DESPITE THE efforts of some legislators to delay, if not stop altogether, the floor debates on the reproductive health bill, sponsors of the substitute bill in the House of Representatives managed to make themselves heard. And that they managed to do so on International Women’s Day, as thousands of supporters of the RH bill massed outside the Batasan grounds, made this initial step all the sweeter.
At a forum Wednesday, Rep. Janette Garin, deputy majority floor leader and an early proponent of the measure, was asked how she would feel if the bill was defeated on the floor. While confident that the bill’s supporters could muster the numbers needed to pass the measure, Garin said that at the very least she hoped they could say that “we legislators debated the bill openly, and that we managed to move it so that we could vote on it.”
This in contrast to previous congresses where legislators were most unwilling to even sponsor a bill that touched on family planning, maternal health and reproductive health. So cowed were members of Congress that they would even expunge from the budget any item that referred to the purchase of contraceptives, or the provision of family planning services. Over time, especially after the creation of the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development (PLCPD), legislators would file bills touching on these concerns. But the measure had a difficult time making it out of committee (sometimes with the collusion of the committee secretariat), and the floor debate on the RH bill with Rep. Edcel Lagman as main author in the 14th Congress was the farthest the bill had ever gone. Still, with the determined filibuster of a few House members (you know who you are) and the active pressure exerted by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the RH bill failed to make it beyond the period of floor debates.
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TODAY, SAYS Garin, the committee on rules has set firm rules on interpellation, limiting the period of questioning to one hour for each member (as set forth in House rules). After all, for many congresses now, all the possible questions and objections to the bill have been raised, all possible information and objections aired. “I believe all legislators are intelligent enough to decide for themselves,” asserted Garin.
For Akbayan Rep. Kaka Bag-ao, who delivered her sponsorship speech on March 8, the issue goes well beyond “pills and condoms” but rather is all about “women’s right to decide for themselves.” “Women have been fighting for their basic rights throughout history,” asserted Bag-ao, “from the basic right to vote, to equal opportunities, to make decisions regarding their health, women have had to struggle. No right was ever given women on a silver platter.”
For Diwa Rep. Emmeline Aglipay, the debate over the RH bill provides the legislature an opportunity “to let reason guide our faith.” “We want to promote and protect life,” she declared, and for her party, the RH bill is one way to “protect the rights of women workers, including their right to full information and to the benefits due them as women workers.”
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ONE ISSUE brought up by opponents of the RH bill again and again is the “primacy of conscience,” assailing penalties in the bill that would impose a fine or imprisonment on anyone violating the provisions of the bill, including local officials (such as those in Ayala Alabang) prohibiting the delivery of health services or providers refusing to perform these services.
To make things clear, the bill does provide for “conscientious objection,” although it requires the objector to “refer the person seeking such care and services to another … provider.”
But it should be asked: If you are a doctor, nurse or midwife who wants to serve only a certain type of patient, one who shares your own religious or ethical beliefs, why would you work in a public health center where you are obliged to serve everyone who comes for a consultation or for services? Your clients are, in the sense used by Aquino, your “bosses,” for it is the taxes they pay that pay your wages. Aren’t you obligated to serve them regardless of their economic or social status?
You say your conscience or religion prevents you from dispensing pills and injectables or inserting an IUD. But have you considered your clients’ conscience? Don’t you think they, too went through an examination of conscience, and thought long and hard about the decisions that led them to the health center, clinic or hospital? What makes your conscience superior to those of the ordinary men, women or youth who come seeking your services or counseling? Just because you are a professional, does that make your conscience better formed or informed?
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HEALTH WORKERS likewise cite the conscience clause when they are confronted with women whom they suspect of having undergone a clandestine abortion. Many times, said Garin who is also a doctor, women would be brought to a hospital already bleeding or suffering the first stages of infection, and doctors and nurses would deliberately delay treatment to “punish” the women whose behavior they disapprove of. This, even if, as Garin points out, “the window of opportunity is very narrow for treating a woman with the beginnings of sepsis.”
Does the sensitive conscience of a conscientious objector justify the needless suffering of a patient, or endangering her life?
It would be tragic if we reduce this debate to a pissing contest of consciences, when in reality what we need is mutual respect, including respect for the feelings of people who may be poor and in need of help, but who nonetheless have thought long and hard about their lives.