The Reproductive Health Bill - Essay Example

The bill has been unanimously approved by the House Committee on Population and Family Relations last January 31, 2011. It is now awaiting approval on third reading in Congress after which it will be submitted to the Senate for approval and eventually submitted to the Office of the President for signature (Montenegro, par.2). This process however is not an easy route. Various contending factions have their own vocal supporters from prominent groups and personalities in the fields of the academe, government, civil society and the religious.

It is worth noting that the powerful Catholic Church, representing Catholics who comprise around 80 percent of the Philippine population (Santos, par. 4), is in the forefront of the campaign against the bill. The RH Bill seeks to guarantee universal access to family planning methods. The bill also aims to provide universal access to information on contraception and maternal care, and promote age-appropriate sexual education to youths in elementary and high schools (Palmer, par. 5). The bill seeks to protect the health and lives of mothers who die from unnecessary causes in childbirth, prevent unintentional pregnancies and thereby prevent abortions.

For the bill’s proponents, one of the primary reasons why they wrote the bill is the interconnection between rapid population growth and poverty, with much of the growth in population occurring among the poor. In a 2004 study, the Asian Development Bank cited the country’s large population as one of the core drivers of the country’s poverty (Palmer, par. 2). Ernesto Pernia, an economics professor points out that with fewer children and wider birth intervals the poor will be able to devote more of their very limited resources to each child’s education and health which in turn will increase their chances of climbing out of poverty (Palmer, par. 7). It is worth mentioning that not all religious groups are against the RH Bill.

The Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches supports the RH Bill because it is pro-life, pro-development and pro-poor. Addressing the concerns of the Catholic Church that the bill promotes a “culture of death” by allowing artificial contraceptive methods, its leader Bishop Efraim Tendero had this to say: "Life begins at fertilization. Therefore if there is no fertilization, there is no life yet. The use of artificial contraception is not taking away life because life has not yet started.

" (Santos, par.5 & 7). Another influential religious group, the Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ), believes that the RH bill will help decrease many of society’s worsening ills which could be attributed to the increase in population. The group’s stand is with the RH bill, married couples can avoid unwanted pregnancies (Santos, par. 7-8). Another group, the Interfaith Partnership for the Promotion of Responsible Parenthood considers the RH bill as necessary to prevent the deaths of mothers and babies (Santos, par. 11). Leading the groups against the RH Bill is the Catholic Church.

The Church supports Natural Family Planning, which includes abstinence and fertility beads among women. But it strongly prohibits the use of artificial means, such as birth control pills and condoms because it prevents human life (Palmer, par. 11-12). The Church argues that by making contraceptives universally accessible and promoting sex education in schools, it will promote promiscuity (Palmer, par. 13). But proponents argue that that is exactly why the proposed sex education of the youth includes values formation.

The Church believes there is no relation between population size and poverty. They argue that instead of spending P6 billion in implementing the bill, it should instead be used