined contents,” he said.

The debate, moderated by Jonathan Malaya, Editor-in-Chief of Liberal Philippines, is the first in a series of activities designed to spark active, liberal exchange of ideas.

“We at Liberal Philippines feel that population policy was an important topic and that we should not be afraid to take on this issue,” said Malaya.

In the future Liberal Philippines will continue to host seminars, workshops and fora to help the public form a reasoned and well-informed opinion on pressing issues of our time.