MANILA, September 7, 2008—The controversial Reproductive Health Bill pending in Congress is “inimical to health” said Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar V. Cruz.
The premature stir of the Congress to push for the reproductive health bills brings to mind some practical questions that proponents of this unnecessary legislation should answer, he said.
The Reproductive Health issue has already drawn many people to say so many things. Various sectors of the society have taken diverse positions in proposing or opposing a supposed national mandate that, proponents claim, will alleviate poverty as it manages the population—as if this is possible, the prelate said in his blog http://ovc.blogspot.com.
“Should the issue on reproductive health be more objectively and properly called instead “unreproductive health?” Cruz asked.
Albay Congressman Edcel Lagman is the key author and sponsor of the Bill. It is also supported by lawmakers Janette Garin, Narciso Santiago III and Ana Theresa Hontiveros-Baraquiel, among others.
The bill aims to grant public funding to family planning methods using artificial contraceptives and sex education for students. It also gives access to reproductive health information to avoid unwanted and untimely pregnancies and to limit the country’s population.
The Church is opposing the Bill as many of proposed tenets go against the teaching of the Church on moral grounds.
The Catholic Church deems artificial contraceptives anti-life and immoral. According to the teachings of the Church, married couples should practice only natural family planning methods, which require sexual abstinence when the woman is ovulating.
The essence of thesis and the consequent phrase adopted in terms of “Reproductive Health” is to promote health by making this physical attribute precisely unproductive. For this reason, reproduction is thereby seen as inimical to health, the archbishop stressed.
“Reproduction should be avoided for reasons of health whereas it militates against such a physical well-being—particularly on the part of women,” he said.
Cruz asks further: “Is health good if this is deliberately rendered unfruitful, intentionally made unproductive or unreproductive?”
“Stagnancy, inertness and non-life giving when apparently considered expressions of health are beyond rhyme or reason. While recourse to euphemism is every now and then understandable, to claim that women’s health equals their non-generative state is unreasonable and wherefore unacceptable,” Cruz said.
“Why is it those already produced or reproduced, are the ones against the reproduction of others just like them?” he further posed.
The proponents of the Bill feel so depressed and oppressed that they do not want others to be born, to see the light, to feel the world, he commented.
“Would they neither not have been reproduced at all? Do they find life so futile in having so inutile in living that they simply do not like others like them to be born at all? Would they rather have themselves instead ‘unreproduced’ at all?” Cruz asked.
“Are those advocating for zero reproduction certain that they themselves have not in any way reproduced someone--like a bubbling son or a cute daughter?” he questioned.
The authors of the Bill do have children. “How can they decide that their children returned to nothingness? To dislike if not to hate others who love to reproduce themselves is neither right nor fair,” Cruz queried. (Santosh Digal)
