Thousands join church-led rally vs. Reproductive Health bill
Around 10,000 Catholic faithful led by Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) President Archbishop Angel Lagdameo yesterday went to the streets here in the heightening show of protest of the Church against the Reproductive Health Bill pending in Congress.
Students of Church-run schools, parishioners of Iloilo and Guimaras, priests and nuns, and members of lay organizations carried streamers denouncing the bill, the "Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2007," as "anti-life" and against religious teachings.
Streamers against the bill have also been placed in Church-run schools and in parishes.
The protest here is a prelude to a bigger protest in Manila to be held Friday at the University of Santo Tomas grounds.
The protesters assembled in three converging points around 1 p.m. before proceeding to the Iloilo Freedom Grandstand where a program was held followed by a Mass officiated by Lagdameo and other members of the clergy.
The protest, timed with the 40th anniversary of the encyclical letter of Pope John Paul VI on human life, is "a rally for the defense of the family and life against on-going attacks against them through legislative agenda," said Lagdameo in a circular.
In his homily, Lagdameo stressed the Church's stand against contraceptives.
"We in the Catholic Church... advocate only natural family planning methods as the only morally acceptable way of practicing responsible parenthood," he said.
He said the Church does not forbid the advocacy of the increase or decrease of population provided that the religious beliefs of the couple on sexual and family morality are respected.
But the prelate said the family as an institution is being threatened by the bill.
"The subtle attacks on family and conjugal morality through legislations that promote artificial methods of birth control are couched in attractive but deceptive terminologies like Reproductive Health Care, population management, anti-discrimination of women and children, reproductive rights and patients' rights."
Lagdameo also refuted even government statistics on the country's population growth rate (PGR).
Quoting Dr. Joseph Chamie of the UN Population Division, Lagdameo said that "the problem is not about population explosion but population implosion." He said birth rates in 51 countries have fallen so low that these could not even replace those who died.
"While our government policy makers claim that our growth rate is 2.36 percent, both the (United States Agency for International Development) and the (United Nations) have arrived at a much lower PGR. In fact, as of December 2004, the National Statistics Office had projected a population growth rate of 1.99 percent. The Philippines is slowly joining the countries with very low growth rate," said Lagdameo.
The prelate said that poverty is not caused by overpopulation but by misuse of public funds.
"If all the money that go to graft and corruption of government or are used for the wrong reasons were spent for our increasingly poor population, we will have indeed both population and true progress, a population that is the resource and object of development," he said.
"If only government would be really pro-poor, there would be less and less poor people," the prelate added.
Catholic organizations opposing the bill said they will hold more protest actions and campaigns to block the passage of the bill as Congress resumes its sessions next week.
Dr. Rene Josef Bullecer, country director of the Human Life International, said they will launch a signature campaign aimed at gathering one million signatures each in the Visayas and Mindanao against the bill.
"We want to send a clear and strong message that we don't want this bill," said Bulleger in a press conference held before the prayer rally in Iloilo.
Bulleger said they also plan to invite people to sign their opposition to the bill in a kilometer-long cloth in Cebu.
But proponents of the bill said the Church is distorting the proposed legislation and "spreading misinformation."
"It's their right to hold a prayer rally but I urged them to the stop the distortion of facts and the misinformation," Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin, one of the main sponsors of the bill, "said in a telephone interview.
Garin belied accusations that the bill promotes abortion and encourages "free sex" for teenagers by providing access to reproductive health services.
"That is a big lie. The Church is abusing its powers by spreading misinformation," said Garin.
Garin said that if the bill is enacted, the distribution of condoms, for example, will be limited to couples and channeled through health centers.
She said that while majority of the congressmen support the bill, she is saddened because her colleagues who support the bill are being "intimidated" by threats of ex-communication or withholding of communion.
"I feel bad about accusations that we are promoting abortion or that we are abortionists. That is farthest from the truth. We believe that what we are doing is good for our people," said Garin.
She urged those who believe in the necessity of the bill to "come out and speak up, especially the poor and women who have been denied accessible reproductive health care services."