Time will tell

Now that the deed is done, only time will tell whether indeed as the proponents of the Reproductive Health bill are right – that this bill, now becoming into law, will attain the wonderful things that the majority of Congress promised will come about.

This means that with a budget of over P10 billion every year, maternity death will drop, fewer women will get pregnant and thus population will decline to the point that the government will have a budgetary surplus that will make their President Benigno Aquino the great hero that Sen. Miriam Santiago proclaimed him to be.

Majority of the members of Congress clearly succumbed to presidential pressure and the Liberal Party ordered its members to vote in favor of the bill despite their earlier pronouncements that they were not in favor of the bill.

But presidential pressure cannot be denied and with the congressmen and senators gasping for funds for their reelection, the sweet smell of the pork barrel are so compelling that one congresswoman declared that morality should not be their guide as if morality is a thing that can be just thrown aside when material profits are very persuasive.

It is also clear that without the presidential intervention, the RH bill would have been junked so that Santiago is right – Aquino is the real hero (or heel) of the reproductive and population control policy of the government. All the arguments cited by the congressmen and senators hew to the same idea – that this reproductive health policy is the cure for this nation's ills.

It will no longer be “daang mutuwid” which is difficult to follow because this means corruption and debasement of character. Moreover, the ilk around Aquino's coterie is beginning to realize that the straight and moral path is not their kind of policy lest they cannot dip their dirty fingers into the national coffers. The people applauded Aquino on his inauguration in 2010 but time and circumstance have muted this phrase where millions hanged their hopes for a better Philippines.

There is no money in the straight and narrow path, but there is plenty in condoms and contraceptives, aside from the funds coming from international agencies that had been pushing for this bill. The dollars since time for so long had never been subjected to audit and thus is the easiest source of graft. The international community can only howl but that is all they can do.

That being the case, Aquino and the Congress must now prove that their formula against poverty and maternal death will turn around this country.

Morality has been eschewed in the Aquino governance. This thinking is dangerous as it can lead to a progression in the international movement for the denial of morality in public life which, as one can sensibly realize, is a rejection of God.

Aquino and the Congress tested the nation and they found that people will accept governance without morality as long as their material needs are served or can serve them. We shall wait how this progression to more radical views will emerge but you can bet your last peso the international movement called Responsible Parenthood based on the United States and backed up by the Democrats have already planned this long before.

To a certain extent, the Church and its many religious organizations, including nuns and priests who think they are avant-garde or advanced in modern thought, are to share this setback. One “nun” for instance wrote in a national daily asking who's the God the anti-RH people believe in. One thing I am sure is that hers is not the same God as ours although she hides beneath the habit of a Catholic church congregation.

There are members of the clergy, bishops and priests, who have been complacent and lay people, including those movements that claim to be promoting family, marriage and life, who have shown indifference to this issue.

No wonder that the pro-RH politicians and advocates are emboldened to act the way they did because there are Catholics described as “narrow in faith.” They keep silent even when politicians and RH advocates taunt and ridicule the Church.

I don't blame them. That is between them and their faith. I am only saying that the pro-RH found their complacency and indifference as allies.

I saw a film where the Mossad captured a Nazi war criminal. While waiting for transport, he engaged his captors in a violent discussion. The German said “you know why it was easy to conquer you? It is because you are weak. Four guards herded thousands into the gas chamber and not one lifted a hand to fight the guards, conscious only of their own selves.”

Battles are lost not because the enemy is strong but because people refuse to resist.*

back to top