Manila Standard Today, February 22, 2006
Protestants endorse family planning
By Christine Herrera
PROTESTANT bishops have taken a bold stand on artificial birth control, in sharp contrast with the policy of the Catholic Church.
“We are prolife, we are antiabortion; we are propoor so we endorse family planning bills in Congress because these will solve the unchecked population growth and help bring down poverty.”
The Council of Christian Bishops of the Philippines (CCBP), which is composed of protestant prelates with 20,000 churches nationwide, adopted that position after the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) rejected House Bill 3773 or the proposed Responsible Parenthood and Population Management Act of 2005.
Bishop Fred Magbanua, CCBP president, said the protestant bishops support the policy allowing couples to choose when and how many children to raise.
Making a mockery of the CBCP’s shock and awe policy, the CCBP also endorses the use of birth control devices such as pills, condoms, injectables, IUD, permanent sterilization or tubal ligation for women and vasectomy for men.
“It is the right of the couple to choose the method of family planning, which they see fit them. We also respect the couple’s right to space the mother’s pregnancy,” Magbanua told Standard Today in an interview.
By spacing the pregnancy, he said, the mother’s reproductive health is protected and the child in the womb will be healthier.
No life is taken away
Pills and other forms of contraceptives “do not kill life because these do not destroy fertilized eggs. “It is our position that when a woman uses pills or a man uses condom, it prevents fertilization. When egg is not fertilized, life has not begun. No life is taken away,” Magbanua pointed out. “We are prolife.”
While the Catholic bishops impose on the faithful to reject HB 3773, the protestant bishops are tapping their flock to lobby for approval of the measure.
The bishop said the CCBP will never condone any legislation that would kill life or even threaten it.
In fact, he said, HB 3773 is antiabortion.
“The bill espouses antiabortion because it mandates the dissemination of correct information on how to prevent pregnancy. Abortion is being done because of unplanned or unwanted pregnancy,” Magbanua said. “Therefore, it is moral and biblical.”
“Once people are aware of how to go about preventing unplanned and unwanted pregnancy, no abortion will ever take place,” the bishop said. “The population will be healthier.”
Saving mother and child
House Deputy Minority Leader Gilbert Remulla of Cavite and Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros, who are among the 51 authors of HB 3773, cited the findings of a study conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute and the University of the Philippines showing that 473,408 women undergo abortion annually.
“These are 473,408 babies getting killed every year, only because the government has not done its part to provide information and access to family planning methods,” Remulla said. “We could have saved those babies. But we do not want more fetuses killed. So it is incumbent that we legislate national policy.”
Of the number, 80,000 of these women die of complications, Remulla said, citing the study. “We could have saved those women, too. We can save both the mother and child by passing this bill,” he said.
This makes unsafe abortion as the fourth leading cause of maternal deaths, he said.
“While abortion is a criminal act, at least 1,297 women resort to this illegal act everyday and at least 389 of them are from the National Capital Region,” said Remulla, vice chairman of the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development.
Abortion rampant
Remulla said the new study cited figures showing an increase in the incidents of abortion nationwide and a link between induced abortions and natural family planning.
The Guttmacher-UP study, titled “The Incidence of Induced Abortion in the Philippines: Current Level and Recent Trends,” was conducted from 2002 to 2005. The study used data from 1,658 Philippine hospitals to estimate abortion incidents in 2000 and assess trends between 1994 and 2000 nationwide.
Citing the Guttmacher-UP study, Hontiveros said the National Capital Region registered the lowest increase in the use of modern methods of contraception at 4.3 percent while the Visayas experienced a decrease in the use of such methods.
NCR registered the highest increase in the use of natural family planning methods at 49.9 percent followed by the Visayas at 35.3 percent.
The increase in the use of natural family planning methods in Manila must have been attributed to the Executive Order issued by Manila City Mayor Lito Atienza promoting the traditional methods of family planning only, openly discourages modern methods of contraception.
However, Hontiveros noted that while the NCR registered the highest increase in the use of traditional methods at 49.9 percent, it also recorded the highest number of induced abortions by 33.72 percent from 104,585 in 1994 to 139,853 in 2000.
One of three pregnancies in Metro Manila result in abortion, she lamented. While the Visayas experienced a decrease in the use of modern methods, induced abortions increased by 113.6 percent from 34,375 in 1994 to 73,427 in 2000, Hontiveros said, citing the study.
According to the Guttmacher-UP study, although contraceptive use has increased from 40 percent in 1993 to 47.8 percent in 1998, unmet need for contraception still remains at a little over 50 percent.
While there was an increase in the use of both modern and traditional methods, the increase in the use of traditional methods is notably higher at 30.6 percent compared to the 12.8 percent increase in the use of modern methods.
According to the Guttmacher-UP study, Filipino women who resorted to induced abortion could not avail of modern family planning because of the high cost of contraceptives; the social and psychological stigma attached to the methods of service; the devolution of health services to local government, which discourage or punish the use of modern family planning; the prejudice of the husband and misconceptions about modern family planning.
Remulla and Hontiveros lamented that the government has yet to come up with a national policy on family planning, prompting the local governments to adopt their own ordinance according to the local executives’ whims.
To counter the baby boom, this early, the lawmakers are batting for a national policy that will make sex education a mandatory part of the curriculum from grades 5 up to high school, in public and private schools, including Catholic institutions.
Under the proposed law, schoolchildren will be taught about safe sex, responsible parenthood, abstinence before marriage and the use and application of condoms, pills and other contraceptive devices and natural family planning methods to prevent unwanted and unplanned pregnancies.
But the CBCP branded the proposal as promoting “promiscuity.” The bishops wanted the sex education to be done not by the schools but by the parents.
The CBCP assigned five prominent bishops to lead the rallies against the bill. These were Bishops Paciano Aniceto, CBCP chairman of the Commission on Family Life of the Philippines, Ramon Arguelles of Lipa, Antonio Tobias of Novaliches, Deogracias Iniques of Caloocan, CBCP chairman of the Episcopal Commission on Public Affairs and Manila Auxiliary Bishop Teodoro Bacani.
In a pastoral letter issued last year, Aniceto urged members of the clergy, Catholic schools, youth organizations, family life directors, members of Couples for Christ, lay people and cathechists to manifest “collective opposition” to the bills through rallies and “people power.”
The uncompromising stand of the Church is that only natural family planning method, through Rhythm and Billings methods as the only “godly way” of limiting the size of a family. Using birth control devices is a sin and antilife.
‘Unmet need’
Citing the 2003 National Demographic Health Survey (NDHS), Rey Remonde, national advocacy and resource mobilization specialist of the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines, said majority of 12.8 million married women have a high “unmet need” as their fertility rate of 3.7 percent overtakes their desire for a small family (2.7 percent.)
The NDHS study shows that most women desire to have two to three children but in reality, they give birth to more than three, even five children due to lack of access to contraceptives.
According to the NDHS study, maternal mortality ratio fell from 209 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1993 to 172 in 1998. Still, this means that 10 women die of pregnancy and childbirth-related causes daily, Remonde said. To be continued