Time for courage

For about 17 months now, ever since it was introduced in the House of Representatives’ Committee on Population at the beginning of the 15th Congress in August 2010, the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill has been the subject of intense debate.  This intensified after the bill passed the Committee on January 31 this year and entered into plenary deliberation.

The only other legislative items to rival the RH bill in terms of the intensity of debate provoked were the impeachment of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez and the budget deliberations.  As 2011 comes to a close, the RH Bill has been debated ad nauseam.

One wishes that one could characterize the debate as a laudable exercise in democracy.  It has become, instead, an exercise on how to use parliamentary procedures to derail democracy.   The same questions have been repeatedly raised by the anti-RH interpellators, and it has become increasingly clear that, not having the votes to prevent the passage of the bill in the House, they have resorted to the equivalent of a filibuster to delay the bill from coming to a vote on the floor.

Over 40 members had themselves listed to interpellate, but over the last eight months, only about 12 have taken the podium, some repeatedly and for hours on end, with the obvious intent of either preventing a vote or delaying it till we come closer to the 2013 elections, when the specter of  electoral retribution by the Catholic Church hierarchy against RH supporters can be used to scare fainthearted supports from voting for the measure.

Speaker on the spot

Since RH is one of his priority bills, an impatient President Aquino called Speaker Sonny Belmonte last week to ask him if the vote would take place before the congressional break for Christmas, as Belmonte promised earlier.  The Speaker replied that that would not be possible, given the number of congressmen who were still lined up to interpellate.   Though an RH supporter, the Speaker is has been extremely cautious in influencing the course of the debate.  Not known for shepherding controversial initiatives, he could be worried, some say, about a backlash from the Catholic hierarchy that might claim him as a victim.  Others say he is waiting for a “decisive majority” to emerge in favor of the bill.

Whatever the reason for his hesitation, it is clear that what the historical moment demands from Belmonte is that he leave political calculation behind and evince moral courage to bring the debate to an end and call for a vote on the measure.   The RH Bill will be seen by future generations as the transcendental issue of his tenure as Speaker of the 15th Congress.  Indeed, most other members of Congress realize that the issue goes beyond partisan political calculations, that their stand on the bill will greatly determine how they will go down in history–whether they will be recorded as having courageously pulled the country towards the future or voted to keep it shackled to an ecclesiastical monopoly of morality owing to pusillanimous electoral considerations.

Fundamentalism versus Reason

The debate in the House reminds this writer, a participant in the House debate, of the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial” in Tennessee in 1925, where a schoolteacher named John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching the theory of evolution.  The trial evolved into a battle between fundamentalism and reason, with the controversial three-time Democratic candidate for president William Jennings Bryan leading the prosecution and the famed defense lawyer Clarence Darrow heading up the defense.   (The conflict was memorably captured in the film Inherit the Wind, with Frederic March playing Bryan and Spencer Tracy acting as Darrow.)

The surreal dynamics of that encounter between benightedness and enlightenment has been replayed in the House in the last few months, as shown by the passionate exchanges, on and off the House floor, provoked by  the anti-RH interpellators’ oft-repeated questions and assertions:

Q.  Didn’t God tell Adam and Eve to go forth and multiply?

A. Yes, but Adam and Eve were the only two persons in the world at the time.  Now, we have seven billion people.

Q. Isn’t it the case that had Mama Dionisia practised family planning, there would have been no Manny Pacquiao?

A. Had there been an RH Bill, there might have been more Manny Pacquiao’s since smaller family sizes among the poor would have resulted in less infant deaths and in more children being better fed and having access to better health care.

Q. Contraception is forbidden by God, and one way to show his displeasure at the House’s taking up the measure during the 14th Congress was his sending the destructive Typhoon Ondoy in September 2009.

A.  It is forbidden by the Pope, not God.  Other religions, such as Islam, and other Christian denominations, like the Iglesia ni Cristo, see contraception as ethically and morally acceptable.  As for Ondoy being a sign of God’s wrath, we obviously have no way of discerning divine intent.

Q. Contraception is abortion.

A. Contraception prevents fertilization–the sperm from meeting the egg–so there is nothing or no one to abort.

Q. The RH Bill is part of a US plan—“the Kissinger Doctrine”—to dominate the developing countries by controlling their population growth.

A. This is a paranoidal conspiracy theory that would have us believe that the more than 100 sponsors of the RH Bill, including some of the most prominent anti-US political figures, are automatons controlled by Washington.  The RH Bill stems out of a felt need arising from local circumstances to promote the reproductive health of women, one of the positive consequences of which is a lower rate of population growth that will contribute to a higher rate of economic growth necessary for economic development.

Q.  Isn’t the RH Bill is being pushed by foreign pharmaceutical firms?

A.  Again, this is a conspiracy theory that would cast the more than 100 sponsors of the RH Bill, some of whom are the strongest critics of transnational corporations, as lobbyists for “Big Pharma. “  But we would like you to name who among the more than 100 sponsors are agents of US imperialism and the drug transnationals.

Q.  Contraceptives are abortifacients.

A.  Contraceptives marketed in the Philippines are cleared by the Food and Drug Administration, which has not found them to be abortifacients.  Let us leave the determination of whether or not a contraceptive is abortifacient to the appropriate government agencies, which have the expert skills to do this, rather than have us amateurs in Congress make the decision.

Q.  Doesnn’t contraception inevitably lead to abortion?

A. The RH Bill explicitly opposes abortion.  And by providing reproducticve counseling to the young and making both counseling and contraceptives available to the poor, the RH Bill will lead to a decline in the rate of induced abortions, which now comes to 470,000 a year, since many of these stem from unwanted pregnancies.

Q.  Population growth has no bearing on economic development.

A. A high population growth rate, by diverting resources to consumption, reduces the resources available for investment, which is necessary for rapid economic growth.   The average annual growth rate over the last several years of 4 to 4.5 percent of GDP is simply too low to keep up with a population that is growing by 2.04 per cent.  You need an economic growth rate of 6-8 per cent at the least, and you won’t get that if resources keep on being spent on an keeping up with the consumption needs of an rapidly expanding population.

Q. Family size has nothing to do with poverty.  My parents had 10 children, and we were able to rise up from poverty.

A.  You were fortunate. But most other Filipino families are not as fortunate as your family:  the statistics are clear: the larger the family size, the smaller the family income and the poorer the family.  This is not to say that population management is the only solution to poverty.  It must be combined with other measures, such as measures that redistribute income and assets and good governance.  But it is a central part of the solution.  If you compare us to our neighboring ASEAN states, specifically Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia, and ask what made it possible for them to achieve high economic growth and remarkable reductions of poverty, the answer is clear:  one of the key ingredients was aremarkably successful family planning program.

Q. Their big populations are the reason China and India are prospering.   If we have a big population, we might even be able to invade China.

A.  Huh?  One of the major reasons for China’s successful economic modernization is the one-child policy, which allowed economic growth to outstrip population growth.  But, of course, we are not promoting coercive controls, like China’s, but the voluntary and educated choice adopted by our neighbors.  As for India, the government is presently aggressively promoting family planning to ensure that that its economic gains are not derailed by uncontrolled population growth.  As for saying that a large population might enable us to invade China, that is a dangerous and irresponsible statement.

Q. Isn’t the RH Bill is an unjustified, coercive intrusion of the state into family life?

A. At the heart of the RH Bill is free choice.  From a condition of no choice or limited choices, individuals are provided with the means to make decisions on how many children to have and how to space their children so as to protect the health of the mother and the health of the child, and enable the family to rise up from poverty.   No one is forcing anyone not to have children or to limit the number of their children, but the government is saying, if decide to limit the number of children you have, then here are the means for you to do it.

Q. If one wants to engage in family planning, then there’s abstinence and natural methods of contraception.

A.  Abstinence would work for angels, and unfortunately, most men and women are not angels but are, as the Bible says, “though higher than beasts, lower than angels.”  As for reliable methods of family planning like the Billings Method, they are among the methods of contraception promoted by the RH Bill, but–under the principle of free choice–not to the exclusion of other methods.

Q.  Condoms cause the spread of AIDS because they encourage promiscuity.

A. There is absolutely no scientific study that finds this to be the case.  On the  contrary, condoms have been found to be one of the most effective means to prevent HIV-AIDS.  For instance, in Thailand, widespread condom use has reduced rate of new HIV infections, and it is also a central contributor to the recent decline in the rate of new infections globally.

Q.  RH will saddle the Philippines with an aging population, as in the developed countries, with negative consequences for the economy.

A. No respectable economist has claimed that the current problems of the developed countries stem from the larger share of senior citizens in their populations.  Technological advance makes labor more productive, meaning what it took 10 workers of working age in the past to achieve can now be achieved by three or four.

The increase in the proportion of people over 65 in the work force will only become significant by the end of the 21st century for the Philippines.   The demographic challenge now is to bring down the current high fertility rate to replacement level.  If we bring down the fertility rate to replacement level uonly in 2050, that will mean the Philippines will have 250 million people by the turn of the century, which will be far above the ecological carrying capacity of the country, which is already straining, having to support our current population of 94 million.

Q. The RH Bill is unconstitutional.

A. The Constitution mandates the state to protect life of the unborn from conception.  There is nothing in it that prohibits contraception.  The bill, in fact, promotes the constitutional provisions requiring the state to promote the welfare of women, the health of the people, and “the right of the people to a balanced and healthful ecology in accord with the rhythm and harmony of nature.”

(INQUIRER.net columnist Walden Bello represents the partylist Akbayan (Citizens’ Action Party) in the 15th Congress.)