Underage girls ‘against’ RH bill

The Catholic Church is deploying underage girls against modern devils Sen. Pia Cayetano, Rep. Edcel Lagman and tour guide turned Internet meme Carlos Celdran. Its youth site (www.youthpinoy.net) features an article, “Youth Locked and Loaded for Anti-RH Rally,” and a photo of young girls smiling in their school uniforms and holding anti-Reproductive Health bill placards. The article opens: “An estimated 2,500 young people from the Episcopal Youth Commission of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines … are to join faith-based groups, family and life advocates and concerned citizens in the mass mobilization [on Aug. 4 at the Edsa Shrine].”

Schoolchildren are no strangers to religious groups’ political rallies. A YouTube video, “Anti RH bill, anti condom, anti same sex marriage, anti gay pro-life demonstrator,” features similar girls in uniforms, giggling while chanting, “Pamilya sagipin, huwag lansagin.” A hidden speaker in another video, “Anonymous Student at RH Rally,” protests: “Our school forced us to be here… I’m standing here and I don’t even support this [anti-RH bill rally].”

Recalling our own teachers’ old tricks, one wonders whether attendance at these rallies is graded.

Conscripting children as unwitting political mouthpieces is one of the most dastardly blows to our Constitution. Freedom of speech is democracy’s sacred fabric because without the free flow of ideas, all other rights become meaningless. A key corollary to being free to express one’s own ideas is being free from forcibly expressing another’s ideas. The Constitution prohibits President Aquino and the armed forces from pointing a gun at a child’s head and forcing her to curse former President Gloria Arroyo’s neck brace. Likewise, we should be shocked if someone points Manny Pacquiao at a child’s head and forces her to cry, “Jail Carlos Celdran!” And minors have rights, as the then 6-year-old Kris Aquino demonstrated in campaigning for her father.

Religious schools may invoke academic freedom, a species of freedom of speech that has been mutating beyond recognition in their hands. St. Theresa’s College of Cebu invoked academic freedom when it defied a court order to let certain students, whose bikini photos were uploaded to Facebook, attend their graduation. Pilar College of Zamboanga is invoking academic freedom to justify its continuing ban on the hijab (Muslim head scarf). Even assuming that strongly encouraged participation in a political rally is a valid teaching exercise, academic freedom is trumped by a fundamental constitutional right, of which none is more fundamental than the freedom of speech. And academic freedom primarily protects a school’s right to choose what to teach, not campus transformations into Orwellian states.

Schools may also invoke their authority over students. But this authority is “special parental authority” under our Family Code. It cannot trump the fundamental right to free speech, and it would be especially awkward if a parent with the actual parental authority disagreed with the rallies.

Finally, a religious school may argue that students are simply praying. The CBCP quotes Antipolo Bishop Gabriel Reyes: “[T]his is a moral issue and therefore [the Aug. 4 rally] will not be a political rally but a prayer rally focused on praying for the non-passage of the [RH bill].” This statement is up there with Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman (Monica Lewinsky).” A rally against proposed legislation is as political as political gets.

It is extremely ironic that Mr. Aquino’s spokesperson Edwin Lacierda has consistently framed the issue as facilitating informed choice, and we reasonably doubt that minor demonstrators are meaningfully informed or have a meaningful choice in attending. Jean Piaget’s theories hold that children begin to develop abstract thinking only at age 11, and the giggles in those YouTube videos raise doubts whether the children featured fully grasp what they are chanting. Even minors who are genuinely passionate about the RH bill may not appreciate the full range of issues, down to what exactly is the permissible role of organized religion in Philippine political life. And it is doubly ironic that advocates claim to champion the family but children in their school uniforms are being used as pawns.

Many of us wonder how the increasingly divisive debate transitioned from the beautiful Catholic teachings that every sex act must maintain the potential to create life and, more generally, that all life is sacred, to stubborn blanket claims that the RH bill will lead to abortion, decadence and the dark side of the Force. To claims that contraceptives not only encourage immorality but also cause cancer, obesity and halitosis. To consistent refusal to argue beyond the claim that reproductive health is not God’s will, except to substitute “morality” for “God” when reminded of the separation of church and state. To insistence on imposed religious dogma over respect for individual choice. To talk of excommunicating the President.

Let us say a special prayer for our children’s wellbeing and freedom of thought, and maintain a constitutional vigil until they are free.

Oscar Franklin Tan (oscarfranklin.tan@yahoo.com.ph) is an international corporate lawyer and president of the UP Alumni Association (Singapore).