It seems to me that the members of the Catholic Church are not one in their opposition to the Reproductive Health (RH) bill. I am sure the Church is not in favor of the practice of having big families. Otherwise it will not promote the natural family planning method. I think its real reasons for opposing the RH bill are:

1. It is against the use of artificial contraceptives, believing these encourage promiscuous sex.

2. Early sex education will all the more arouse the youth?s curiosity about sex. And the Church doesn?t trust those who might teach it?

I know that the congressmen pushing for the passage of the bill do not intend to promote promiscuous sex especially among the young. But the best of laws are ruined by improper implementation. And this is too much of a sensitive thing to be careless in its implementation. And we know how careless the government can get, History is our witness.

Why don?t we just train our guns on the more obvious reasons for the rising incidence of teenage pregnancies?the insensitive entertainment media that seem to extol pregnant celebrities who are not even married; the unedited showing of sexy TV soaps; and the American sitcoms such as ?Sex and the City,? ?Desperate Housewives,? etc. Why don?t we channel the funds for such programs to holding values formation seminars that will make it clear that people are different from animals, that they cannot just satisfy their sexual desires anytime they want to? Or maybe the funds can be used instead for infomercials promoting Christian values instead of contraceptives.

According to a Church spokesperson, they are opposed to the use of the artificial contraceptives because all the countries that have legalized these birth control methods have ended up legalizing abortion as well, and this is why the Church looks at the RH bill as pro-abortion; that the real reason those countries subsequently legalized abortion was that after promoting contraceptive use, the message the people got was, ?it?s right for people, married or not, to enjoy sex, just as long as they use contraceptives?; that this has led to more unwanted pregnancies as these contraceptives are not 100-percent fail-safe?which explains why there are more abortions.



Both sides are throwing arrows at the wrong targets. I hope they will sit down together and modify the RH bill so they can hit the mark. I believe the Church and Congress have the same objectives. How to get there is what they should talk about.

MARGARITA LOPEZ (via email)