Graver sins

IN RELATION to yesterday’s column on “how contraceptives work,” let me just add that “proper” or “consistent” use of family planning methods is premised on quality counseling of the user. A woman, man or couple coming to a clinic, health center or personal physician must be informed not just of the methods available and how they work to prevent or postpone pregnancy, but also of the possible side effects of each method, and what would work best given the woman’s or couple’s age, circumstance, health status, income and personal preference.

Obviously the needs of a single woman in her 20s would be different from those of a mother of six in her 40s who no longer wishes to get pregnant, or of a male OFW and his wife who meet only every three years or so.

We must also keep in mind that the needs and health conditions of women and men change with regard to their contraceptive needs through the years. Certainly a woman’s needs as a young bride looking forward to founding a family would be different a few decades hence, when as a woman in her 40s she already has the number of children she wants and is more interested in getting protection from future pregnancies while concerned about issues like menopause, reproductive tract cancers and perhaps maintaining an active sex life.

Which is why health advocates keep telling those on the front lines of health delivery to keep an ear (and heart) open to what their patients are telling them and more important what they are not telling them. Their advice or the talks they have with their patients must be tailored to the individual needs of each one, and, whatever method the health provider recommends, he or she is obliged to provide full and accurate information, answering all questions and doubts the user may have.

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THIS is why I was rather concerned about the “conscience clause” in the proposed RH bill. The clause would allow health workers, even those in government, to refuse to provide advice or service to a patient if such advice or service goes against the provider’s conscience.

As I wrote in a previous column, why should the provider’s conscience prevail over that of the patient’s? And if a health provider has reservations about family planning, why work in a government health center where poor people go for all sorts of health services and deserve to be treated regardless of their religious affiliation?

Also, a doctor, nurse or midwife could cite the “conscience clause” to provide wrong or misleading advice to patients, not tell them about methods they do not agree with, or exaggerate the dangers or side effects. The bill, as I understand it, would allow health workers not to provide family planning advice if they don’t want to, but would require them to at least refer the patient to another health service provider who is willing to do so. This sounds to me like a recipe for lazy public health workers to pass on work to colleagues simply by citing their sensitive “consciences.”

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AMERICAN writer E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote a very interesting column in The Washington Post commenting on the media attention (or lack of it) paid to the recent talk before the graduating class of The Catholic University of America by US House Speaker John Boehner.

Like the commencement address two years ago by President Barack Obama before graduates of Notre Dame University, Boehner’s talk provoked reactions from faculty and alumni of Catholic University, but these didn’t get much media attention maybe because, said Dionne, “the media … don’t cover you much if you are civil and respectful. This would be the same media that regularly disparage incivility and divisiveness in politics.”

While Obama was attacked relentlessly (and booed by anti-abortion activists during his speech) at Notre Dame, Boehner was treated much more kindly, with critics in an open letter welcoming him to the university while bringing up issues that receive scant attention in the US media.

“We congratulate you on the occasion of your commencement address to The Catholic University of America,” the critics wrote the speaker who has taken an anti-abortion stance. “It is good for Catholic universities to host and engage the thoughts of powerful public figures, even Catholics such as yourself who fail to recognize (whether out of a lack of awareness or dissent) important aspects of Catholic teaching.”

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WHAT the speaker’s critics slammed Boehner for was the position he had taken with regard to social justice issues, particularly his record “in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor” which they deemed “among the worst in Congress.”

The letter cited the just-passed budget which resulted in “disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons” and which has “anti-life implications,” including cuts to the Women, Infants and Children program.

Dionne noted that “there is … a problem for those bishops who barely murmur when a Catholic politician departs from the church’s teachings on social justice but think that even the mildest deviation on abortion is enough to keep a public figure off a Catholic campus. As a result, they feed the distorted media narrative about what the church believes.”

Here in the Philippines, despite the heated exchange and name-calling on the RH bill, we’re not even talking about abortion. What the bill essentially wants is for government to take a more active hand in meeting the aspirations of poor couples who want to keep their families small.

But the way the bishops are talking, it’s as if the greatest sin for a Catholic Filipino these days is to support the RH bill, ignoring many other serious “social sins” that the Church in previous decades had once condemned loudly and bravely.