On the Reproductive Health Bill No. 5043

(excerpted from Emil Jurado's column "To The Point")

There are fallacies being peddled by Rep. Edcel Lagman and his anti-life cohorts in the lower House in connection with the proposed Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008, which seems to be gaining ground in media.

Lagman and company deny that contraceptives are life-threatening and claim they are essential medicines, family friendly, and thus, would improve the Filipino quality of life.

Santa Banana, the Reproductive Health Bill would even go so far as mocking parents with fine and imprisonment in refusing to expose their children to mandatory “age-appropriate” reproductive health education starting Grade 5 outside the loving confines of home and family. That’s child abuse of the highest order!

Another brazen lie is that the use of condoms would prevent the spread of the AIDS-causing HIV virus, under the guise of “safe sex.” My gulay, even the Department of Health is now peddling the baloney that the nationwide use of condoms will prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
There’s is empirical data that a prophylactic material, like a condom, as a means of preventing HIV/AIDS is not 100-percent foolproof. Thus, for the Health Department to promote the use of condoms could increase instead the incidence of the disease it is supposed to prevent.

This is, of course, outside the context of morality in the use of condoms, which is banned by the Catholic Church. Contraception is wrong not because the Church has banned it; the Church banned it because it is wrong. And insofar as Catholics are concerned, fidelity to the Church is fidelity to Christ, who founded the Church on a “rock” called Peter, the first Vicar of Christ on earth.

The idea of “safe sex” peddled by the reproductive health bill advocates is actually a copy from the West, thinking that if they use a condom, it would protect them from HIV/AIDS.
Not only is the idea of “safe sex” with the use of condoms an illusion. It also encourages us Filipinos to violate our norms and the promise to practice marital fidelity and chastity.
What is needed is for men and women to change their sexual behavior instead of relying on condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Liberal and non-Catholics will say that compliance with the doctrines and tenets of the Church would be a difficult thing to do. But that’s precisely the point. In marriage and raising a healthy family, there’s need for discipline. And that’s the spirit of Article II, Section 15 of the Constitution which provides that every citizen has the right to health, hence the state has the duty to protect the citizens against dangerous substances as provided for in Article XVI, Section 9.