Enrile sees church going all out to defeat RH bill

By Macon Ramos-Araneta | Posted on September 13, 2012 |

 

The Catholic Church will try to use its connections, influence and all other means in its aim to defeat the controversial Reproductive Health if they could defeat it, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said on Wednesday.
But Enrile said he was not aware if the Catholic Church would come out with a unified stand against the proposed measure.
“It’s well known that the Catholic Church is against that version of the RH bill,” said Enrile who is also against the measure.
“If I were in their place, with the size of the Catholic Church, they can make themselves as a group especially in our political exercises.”
But Enrile stressed that he respected the opinion of the proponents of the RH bill, who are currently amending some of its provisions at the committee level.
“We are in the period for the committee which sponsored the measure to propose what it considers essential amendments,” Enrile said.
After the close of the period of committee amendment, Enrile said, the members of a legislative assembly could not be stopped to propose amendments they considered important to refine the bill or protect the interest of the country.
“When we come to that point when the period of amendments is to be introduced, who knows, there are 23 senators, including the co-sponsors of the measure and the people who are probably inclined to support the bill, who will have their own amendments,” Enrile said.
He said the question on the ‘beginning of life’ could be a basic question during the period of amendments.
“There is a debate even on this. According to some, it should be at fertilization, when the spermatozoa of the male fertilize the ova of the female, so life begins. The life has the time to implant itself, and you start already the aging process from then on,” Enrile said.
In strongly objecting to the RH bill, Enrile said, he was talking about the totality of the interest of the nation.
He cited the need to draw a lesson from other countries that “have experienced this already or experimented on this.”
“There are other countries. That is the purpose why, after the speech of Senate Majority Vicente Sotto III, I told him that I would like to ask just two questions about the experiences of other countries that went ahead of us to adopt this kind of policy and find out what is the good side of this process, and what is the bad side.
“It cannot always be the good side. There must be some bad side of this process, and if I have this correct, it is being felt by countries that have undergone this policy, Singapore, Japan, Korea, China, Thailand, France, Spain, Russian, the European countries and many others. What is the impact of this? What is the impact of this policy on countries that did not adopt it?”
Enrile said the essential things that must be addressed were the fertility rate of Filipino women because of poverty in this country, and the weakness of the government to provide for education and for the creation of jobs.
“I say this because this is the one that I encountered in life. To break through the barrier of ignorance and poverty. I am not talking from theory. I am talking from experience,” Enrile said.
“We are not alone in this planet. There are others. We do not live in an ideal world where nobody is going to harm us. We have experienced already being harmed. We have been colonized several times. We have been invaded by our neighbors here in Asia.”(END)