LTE: “Everyone against the RH Bill is stupid.” True story.

With all the flaws in its very foundation, it is necessary to ask the question whether the Bill should ever end up as a Law? Laws are Laws and not I, not the Gentleman from Albay, not the Archbishop from Pampanga, not the Balding Man up there should ever cross it. Everyone must abide.

If the RH Bill should end up becoming a Law, then there is no reason for anyone to feel excluded or unaffected by it—especially when our money is on the line. Section 23 of the RH Bill (Appropriations) states that a hundred million pesos must automatically be appropriated for its enactment. True enough, Laws cannot function without the proper funding. However, if it is against our beliefs, should we allow the taxpayer’s money, our money, to end up funding the bill? Should we allow our money to end up in the pockets of transnational pharmaceutical companies without question? And what with pulmonary diseases which kill more Filipinos than reproductive illnesses do? With no Law making a sure allotment for other diseases, funding for these diseases are set aside for the 100++ million annually which will go for the manufacturing and distribution of condoms and contraceptives.

Do we honestly need that much condoms? Are we that addicted? Or are we giving too much for the benefit of DKT International (Trust and Frenzy Condoms), Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, etc? This, amidst their crimes against Filipino scientists.

I must admit, nonetheless, the RH Bill has its good points—like the right to information, especially for women. But it also has its bad points. And if we enact this into a Law, there will be too plenty of ambiguities that would mean life or death, literally. Any good lawyer can argue his way out of an abortion case. I myself can argue at the point wherein life begins. Indeed, civil disobedience is wholly justified since the Bill tackles such sensitive views on Life.

While the RH Bill and I share the same view that women should be empowered, I do not believe that this empowerment should come at their own expense. The case often cited is that women are made factories of babies (ginagawang pabrika) which men take advantage of. True, this is present today. But condoms would not solve this. It’s even more fatal that the RH Bill fosters this form of consciousness—that the condom is a weapon against the primitive desires of men. Condoms and contraceptives would only put a plug on the factory, but the view of making factories out of women is not erased. The violence doesn’t stop. A condom or a contraceptive does not and will not uplift the state of women as long as society remains a frozen structure which looks at women as such. Again, I reiterate: Education.

The practice of making Laws is the practice of defining Common Good and Social Consciousness—not majority rule or compromise. If we are to fill the minds of the people with weak arguments, this achieves nothing. The direction we are to take remains unfounded, even divided.

It is a comforting thought that educated boys and girls these days already know that having more children makes it difficult to raise a family without the RH Bill being institutionalized. The direct proportion is easily learned anyway without the superficial help of condoms and contraceptives. What remains, through thick and thin, is the fact that good education saves.

We can’t pass the RH Bill when such solid arguments remain standing against the idea of overpopulation itself, the methods of teaching sex education, and the differing views we all have—Catholic or non-Catholic—on Life. We can’t turn the RH Bill into a Law while Germany celebrates reaching the same population as ours while we, on the other hand, are told to despair over it; We can’t make the RH Bill a Law when it is clear that the only difference between Germany and us is that international trade laws are working for their side, not ours; We can’t put the RH Bill into Law when even the US State from which it was modeled after could not be proud of its results; We can’t say that the RH Bill would save us from poverty while the State abandons Education; We can’t say that the RH Bill would help the state of women when our children are allowed to live by the same institutions wherein laboring men are favored over women. Ultimately, we can’t pass the RH Bill for it has divided our nation.
If there’s anything I should commend the RH Bill for, it is that it has strengthened the call for structural change by attempting at it. And it is for this reason that I admire the Church. The Church is an institution with set principles—an institution where Laws are Laws. Father Zossima, an iconic character from Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, says it best with his beliefs that it is the State which should strive to one day to become the Church, not a separation. For the Church sticks to its mission, not without its faults, to bring God’s Kingdom into this Earth. And this, the Church strives to achieve with an unwavering and consistent structural approach to its problems. If there’s anything we could learn from the Church’s stubbornness, it’s that you can’t be inconsistent—you have to look at the structural picture. We can’t be activists for or against the RH Bill and be apathetic of other things at the same time.

It is strange that the media is venerating our country’s divide as “a sign that Filipinos are now thinking.” The Filipino has always been thinking. They do not need an RH Bill to tell them that. It’s as if everything else prior to this was stupidity. But it’s not. Intelligence has always been present in our country.