SOTTO ACCEPTS CHALLENGE TO PRODUCE SON'S DEATH PAPERS

BY MACON RAMOS-ARANETA

Senate Majority Floor Leader Vicente Sotto III lashed back at former Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral and Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin and acceded to their challenge to produce the death certificate of his infant son, who died in 1975, to prove that he died because his mother had used contraceptives.

“Why would I invent this truth? They’re even asking for the death certificate.  have one, Mr. President. I will give it you. I will give them a copy. They probably thought I  will not heed their challenge,” Sotto said in the second part of his speech opposing the reproductive health bill.

Sotto said the remarks of Cabral and Garin about the death of his son were “callous and insensitive” and that it was unfortunate that the debate over the bill had come to this level.

“They should have given the sorrow of my family more respect,” he said.

“I just what to make this clear Mr. [Senate] President for those who did not understand well what was the story. Dianne…. Dianne was the name of the pills used by my wife then. She was being supervised by a doctor while using this. My wife is intelligent. She knew how to use this,” said Sotto.

He said what his wife’s doctor, Carmen Enverga Santos, told them was clear.

“Dr. Santos was assisted by my mother,  Dr. Herminia Castelo-Sotto, the first Philippine medical commissioner of the Workmen’s Compensation Commission of the Department of Labor…. They said that the pregnancy of my wife Helen despite the contraceptives and using them could have caused the  complication, prematurity and eventually the death of our child,” he said.

He said it was clear that his wife got pregnant even though she used contraceptives.

Cabral earlier  said she hoped Sotto would make public the death certificate and hospital records of his son to prove his claims.

Garin, another supporter of the RH bill, issued the same challenge to Sotto, and said he should have sued his doctor for “misinformation.”

But Sotto said there were studies that prove that the use contraceptives have adverse effects on the health of a child.

He cited a book by Barbara Seaman entitled “The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women: Exploding the Estrogen Myth,” which said that women who took pills but still got pregnant had more abnormal children with lower IQs.

Sotto also picked up from his first speech about an international lobby for the RH bill and included the US Agency for International Development in the effort.

The USAID is the agency which the United States uses as its principal instrument to control and reduce the population through birth control worldwide, Sotto said. It is also the same agency which funded DKT or Dhramendra Kumar Tyagi, the largest manufacturer of Trust brand condoms, pills and other contraceptives.

“DKT wants to spread the use of contraceptive products in the Philippines,” said Sotto. “This is a good tactic. You make the demand for contraceptives and at the same time supply the solution.”

Sotto also said the USAID gives funds to the National Statistics Office to come up with information that would support efforts to control population growth.

Another player in the campaign for the RH bill was the Alan Guttmacher Institute, Sotto said, saying it was the marketing arm of Planned Parenthood Institute, which promoted birth control without regard to health concerns.

Sotto also cited the September 2010 report of the World Health Organization, Unicef, the United Nations Population Fund and the World Bank, which estimated annual maternal deaths in the Philippines at 2,100 in 2008.

“That is equivalent to 5.75 deaths a day, which is way off from the 11 per day [that pro-RH advocates claim]. This was clearly down from the 2000 level of 4,100, or 11.2 a day, which was published in a report seven years ago by the same international agencies,” he said.

He further stated that UN agencies are using UN resources to advocate their agenda on a local level in order to bypass cultural and religious resistance. Gamal Serour, president of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, reported that UNFPA has a program in 25 countries to lobby religious leaders into dropping objections to the agenda. These programs are aimed at “re-educating” religious leaders and convincing them to accept their population control programs.

Sotto identified several local organizations as being recipients of funding from international organizations. These include the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines, Reproductive Health Advocacy Network, Likhaan, an affiliate of RHAN and the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines.

FPOP, Sotto said, was affiliated with “the number one international organization” that promotes abortion worldwide, and received a subsidy of over P27 million in 2011.(end)