Ateneo Faculty: Catholics can support the RH Bill in good conscience

I am post­ing this state­ment by some of the most respected fac­ulty of Ate­neo de Manila Uni­ver­sity. Most of them I know and some of them were my teach­ers. I do not intend to fight with any­one about this. But I want you to read it, because it opens up the dis­cus­sion and makes you think. Hon­estly, I am sick and tired of peo­ple tak­ing a stance with­out read­ing the whole bill and just obey­ing “what the Catholic Church says.” Fun­da­men­tal­ism hap­pens pre­cisely because peo­ple do NOT think and just fol­low blindly. There is a rea­son why we have a con­science. And there is a rea­son why we can think.

Now if after read­ing this, in your con­science you decide to go against the RH Bill, well and good. At least you thought about it already. That is all I ask really for. :-)

Dec­la­ra­tion of sup­port for the Repro­duc­tive Health Bill’s imme­di­ate pas­sage into law from indi­vid­ual fac­ulty of the Ate­neo de Manila Uni­ver­sity

We, indi­vid­ual fac­ulty of the Ate­neo de Manila Uni­ver­sity, speak­ing for our­selves and not for the Uni­ver­sity, strongly sup­port House Bill 5043 on “Repro­duc­tive Health and Pop­u­la­tio Devel­op­ment,” and call for its imme­di­ate pas­sage in Con­gress. After study­ing the bill’s pro­vi­sions in the light of the real­i­ties of Fil­ipino women, poor fam­i­lies, and our youth, we have reached the con­clu­sion that the philip­pines urgently needs a national pol­icy on repro­duc­tive health and pop­u­la­tion devel­op­ment, as pro­vided by the RH Bill.

A con­sis­tent, inte­grated, and com­pre­hen­sive pop­u­la­tion frame­work guar­an­tees bud­getary sup­port from the national gov­ern­ment for repro­duc­tive health ini­tia­tives, and ensures their sus­tain­abil­ity across local gov­ern­ment units regard­less of changes in national and local lead­er­ship. While curb­ing our rapid pop­u­la­tion growth rate of 2.04 per­cent will not, by itself, solve poverty in our coun­try, address­ing the pop­u­la­tion prob­lem is cru­cial to over­all eco­nomic growth and poverty reduc­tion, along with asset redis­tri­b­u­tion, employ­ment and liveli­hood oppor­tu­ni­ties, com­bat­ing cor­rup­tion, improv­ing gov­er­nance, and strength­en­ing institutions.

We fur­ther believe that it is pos­si­ble for Catholics like our­selves to sup­port HB 5043 in good con­science, even as we rec­og­nize, with some anguish, that our view con­tra­dicts the posi­tion held by some of our fel­low Catholics, includ­ing our bish­ops. Those who oppose the RH Bill have denounced it as “pro-abortion,” “anti-life,” “anti-women,” “anti-poor,” and “immoral.”

How­ever, our rea­son, informed by our faith, has led us to believe and say oth­er­wise. The RH Bill is pro-life and pro-women. HB 5043 cat­e­gor­i­cally rejects abor­tion, which it deems a “crime,” in con­so­nance with the 1987 Con­sti­tu­tion. What it, in fact, wants to do is pre­vent abor­tions by offer­ing cou­ples an array of “medically-safe, legal, afford­able and qual­ity” fam­ily plan­ning meth­ods, from which they can choose the one that will work best for them. In so doing, the RH Bill seeks to avert unwanted and mist­imed preg­nan­cies, which cause mostly poor and mar­ried women despair­ing over yet another preg­nancy to seek an induced abor­tion. We are alarmed that an esti­mated 473,400 Fil­ipino women went for an abor­tion in 2000, and that some 79,000 of them wound up in hos­pi­tals for abor­tion com­pli­ca­tions. We con­sider it our guilt and our shame that so many of our women should be dri­ven to such dire straits as to make abor­tion a fam­ily plan­ning method, for want of infor­ma­tion on and access to an effec­tive means to pre­vent an unplanned pregnancy.

We believe in the sanc­tity and dig­nity of human life, whether that life is the mother’s or the unborn child’s. It is for this rea­son that we sup­port the RH Bill’s intent to expand cou­ples’ but espe­cially women’s access to safe, legal, and reli­able fam­ily plan­ning methods,whether mod­ern nat­ural or mod­ern arti­fi­cial. The United Nations Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNFPA)says that women’s access to effec­tive con­tra­cep­tion would avert 30 per­cent of mater­nal deaths, 90 per­cent of abortion-related deaths and dis­abil­i­ties, and 20 per­cent of child deaths. Thus, the RH Bill is not only pro-life (in that it aims to pre­vent the ter­mi­na­tion of an unborn child’s life), but also pro-women, because it enables them to plan the num­ber and spac­ing of their chil­dren so as to avoid fre­quent and closely-spaced preg­nan­cies that imperil their health and lives. More­over, given that our mater­nal mor­tal­ity rate is a stag­ger­ingly high 162 mater­nal deaths per 100,000 live births, the RH Bill aims to improve mater­nal and infant health by enjoin­ing cities and munic­i­pal­i­ties to pro­vide an ade­quate num­ber of skilled birth atten­dants and hos­pi­tals ren­der­ing com­pre­hen­sive emer­gency obstet­ric care.

In sum, because repro­duc­tive health is cen­tral to women’s over­all health, fun­da­men­tal aspects of women’s well­be­ing are com­pro­mised when repro­duc­tive health is ignored. The con­di­tions under which choices are made are as impor­tant as the actual con­tent of women’s choices: the right to choose is mean­ing­ful only if women have real power to choose.

The RH Bill is pro-poor. Based on the Pulse Asia 2007 sur­vey on fam­ily plan­ning, an over­whelm­ing major­ity (92%) of Fil­ipinos believe that it is impor­tant to plan their fam­ily, and most (89%) say that the gov­ern­ment should allo­cate fund­ing for mod­ern arti­fi­cial meth­ods of fam­ily plan­ning, includ­ing the pill, intrauter­ine devices (IUDs), con­doms, lig­a­tion, and vasec­tomy. And yet only 5 out of 10 mar­ried women (50.6%) use any fam­ily plan­ning method, whether mod­ern nat­ural or mod­ern arti­fi­cial. This sug­gests a sig­nif­i­cant unmet need for repro­duc­tive health services.

By treat­ing con­tra­cep­tives as “essen­tial med­i­cines,” HB 5043 makes con­tra­cep­tives (includ­ing those requir­ing hos­pi­tal ser­vices like tubal lig­a­tion, vasec­tomy, and IUD inser­tion) part of the National Drug For­mu­lary, and there­fore more acces­si­ble and cheaper for Filipinos.

This is a decid­edly pro-poor mea­sure, con­sid­er­ing that the major­ity (58.1%) of those who use mod­ern arti­fi­cial fam­ily plan­ning meth­ods rely on the gov­ern­ment for their sup­ply of con­tra­cep­tives. Our Catholic faith calls on us to embrace the pref­er­en­tial option for the poor and mar­gin­al­ized. We there­fore sup­port the RH Bill, which we believe will be espe­cially ben­e­fi­cial for our poor­est 20 per­cent who can­not afford fam­ily plan­ning ser­vices, and there­fore have the high­est unmet need for fam­ily plan­ning (26.7%), and 2.5 chil­dren more than they desire.

Fur­ther­more, we uphold the prin­ci­ple of inte­gral human devel­op­ment, which is why we want cou­ples to be able to have only the num­ber of chil­dren that they want and can ade­quately feed, clothe, care for, and send to school, so that they can attain their full poten­tial as human beings, and con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of Philip­pine society.

The RH Bill is pro-youth. As teach­ers of our young peo­ple, we are deeply con­cerned that, over time, more of them are get­ting ini­ti­ated into sex at increas­ingly younger ages. Based on the 1994 and 2002 Young Adult Fer­til­ity and Sex­u­al­ity sur­veys of the UP Pop­u­la­tion Insti­tute, not only did the pro­por­tion of youth aged 15–24 who are engaged in pre­mar­i­tal sex increase (from to Dec­la­ra­tion of sup­port for the Repro­duc­tive Health Bill’s imme­di­ate pas­sage into law 17.8% in 1994, to 23.4% in 2002), but the aver­age age for their first sex­ual encounter declined (from 18 in 1994, to 17.5 in 2002). Even more wor­ri­some is how their pre­mar­i­tal sex act is often unpro­tected, with three in four of them (75.1%) admit­ting to not using any kind of con­tra­cep­tive dur­ing their most recent pre­mar­i­tal sex act, pri­mar­ily because of lack of knowl­edge on con­tra­cep­tion. Our young people’s pre­mar­i­tal and unpro­tected sex there­fore places them at high risk for early preg­nan­cies, and con­tract­ing HIV-AIDS and sexually-transmitted diseases.

We favor the RH Bill’s pro­vi­sion of manda­tory age-appropriate repro­duc­tive health edu­ca­tion, believ­ing as we do that much of our youth’s risky sex­ual behav­ior is linked to their lack of infor­ma­tion and val­ues for­ma­tion on their repro­duc­tive and sex­ual health. We take excep­tion to the opin­ion that teach­ing them about sex will make them pruri­ent and promiscuous.

Rather, we hold the view that by pro­vid­ing our young peo­ple the infor­ma­tion and val­ues they would need to take care of their repro­duc­tive health, and by cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for them to artic­u­late and clar­ify their ques­tions and feel­ings about sex, we are empow­er­ing them to make respon­si­ble deci­sions regard­ing their sex­u­al­ity and sex­ual behav­ior, whether now or in the future.

After all, Catholic social the­ol­ogy teaches us that the prin­ci­ple of human dig­nity requires us to uphold human rights, which include the right to edu­ca­tion and appro­pri­ate infor­ma­tion (Gaudium et Spes, 1965) and the right to develop one’s intel­li­gence and free­dom in seek­ing and know­ing the truth (Cen­tes­imus Annus, 1991).

The RH Bill is pro-informed choice. In seek­ing to pro­mote both mod­ern nat­ural and mod­ern arti­fi­cial meth­ods of fam­ily plan­ning (with “no bias for either”), HB 5043 rec­og­nizes that cou­ples, espe­cially women, have the right to choose the fam­ily plan­ning method that they con­sider to be the safest and most effec­tive for them, pro­vided that these are legally permissible.

Although nat­ural fam­ily plan­ning (NFP) which the Catholic Church pro­motes offers many ben­e­fits, it is impor­tant to real­ize that pur­su­ing an NFP-only pop­u­la­tion pol­icy will be a dis­ser­vice, if not a grave injus­tice, to women and cou­ples for whom NFP sim­ply can­not work.

We are think­ing of women who find it impos­si­ble to pre­dict their infer­tile peri­ods; or cou­ples who see each other on an irreg­u­lar basis; or women who are trapped in abu­sive rela­tion­ships with men who demand sex any­time they want it. Why is it morally wrong for such women and cou­ples and even oth­ers not encom­passed by the above sit­u­a­tions to use a mod­ern arti­fi­cial fam­ily plan­ning method that has been pro­nounced safe and non-abortifacient by health author­i­ties, if their dis­cern­ment of their par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion has led them to con­clude that such a method will enable them to ful­fill the demands of mar­i­tal love and respon­si­ble parenthood?

Catholic social teach­ings rec­og­nize the pri­macy of the well-formed con­science over wooden com­pli­ance to direc­tives from polit­i­cal and reli­gious author­i­ties. Gaudium et Spes (1965) tells us: “In the depths of his con­science, man detects a law which he does not impose upon him­self, but which holds him to obe­di­ence. Always sum­mon­ing him to love good and avoid evil, the voice of con­science when nec­es­sary speaks to his heart: do this, shun that. For man has in his heart a law writ­ten by God; to obey it is the very dig­nity of man; accord­ing to it he will be judged” (no. 16).

We respect the con­sciences of our bish­ops when they pro­mote nat­ural fam­ily plan­ning as the only moral means of con­tra­cep­tion, in adher­ence to the teach­ings of Humanae Vitae (1968). In turn, we ask our bish­ops to respect the one in three (35.6%) mar­ried Fil­ipino women who, in their “most secret core and sanc­tu­ary” or con­science, have decided that their and their family’s inter­ests would best be served by using a mod­ern arti­fi­cial means of con­tra­cep­tion. Is it not pos­si­ble that these women and their spouses were obey­ing their well-informed and well-formed con­sciences when they opted to use an arti­fi­cial contraceptive?

We there­fore ask our bish­ops and fel­low Catholics not to block the pas­sage of HB 5043, which pro­motes women’s and cou­ples’ access to the full range of safe, legal, and effec­tive mod­ern nat­ural and mod­ern arti­fi­cial fam­ily plan­ning meth­ods, from which they can choose the one most suit­able to their needs and per­sonal and reli­gious con­vic­tions. To cam­paign against the bill is to deny our peo­ple, espe­cially our women, many other ben­e­fits, such as mater­nal and child health and nutri­tion; pro­mo­tion of breast­feed­ing; ado­les­cent and youth health; repro­duc­tive health edu­ca­tion; pre­ven­tion and man­age­ment of gyne­co­log­i­cal con­di­tions; and pro­vi­sion of infor­ma­tion and ser­vices address­ing the repro­duc­tive health needs of mar­gin­al­ized sec­tors, among oth­ers. In pur­suit of the com­mon good, or the “sum total of social con­di­tions which allow peo­ple… to reach their ful­fill­ment more fully and more eas­ily” (Gaudium et Spes 1965, no. 26), we call on the Catholic Church to let the RH Bill pass in Con­gress, and to con­sider forg­ing a prin­ci­pled col­lab­o­ra­tion with the gov­ern­ment in the pro­mo­tion of nat­ural fam­ily plan­ning which Humanae Vitae deems morally accept­able, and in the for­ma­tion of con­sciences with empha­sis on the value of respon­si­ble sex and parenthood.

To our fel­low Catholics who, in good con­science, have come to con­clude, as we have, that we need a repro­duc­tive health law: we ask you to declare your sup­port for HB 5043.

Finally, we call on our leg­is­la­tors in Con­gress and in the Sen­ate to pass the RH Bill. Doing so upholds the con­sti­tu­tional right of spouses to found a fam­ily in accor­dance with their reli­gious con­vic­tions; hon­ors our com­mit­ments to inter­na­tional covenants; and pro­motes the repro­duc­tive health and repro­duc­tive rights of Fil­ipinos, espe­cially of those who are most mar­gin­al­ized on this issue?our women, poor fam­i­lies, and youth.

We sign this dec­la­ra­tion as indi­vid­ual fac­ulty of the Ate­neo de Manila Uni­ver­sity, and speak for our­selves and not on behalf of our col­leagues nor the University.

15 Octo­ber 2008
Sig­na­to­ries (as of 15 Octo­ber 2008)

Ray­mond B. Aguas (Depart­ment of The­ol­ogy)
Liane Peña Alam­pay (Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy)
Fer­nando T. Ald­aba (Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ics)
Rem­mon E. Bar­baza (Depart­ment of Phi­los­o­phy)
Manuel B. Dy, Jr. (Depart­ment of Phi­los­o­phy)
Eliz­a­beth Uy Eviota (Depart­ment of Sociology-Anthropology)
Marita Cas­tro Gue­vara (Depart­ment of Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Stud­ies)
Roberto O. Gue­vara (Depart­ment of The­ol­ogy)
Anne Marie A. Karaos (Depart­ment of Sociology-Anthropology)
Michael J. Lib­er­a­tore (Depart­ment of The­ol­ogy)
Liza L. Lim (Depart­ment of Sociology-Anthropology)
Cristina Jayme Mon­tiel (Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy)
Mary Racelis (Depart­ment of Sociology-Anthropology)
Agustin Mar­tin G. Rodriguez (Depart­ment of Philosophy)