FROM MY OWN POINT OF VIEW- ON RH BILL

By Maria Edfrel Haboc

For a long long time, the Philippine government is finding ways to eliminate poverty and their efforts are all in vain. Even with the aid of the United Nations, or the mercy of any other organizations, these solutions are not yet realized until the Philippines came to a point that its population is growing out of control.

Then came Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman and Rep. Janette Garin’s initiative – The Reproductive Health Bill. Reading the entire propositions of the bill, one can say that what it contains is for the good of everybody. Its goal is to educate every Filipino about family planning, responsible parenthood and providing contraceptives to indigents.

But this bill has diminished through and through, although it bears the flag of everybody’s freedom. (It is everybody’d freedom to have a choice).  It has been rained on by rebuttals, violent reactions and black propaganda. Now, this bill has come back from the dead, to try to survive from tribulations brought forth by attacks coming from – the religious sector.

Informed choice – it is the very platform of the government’s efforts to reduce poverty and the population explosion as well. By giving the right information to the people, they will be able to decide if they would carry on and BEAR CHILDREN WHICH WILL JUST END UP STARVING, OR DUMPED IN A GARBAGE CAN. Or they will have a choice to LIMIT THEIR CHILDREN, WHICH THEY CAN SUSTAIN. Currently, the only choice we have is the first one. Legislators are now paving way to have a better road to progress – by trying to make way for the second choice. If this RH Bill is realized, it will help many indigent families. It will inform the uneducated about their rights and what they can do to live a more sustainable and bearable life.

“It is nothing but murder… a corruption of the very purpose of why we are here… to thrive…” if I’m not mistaken, this is a redundant cliché of the antagonists of the RH Bill. They claim contraception is murder. They say it’s against the Word of God. Can they please cite a passage on the Bible that says it is wrong? And I’ll show them a verse that proves they are wrong. They don’t realize that letting people live in misery, in a situation that could have been prevented, to be borne into this world just to starve, to suffer is much worse than murder. What do they do about it? Can they feed these people? Do they even help them?  And murder, they say? Who is being murdered? Nothing is being murdered because nothing is formed. Contraception impedes the union of the sperm cell and the ovum. (We all know that if these two combines, the result is that of a live being, the zygote).  Now cite the murder there.

Sexual intercourse is only for procreation. Really? Don’t legitimate couples have the right to express their love to each other once in a while, having no worries it may lead to an unwanted pregnancy?  What’s the point of God making “reproduction” enjoyable?

And the purpose of our very survival here is to what? To THRIVE? To thrive and deplete the natural resources? To thrive and suffer hunger, thirst, poverty? To thrive and have no dignity?

Now, we’re back to ignorance. To those who oppose the RH Bill and claim that they are pro-life, what kind of life are they exactly advocating? Fetuses dumped, abandoned babies, mothers dying out of giving birth, starving families – all of these could have been curbed down if not eradicated, if only the government has implemented a long-term solution to the population explosion problem.

Think about it. Yes, we’ve heard that even America, a long time proponent of the Reproductive Health, still has about 300 million people living in poverty. But as we can see, the poor here in the Philippines are in much worse conditions than the American poor. Homeless people there have pension from the U.S. government! Think about it. This is for the good of everybody…. Why not give it a chance?