GOALS AND CHALLENGES IN LEGISLATING AN RH LAW
(Speech delivered by REP. EDCEL C. LAGMAN at ICPD 15 National Conference Workshop at the Summit Hall, PICC,
Pasay City on 26 August 2009)
(Speech delivered by REP. EDCEL C. LAGMAN at ICPD 15 National Conference Workshop at the Summit Hall, PICC,
Pasay City on 26 August 2009)
I am no stranger to controversy. In my more than two decades as a legislator, I have sponsored controversial bills on issues as varied as genuine agrarian reform that will truly benefit our landless farmers; the repeal of the archaic practice of the death penalty; a sensible but authentic Magna Carta of Students; innovative ways to reduce our foreign debt and; the enactment of a law that will finally give all Filipino women and couples the right to fully exercise their fundamental human right to plan and space their children in accordance with their convictions and religious beliefs.
But I have to admit that among all these controversial measures, nothing can beat the RH bill in terms of the uproar it has created and the passionate debates that have ensued from its filing – both within and outside the Halls of Congress.
However, I am not one to back out from a good fight. In fact, those whom I’ve worked closely with, like the Catholic hierarchy, in the enactment of RA 9346 prohibiting the imposition of capital punishment and more recently, Republic Act 9700 extending the land acquisition and distribution (LAD) component of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, would testify that I even relish a good fight.
The struggle to finally enact a law that will help safeguard the future of millions of women and their families and will have a host of positive multiplier effects on the health and lives of women and children will certainly more than qualify as a good fight.
ACHIEVABLE GOALS OF THE RH BILL
For a bill that has created such tumult, the goals of the RH bill are actually quite simple, which are all ICPD-MDG related.
First, the RH bill will help give parents the opportunity to exercise their right to freely and responsibly plan the number and spacing of their children. The bill mandates the provision of all forms of family planning to women and couples as long as they are legal and medically-safe, and preferably truly effective.
This means that a family planning method does not need the seal of approval of the Catholic Church for it to be offered in government health centers or directly to acceptors.
This bill is progressively rights-based.
Second, it will help improve maternal, newborn and child health and nutrition and reduce maternal, infant and child mortality. The bill is primarily a health measure. It will promote maternal and infant health even as it will help prevent the deaths of thousands of mothers and babies annually.
Both the WHO and the UNFPA have unequivocally asserted that a third of all maternal deaths could be avoided if women who wanted to use contraception were given the opportunity to do so. Proper birth spacing through family planning also significantly increases infant survival and has a positive effect on newborn and infant health.
Third, the RH bill will give women more opportunities to finish their education and secure productive work. Access to family planning information and services ensures maternal health and frees women to pursue opportunities in education and employment and thus will enhance their social and economic status and that of their families.
A woman who has the chance to finish her education and look for remunerative work will have more power to make decisions to improve her own and her children’s lives and contribute more meaningfully to her community. Thus, she would more likely be a productive member of society.
Fourth, it will help reduce poverty and achieve sustainable human development. It is necessary to enact a clear, comprehensive and rights-based national policy on reproductive health because it is an indispensable development tool.
The United Nations has declared that that “family planning and reproductive health are essential to reducing poverty” and “countries that invest in reproductive health and family planning and in women's development register slower population growth and faster economic growth.”
It was a Filipino, the late Rafael Salas, the first Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund, who pioneered and concretized the import of realizing the “crucial links between population and development and the need to take population into account in development plans.”
Clearly, any development program which does not incorporate population issues in its agenda will be virtually useless because there is an indisputable interrelationship between population, poverty and progress in relation to sustainable human development.
Disease, ignorance, environmental destruction, unemployment, hunger and the low status of women are concrete manifestations of poverty. These social ills cannot be overcome if government continues to relegate to the background the issue of population as it relates to development.
Fifth, the RH bill will most definitely help lower the incidence of abortion by preventing unplanned, mistimed and unwanted pregnancies.
We need a national policy on RH and population development because providing women with the information and services they need to plan and space their children will prevent unwanted pregnancies and help preclude the need to resort to abortion.
WE HAVE THE SUPERIORITY OF NUMBERS
The first version of the RH bill was filed way back in the 11th Congress and every Congress since then, versions of the bill have been filed and suffered the same fate – all gathered dust in the Archives of the House of Representatives.
House Bill 5043 has not and will not gather dust. On the contrary, it has been gathering more coauthors. As of yesterday, it now has 131 coauthors and about two dozen more legislators, although not covert coauthors, have committed to support the measure when it is put to a vote.
But some would argue that this is not enough since 131 supporters do not constitute an absolute majority of the House membership. The House of Representatives currently has 268 members. An absolute majority of 50% plus one would total to 135. Are we then four coauthors short?
We are actually in excess of 45 coauthors because we do not need an absolute majority of the total membership of the House to pass HB 5043. All we need is a simple majority of the quorum on the day a vote is taken.
Ordinarily, during the roll call about 170 members are present. If during the voting 170 members are still present, only 86 votes – not 135 – would be needed to constitute a simple majority to approve the bill.
Support for the RH bill is not confined to the Halls of Congress. Public support for the RH bill is overwhelming.
For almost two decades, SWS and Pulse Asia have documented that 92% to 98% of Filipinos want to mitigate their fertility and plan their families.
In survey after survey from the cosmopolitan cities of Manila and Parañaque to the conservative communities of Cebu and Bohol, the results of the surveys have been consistently encouraging. It does not matter what age people are, what their economic status is or whether or not they are Catholic. An overwhelming majority of Filipinos support the RH bill and agree that Filipinos need information on family planning and access to reproductive health supplies and products, both of which the bill undertakes to provide.
The latest SWS survey reveals that 71% of Filipinos want to have the bill enacted into law and 76% agree that there should be a law mandating schools to teach family planning to the youth.
The RH bill enjoys multi-sectoral support coming from the academe like U.P. Economics professors and professors form the UP College of Law and 69 Ateneo University professors; interfaith partnerships like Christian churches, Muslim communities, Iglesia ni Cristo and Jesus is Lord, among others; employers groups like the Employers’ Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP); labor groups like the Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino; youth organizations like the National Youth Parliament, a consortium of more than 150 student councils from state universities and colleges and sectarian institutions of higher learning; community of scientists like the National Academy for Science and Technology; and the vast NGO communities like the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network; and even Catholic organizations like the Catholics for Reproductive Health.
CATHOLIC CHURCH HELL-BENT IN OPPOSING RH
To describe the fight to have the RH bills passed by both Houses of Congress as an uphill battle is an understatement. It has been a difficult crusade but we are not short on ammunition to overcome the challenges and roadblocks being laid out by the bill’s critics.
Some bishops and lay leaders are hell-bent in opposing the measure. Their campaign is characterized by inordinate misinformation and patent lies as well as pathetic threats of excommunication for legislators supporting the bill.
But given the growing number of coauthors, it seems that it will take more than threats of eternal damnation to cow our RH advocates in Congress. Moreover, since majority of those polled in the recent surveys were Catholic, the very encouraging results of the surveys show that the policies advocated by the Church hierarchy do not reflect the diversity of attitudes and practices among the Catholic faithful themselves.
Catholic Ateneo University professors assert that Catholic women and couples can remain good Catholics even as they use contraceptives.
WE HAVE THE SUPERIORITY OF ARGUMENTS
The flawed arguments of members of the Catholic hierarchy are parroted by their allies in Congress who are critics of the bill. Plenary debates on HB 5043 actually began in September last year but because of the long-winding and repetitive questions not to mention the defective logic and faulty data used by anti-RH legislators during interpellation, the bill has not moved passed the period of sponsorship and debate.
But you have the assurance of your champions in Congress that we do not only have the superiority of numbers, we also have the superiority of arguments.
Unlike those who seek to defeat the measure, your advocates in Congress do not cherry pick their data to support their contentions. Neither do they fabricate their statistics in order to paint a rosier picture of maternal death rates in the country or to make it seem that the RH bill will be superfluous.
We are armed with the most recent statistics and data regarding matters pertaining to RH and family planning so we can debunk the unsound arguments of the bill’s oppositors and clarify the misconceptions on the bill that are being deliberately spread by the measure’s diehard critics.
We are committed to unmasking those who pretend to be purveyors of the truth as pretenders. We are in a situation where the truth can truly set us free. For so long as supporters of the RH bill continue to speak for the thousands of Filipino mothers who die of maternal causes and the millions of women who would like to plan and space their children but have no access to family planning information and services, they speak the truth and the truth of their words will demolish any and all false arguments against the RH bill.
LACK OF QUORUM DERAILS DEBATES ON THE BILL
The more difficult challenge to overcome is the recurrent lack of quorum in the House of Representatives. Because of the controversial nature of the bill, it is not beneath the critics of the bill in the House to raise the quorum issue if there are not enough warm bodies in the plenary hall, even if less contentious bills are routinely debated on and eventually passed by the House of Representatives without the question of quorum being raised.
Perforce, we must encourage all the coauthors of HB 5043 to be more consistent in attending sessions and to actually stay on in case the bill will be called for the continuation of the debates. If there is anything that our coauthors must try to emulate, it is the vigilance of the anti-RH camp when it comes to making sure that the bill will not be discussed if there is no quorum.
An innovation in the plenary debates has been proposed by Speaker Prospero Nograles to expedite the legislative process in enacting the RH bill. In lieu of the traditional one-on-one debates between sponsors and interpellators which is too time consuming, opposing panel debates will be innovated which could last for a maximum of three (3) session days. Let us support the Speaker’s suggestion.
PROSPECTS OF THE BILL’S PASSAGE
ARE PROMISING
House Bill No. 5043 or the proposed “Reproductive Health and Population Development Act” is a beacon of hope, a promise of a better quality of life, particularly for future generations of Filipinos.
This is why the raging debate on reproductive health and family planning refuses to die because Filipinos are now aware that they can have more comfortable lives if they can achieve their fertility goals and the population growth rate can be moderated based on their informed, effective and responsible choice on the number, spacing and timing of their children.
The challenges we face in legislating an RH law are real but not insuperable. It is my personal philosophy that there is no problem without a solution.
When it comes to the prospects of the bill’s passage, I earnestly believe that there has never been a time more promising than now.
I am confident that after a gestation period of over a decade, with your invaluable support we shall safely deliver House Bill 5043 and Senate Bill 3132 and the resulting RH law will help ensure that every pregnancy in the country will be safe and wanted and the birth of every child is a cause for celebration.
Our country’s most fitting commemoration of ICPD+15 is the passage of the RH bill!