Courteous reply to letter makes harsh judgment

This is in response to Joshua Young’s reply to my letter (Inquirer, 8/14/12). I am grateful for his very respectful treatment of it and his courteous expression of his views.

I regret it if I judged President Aquino’s intentions too hard. But I really did not wish to judge his intentions. I just wished to point out that the Responsible Parenthood bill has provisions that promote contraception.

Young claimed that “the RH bill does not favor contraception over other family planning methods; it simply provides public access to information on reproductive health.” He is right, it does not favor the pill, IUD or any other method. But my point was not about favoring one method

or another. My point was the bill promotes contraception, whatever method is irrelevant.

Young also asserted that “At least 15 mothers have died between the publishing of Father Magsino’s letter and the writing of this letter. At least 15 mothers were denied the right to proper maternal health care and deprived of the right to life. Those who continue to show blatant disregard for these mothers are as good as human rights violators in my eyes.”

That I would say is a rather harsh judgment. By opposing the RH bill, I do not show or wish “to show blatant disregard” for mothers who need medical attention. The former does not logically follow the latter. As a priest of the Catholic Church, I can say that the Church has been doing much to care for these mothers, helping the government very much where the government cannot cope.

Moreover, Young’s statement is not a scientifically corroborated statement because we still do not have evidence that the RH bill will solve the problem of dying mothers. I say this simply because this proposed law has not yet been tested or implemented. For all we know it might not work.

—FR. CECILIO MAGSINO,

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