Reproductive Health Bill: Boon or bane?

As I write, I do not know how the lower house of Congress will deal with the controversial reproductive health (RH) bill.

Will they stop it in its tracks by resolving to defeat it?

Will they put it in the freezer and wait for another time?

Or will they pass it and take a huge step towards empowering the women of this country to choose the path of responsible motherhood with easy access to modern and rational methods of contraception?

Questions, like a swarm of bees, buzz in the air. Is it true, as the United Nation has averred that 15 Filipino women lose their lives every day due to unwanted childbirth?

Or that hopes of future prosperity will turn to dust if the country is not able to deal with population growth by giving men and women access to information and means to freely exercise their human right to just have the number of children they want?

There had been debates and debates over the issue and I believe that the public is thoroughly informed about the matter.

Note: 70 percent of women, including Catholics, favor the right to limit the size of their family. It is a question of quality over quantity.

Now it’s up to Congress to decide.

MARGOSATUBIG We have just received a book from our friend Ma. Cecilia Locsin-Nava. The book is Cecile‘s translation of the highly popular novel of Ramon L. Muzones’ Margosatubig written in Hiligaynon and serialized way back in 1947 (?) in either in Hiligaynon or Yuhum. I could still remember readers immersed over the exploits of Salagunting, the hero in a story of love, revenge, and justice. The novel also relates the story of Moro piracy against places in Visayas which explains the presence of watch towers ( one in Dumaguete) to warn residents to flee when Moro vintas appear in the horizon.

Unfortunately no one reads IIonggo or Hiligaynon literature anymore. I think that both Yuhum and Hiligaynon have gone the way of the dodo.

Mrs. Nava, therefore, in translating Muzones’ book from Visayan to English, has rescued the same from the graved yard of history. The book is published by Ateneo de Manila University Press. Mrs. Nava has received fulsome praise for her translation.

The book will be launched in Bacolod soon. Probably at the Negros Museum.

The Filipino Hell. The internet has forwarded the following joke to my wife FLR who, kidding me that am a specialist in the matters of hell, gave me a print-out.

A Pinoy dies and goes to hell. There he finds that there is a different for each country.

He goes first to the German hell and asks “What do they do here?”

He is told, “First they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they lay you on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the German devil comes in and whips you for the rest of the day.”

He discovers that they are all more less the same as the German hell.

Then he comes to the Filipino hell and finds that there is a very

long line of people waiting to get in.

Amazed he asks, “What do they do here?” He is told “First they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they lay you on a bed of nails for another hour.

Then the Filipino devil comes in and whips you for the rest of the day.”

“But that is exactly the same as all the other hells – why are there so many people waiting to get in?”

Because there is always a brownout, so the electric chair does not work.

Somebody stole all the nails to sell it “por kilo”.

And the devil used to be a public official, so he comes in, punches his time-card, shakes hands with all the people waiting there and then goes back home…”

Pnoy appears to be trying to reform the Filipino Hell. Good luck to him.*

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