Dignity

“No Woman should die giving birth.”

Now, that’s a stirring battle cry for the Reproductive Health (RH) bills’ supporters. It was first sounded, I’m told, in an African country where women died during pregnancy at an appalling rate. And it has resonated around the world because it not merely rings true, it rings a fundamental truth: The giving of life to a child should not cost the mother her own.

It is a biological truth, for we are humans, not salmons. It’s a principle to guide our system of beliefs and behavior, if we are a civilized society. Never mind civilized; if we are a humane society. Never mind humane; if we are not a school of fish.

In Congress, the RH bills are now embroiled in number-splitting over how many Filipino women actually die during pregnancy. And in hair-splitting – whether or not a woman is committing abortion by taking birth control pills or wearing IUD. But that’s what legislators do; we shall have to live with that. Soon enough they should be raising their discourse to a higher level, as Senator Miram Defensor-Santiago has admonished. Not all our senators are “Iskul Bukol” alumni after all, and not all our representatives are Bible-misquoting pugilists.

Last time I looked, the highest level attained in the RH discourse – inside and outside Congress – was a discussion on the wisdom of using public funds to prevent unwanted pregnancy. But even that got snarled up in squabbles over untrammeled population growth aggravating poverty, or not. And over sex between consenting adults being a “personal practice” that’s “harmful and immoral,” or not.

Had the discourse been substantive, it would have weighed the right of some citizens to avail themselves of public funds in one form (in this case, reproductive health services) against the right of other citizens to avail themselves of the same funds in another form (in one suggestion, an information campaign on the harmful effects of birth control pills). Then the discourse could have been resolved by simply weighing one right against the other. And justice – one of our most cherished values as a people – would have been enshrined in law.

This battle cry should speed things up a lot, if sounded in Congress. Raise the level of discourse from statistics and semantics to principles, and from there to values. For it is our values as a people that must be embodied in our laws, not our virtues as Christians or Muslims or what. Otherwise, what for did our forefathers revolt against what Marcelo del Pilar called “La Frailocracia Filipina”?

“No woman should die giving birth” is a principle that derives from Dignity. And it pertains not just to women who don’t have the means to prevent unwanted pregnancy but also – more so – to ourselves as a people. We may have harsh words to say about a couple who cannot abstain from sex for two weeks each month, during the woman’s fertile period. But shouldn’t we be harsher to ourselves for letting 11 women die each day for not having monastic self-restraint? Never mind 11; five? Never mind five; one?

And how harsh can we be to our senators and representatives – and how harsh can the civilized world be to us who elected them – if they accept the proposition that abstinence from sex should still be a health requirement for women who cannot afford birth control pills or IUD? In this day and age when medical miracles such as organ transplants have become routine? In a country where a retired general can afford nine cars and a house in California?

It will be argued that Dignity might be lost on our legislators, and it would not be altogether cynical. For although we cherish it so much that the whole country comes to a standstill every time Manny Pacquiao carries our flag into the ring, it is so absent in our public discourses. And therefore absent in our laws, except in our Flag Law. That one proscribes the treatment of our flag with dishonor and the singing of our national anthem with disrespect.

It’s as if we cherish our national emblems’ dignity more than our women’s; more than ours as a people. In the name of Justice we made grandmothers relive the dreadful indignities they had suffered as “comfort women,” and put a price tag on that. In the name of Freedom (of expression) an artist put a penis on Jesus Christ’s face, and we exhibited that on the center stage of our “artistic excellence, Filipino aesthetics and identity, and positive cultural values towards a humanistic global society.”

All the more then should Dignity be brought into our public discourses. And therefrom into our laws. On what better issue to start doing that than reproductive health? In what better law to enshrine Dignity than the one being proposed by the RH bills?

Their opponents argue that the RH bills in fact violate human dignity, and they are not being disingenuous. For in their heart they know that life begins before egg and sperm are conjoined, and preventing that with artificial methods violates the will of God, not to mention the constitutional provision that the State “…shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”

It would be pointless to try and convince them that an unfertilized egg is not an “unborn.” Or that, if it were, practicing the natural methods they endorse would also constitute willful prevention of the union of egg and sperm, contrary to the will of God and the Philippine Constitution. Or that our laws should not be dictated upon by pastoral letters and papal encyclicals.

It would be wrong to have them violate their conscience, as it is wrong to have them impose their conscience upon our laws.

All the more then should the RH discourse center on Dignity, and not on this conception of God’s will or that interpretation of the Constitution. Then the discourse can simply be resolved by a determination of whose dignity must prevail – the mother’s or her unfertilized egg’s? And Dignity shall be enshrined in law.

Romeo D. Bohol is a retired advertising copywriter.