The Catholic Church has emphasized that the rejection of the RH bill is not about a Roman
Catholic verdict but a reflection of the “fundamental ideals and aspirations of the Filipino people”
(Sison 2011). The Church’s position is anchored on her disagreement with the proposal's anti-life stance and problematic attitudes towards issues that affect religious expression. Christianity insists that artificial birth control methods are offensive to life because these tend to suppress the formation of life, particularly in the womb of the mother. In traditional Catholic positions, devices or means that directly hinder the development of life is offensive to life—hence, immoral. In reproductive health language, abortion cases reflect “unmet needs for contraception” which, if used, could have prevented unwanted pregnancies. While the RH framework identifies contraception as a necessary solution in the equation, the Church finds it problematic. It is in this perspective that the fundamental proposals in the bill are deemed immoral. The Church has gathered its forces to show its resistance to the proposal. The resistance has reverberated in many local churches in different parts of the archipelago. The local resistance offered by the Roman
Catholic Church is now shared by the evangelical churches, and Islamic believers. These church communities in the country have used every means possible to disarm the threat provided by this proposal. In response to this political and religious dilemma, this paper describes how the current debate between the Philippine Church and legal proponents on the proposed Responsible
Parenthood Bill in congress is anchored on three problematic attitudes and presuppositions that have served to hinder the resolution of the case. The first is the belief in the separation of the
Church and State. The second is the attitude towards the family. The third reflects the understanding of human sexuality and life. Data for this inquiry will primarily be taken from historical, doctrinal, and demographic sources and current scholarship on the issues.
The Bill as a Philippine Agenda
The Philippines, through the Philippine Population Management Program (PPMPPOPCOM 2002), has been advocating for decades the enactment of a “comprehensive population bill”. Its vision is “to improve the reproductive health of women, men and adolescents and guaranteed access to family planning information…” (POPCOM 2001a). The planned comprehensive population bill is designed to be an essential component of anti-poverty efforts that wholly address poverty, development and population issues. It makes available contraceptive
1devices and sexual education to the younger population. Obviously, these measures are in response to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) conceived in the UN Millennium
Summit. The plan perfectly satisfies the goal of tying up reproductive and sexual health rights with the campaign for economic justice and poverty alleviation (Petchesky 2000, 12) so that the observance of the former is attained. Reproductive and sexual health rights are two of the fundamental human rights recognized in the Cairo International Conference on Population and
Development (ICPD) and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China.
Towards this end, the government endeavored to ensure the accessibility of RH/FP supplies and services and pursue a reduced fertility replacement level of 2.1 by 2015 among others (POPCOM
2002; POPCOM 2001b). The attainment of these measures reflects government resolve to push forward the “health sector reforms” already crafted in the 80s through determined politicallyassisted “decentralization” efforts (Lakshminarayanan 2003) in the local communities. The reduction in the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in the country has been the subject of close international attention (Costello and Casterline 2002; Cabigon 2002a; Cabigon 2002b). Until recently, there remained a great need for high-level political support (Zosa-Feranil 2003) in the Philippines to realize the objectives. Understandably, the desire of the RH Bill proponents is a reflection of this effort to provide the missing pieces. But the Church is not about to give up the fight to resist this effort. Within the concept of reproductive health is the implicit understanding that men and women exercise their human rights in relation to their sexual life. The exercise of one’s rights should primarily consider the person’s desires and preferences to attain the most in life. A number of theories support this orientation. One can find the Social Contract Theory of Thomas Hobbes
(Leviathan) among them, where human rights are treated as a social contract. A related variant is the autonomist perspective, which emphasizes the individual’s bodily and personal welfare as the primary factor in matters of decision making. The exercise of women’s rights hinges on the concept of autonomy. This notion precisely applies to women’s rights for self determination. It is the autonomist perspective that has generated debates (Zagzebski 2007) and the most number of conflicts between the Church and other sectors:
Conservative social, political and religious movements worldwide (Christian, Jewish, and
Islamic) react to what they see as the socially corrosive effects of the unlimited autonomy championed, in their opinion, by “liberalism” (Lakeland, 1997, 28).
Reproduc R. Baring tive Health Bill in the Philippines
2Against the voices of religious conservatism, the resistance is also echoed by MacIntyre
(1981) who has expressed disagreement with notions of an ideal human nature while advancing virtue ethics. The Church clarifies, however, that the exercise of one's right as a person is a moral platform that the individual should consider in view of his/her natural orientation. This view critiques an understanding of human freedom that is identified with extreme views of human autonomy (Guerra 2008). One's natural orientation, the Church insists, is deeply religious.
Individual choices, therefore, cannot remain indifferent from one's religious identity. Every personal decision is consummated in honor of one's identity. The unpopular position of secular explanations regarding the human person in Christian-oriented discourses explains the inability of alternative positions to topple Church-initiated ideas regarding the human person. This ethical pluralism either undermines religious perspectives or promotes them. In this regard, “… religious perspectives can compete or collaborate with other religious views or nonreligious views, attempting to persuade the dialogue partner of the value of their particular ethical outlook”
(Lakeland, 44).