Poisoning the well

When you run out of arguments to bolster your position, you resort to what, in Logic class, is called “poisoning the well.” It means throwing mud at your opponents, flinging suspicion and innuendo at them without offering to provide proof or evidence to prove these true, all with the intent to derail the discussion and impede any progress toward a consensus.

“Poisoning the well” is what Sen. Vicente Sotto III resorted to a few days ago when, on the second day of the Senate plenary debates on the RH bill, he “sought to unmask,” in the words of a report in this paper, the sponsors and foreign supporters of local lobbyists pushing for the passage of the measure.

In particular, Sotto targeted the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP) mainly because of its ties to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). He even traces the roots of the IPPF to Margaret Sanger, a pioneer (and heroine, in the eyes of some) in the reproductive health movement who battled (and went to jail) for the right of women to use contraception and receive information they needed to make informed decisions about their reproductive lives.

Sotto even sought to create a “bogeyman” in the figure of Sanger who, as part of her advocacies, wrote about her belief in eugenics, or the use of “social interventions” in weeding out the infirm or genetically disabled from the rest of society. Sanger, who died in the 1960s, was most active in the early part of the century. And while “eugenics” brings up images of Nazi “purification” experiments, it doesn’t mean that Sanger’s ideas or advocacies have necessarily been adopted by organizations that were created in her wake, including the FPOP.

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I talked with Roberto Ador, executive director of the FPOP, about Sotto’s allegations. Their organization, said Ador, “wants to follow the example of the two lady senators” who are leading the sponsorship of the RH bill in the Senate, referring to committee chair Sen. Pia Cayetano and bill sponsor Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago. When I asked what he meant, Ador said they simply “want to be civil” even in the face of Sotto’s “innuendos.” Still, FPOP is issuing a statement in due course.

What I know of FPOP, though, is that it is the oldest voluntary reproductive health NGO in the country, serving communities for 42 years now by providing reproductive health services through 28 clinics around the country, and 25 chapters. In fact, the FPOP is even older than the Population Commission, which was set up during the martial law period.

The basic decision-making body of the FPOP is its General Assembly, with more than a thousand community volunteers, and about 300 of what Ador calls “policy volunteers,” whom he describes as “professionals like doctors, nurses, lawyers and academics who assist us in our advocacies.” The present chairperson and president of FPOP is Betty Lou Tabanda, a councilor of Baguio City and a long-time friend of mine. She has long been recognized for her commitment to women’s rights and reproductive health.

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Clinics under FPOP auspices provide a wide range of services, from counseling on family planning, adolescent health, STIs  and HIV/AIDS; referrals to other clinics or hospitals for services beyond the clinic’s capability; provision of pills and injectables, and for a few, even the insertion of IUDs and the performance of tubal ligation or vasectomies.

For these services, the clinics either charge nothing at all or accept “token contributions” from clients. To fund their many activities, said Ador, they depend on funding from the IPPF, grants from local and multilateral agencies and from voluntary contributions.

“We are a proud member of the IPPF,” declared Ador, in the face of innuendos that since IPPF members provide abortion services, then the FPOP does, too. “Ever since our founding, the FPOP has provided reproductive health services for the Filipino people,” said Ador. “We have done that consistently through the years, and not once have any of our clinic staff or volunteers done time in jail. This means that we have not and do not provide abortion services which remain illegal in the Philippines.”

But abortion is legal in other countries, and where it is legal, IPPF member-organizations provide safe abortions. Indeed, in the United States, the Planned Parenthood Federation is coming under attack, with federal and state legislators seeking to cut any government funding from their clinics.

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Ador adds that FPOP has been a member of the steering committee of the Reproductive Health Action Network (RHAN), an alliance of NGOs, academe, and even faith-based organizations that have been at the forefront of civil society efforts to advocate and work for the passage of the RH bill.

It’s no mystery who the members of RHAN are, and its statements, mobilizations, policy papers and gatherings are open to the public. It’s only the malicious, I would guess, who see a conspiracy where none exists, and then proceed to peddle their wild conjectures in the guise of parliamentary debate.

Perhaps Sotto would like to broaden his allegations to include a probe into the foreign funding that organizations with links to the Catholic Church and conservative religious groups here have been receiving to conduct their own seminars and campaigns. He might as well look into the involvement of right-wing groups in the formulation of local anti-RH initiatives.

Or he might ask himself if his staunch opposition to the RH bill is not a thinly disguised attack on women, a refusal to respect women’s human rights and grant them protection from oppression and violence. I wonder what the late starlet Pepsi Paloma would have to say about this.