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Anti-RH advocates were forced to leave SB Park after pro-RH advocates discovered that they didn’t have a permit.

The anti-RH advocates tried to bully their way into the camp by setting up tents at the gate for a thanksgiving mass they were planning. When the SB Park officer asked who owned the tents, anti-RH advocates lied and said they didn’t know. The SB park officer was later surprised to see that an anti-RH mass was already set up inside the tents.

When asked about whether they had a permit to do the thanksgiving mass, anti-RH advocates, led by Rizalito David, said that they did have a permit. It was later found out that all they had was an endorsement letter, revealing that the anti-RH advocates lied once again.

Finally, the anti-RH advocates left and moved their planned demonstration to the nearby police station. According to unconfirmed reports, they were allowed to use the venue without a permit.

This small encounter shows how the anti-RH side are willing to lie and disrespect legal procedures, in the same way that they lie about the RH bill and delay the legislative process.

The anti-RH demonstration at the police station will end at 3am tomorrow. The pro-RH occupation, on the other hand, will remain here at SB Park until legislators put the RH Bill to a vote.

Original post at the Filipino Freethinkers website.

by Red Tani

_{The following was published in Manila Standard Today on August 27, 2011}

If you respect the separation of church and state mandated by our Constitution, you can find better ways to start Senate hearings than saying a prayer. Yet this is just what our senators do, and the start of the debates on the reproductive health bill were no different.

What bothers me more than the fact that a prayer was said in a supposedly secular setting was what the prayer implied, politically.

The prayer was supposed to be led by Senator Panfilo Lacson, but because of problems with his voice, he asked Senator Vicente Sotto to do it in his place. Considering the content of the prayer, I’m sure Sotto was more than happy to oblige.

The prayer was originally delivered in 1996 by American Pastor Joe Wright to the Kansas House of Representatives. Legislators, including the House minority leader, criticized the prayer for its “extreme, radical” views. At least one legislator walked out. When the same prayer was said in the Colorado House of Representatives later that year, more legislators were angered; several walked out.

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

by Kenneth Keng

The Board of the Cultural Center of the Philippines will face a Senate hearing this Tuesday morning, August 16 at 930am in the Plenary Hall of the Senate Building in Manila to answer for their ‘crime’ of displaying the Kulô exhibit. The CBCP and its conservative religious right allies will be mobilizing en masse to support their new inquisition, so we are putting out a call to any and all who can make it to troop to the plenary hall gallery (as its a public hearing any valid ID will get you in) and support freedom of speech.

Just by sitting in the hall in numbers across from the same religious right groups that continually threaten violence against the CCP and the artists it supports, you can make a difference by showing the Senators in attendance that there are those who are willing to stand firm against censorship.

Links:

Read the full article in the Filipino Freethinkers website.

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By A.R. Melgar

A new SWS survey confirmed old findings – most people support choice in family planning, including methods declared evil by some church leaders. But can legislators do what’s right and vote on the RH bill now, regardless of the parochial interests of their churches?

Will Congress finally do their duty, or will they be bullied once more into inaction? As Rep. Kimi Cojuangco of Pangasinan said,

I think it’s time for the House of Representatives to think, why are we there? Who do we represent? We are representatives of our constituents. We are not representatives of the Church.

Ironically, a well-known parable of Jesus celebrates the acts of a person who transcended his parochial interests and biases to simply do what’s right. He has no name, but is widely known as the Good Samaritan.

The story goes that a Jewish traveler on the road to Jericho was attacked by bandits and left half-dead. Later, a priest saw him but decided to just pass on the other side of the road. A fellow Jew came and did the same thing. Finally a Samaritan – a member of a people in conflict with the Jews – passed, saw the stricken man and helped, and probably saved his life. In the biblical account, Jesus replied with the parable when asked, “You tell us to ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ but who is our neighbor?”

The RH bill is like the wounded traveler to Jericho. It has been attacked as a bringer of death, illness, corruption, immorality and all things evil…

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

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By Red Tani

Every night, millions of poor Filipinos pray that when they wake up, they’d no longer be poor. Answering these prayers would take nothing short of a miracle. And a miracle, by definition, is highly improbable; just witnessing one is considered a blessing by many.

But a miracle might just be what Romulo Macalintal has performed. Together with Lito Atienza, Macalintal led a campaign to replace the vehicles returned by Catholic bishops in the wake of the recent PCSO scandal. In less than two weeks of fundraising, donations exceeded a million pesos.

But it’s not the amount of donations that I consider miraculous. Nor is it the fact that they were collected in less than half a month. The fact that Macalintal managed to convince so many that the bishops needed money — now that’s a miracle.

Because as friend and fellow RH advocate Elizabeth Angsioco pointed out, the bishops are filthy rich:

Based on Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) 7 July 2011 records, their holdings in these corporations are now worth a whopping P18,040,238,371.80.

There are a few more minor holdings that are not included here and many more corporations can be examined. Even without touching the RCC’s real estate properties (which are surely worth many billions), and its highly profitable businesses like schools and hospitals, it is quite clear that the RCC as a church, as well as its various entities are FILTHY RICH.

What 18 billion can buy

18 billion Pesos. That’s 18 thousand pesos multiplied by a million. Or 18 million pesos multiplied by a thousand. No matter how I put it, few Filipinos can fathom what it means to have such a huge amount. Maybe it will be easier to understand in terms of what the bishops can buy with all that money…

Read the full article at the Filipino Freethinkers website.

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by Jong A.

A headline on the CBCP website reads: “CBCP apologizes over PCSO fund mess,” referring to the pastoral statement of CBCP president Nereo Odchimar, A time of pain, a time of grace. But reading the statement makes one wonder if the CBCP has indeed apologized.

Apology is defined as “an admission of error or discourtesy accompanied by an expression of regret.” Notice that the definition has two parts: 1) the admission of error, and 2) the expression regret. Let’s take a look at some key passages from the pastoral statement and see if they satisfy the definition ofapology:

…we are sorry for the pain and sadness that these events have brought upon you.

We are saddened that many of you…have been confused because of the apparent inconsistency of our actions with our pastoral preaching.

We express again our deep sorrow for the pain that the recent events have brought to you our beloved people.

We can see no admission of error in those sentences (or anywhere in the entire pastoral letter), but only an expression of regret: the first sentence “apologizes” for the pain and sadness brought by the ‘events’; the second says they are saddened by the confusion over the apparent inconsistency of their actions with their preaching; the third expresses deep sorrow for the pain brought about by, again, the recent ‘events’. What’s missing is the part where they are supposed to actually say that they are sorry for the involvement of their bishops in the PCSO scandal.

Read the full article at the Filipino Freethinkers website.

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One of the issues delaying the passage of the RH Bill is the question of when life begins, or more importantly, when the protection of life begins. It’s no help that our constitution uses the imprecise term conception, allowing a lot of room for discussion as the pro-life argue that it refers to fertilization while others maintain that it means implantation, and this debate has taken long enough at the expense of the rest of the provisions of the bill which have nothing to do with the fertilized ovum, such as providing for midwives, emergency obstetric care, and maternal and newborn health care in crisis situations.

While the World Health Organization has already answered that “to date, there is no scientific evidence supporting the contention that hormonal contraceptives and IUD prevent implantation of the fertilized ovum,” the pro-life continue to claim otherwise and even assert that since the bill seeks to provide for these contraceptives, the bill is therefore unconstitutional. I have argued in a previous post that they are actually objecting to the pill, not the bill, and this is just a follow up. If we look at two sections from both Edcel Lagman’sHouse Bill 96 and the final consolidated RH Bill, HB 4244, we will see the important difference that renders the pro-life’s objection moot.

[Read the full article at the Filipino Freethinkers website.]

by Arm

Crossing a busy street and testing one’s agility against vehicles has inherent risks. To minimize these risks, we create structures and social rules such as traffic lights, pedestrian lanes, speed bumps and so on. We also minimize the frequency of exposure to risks. Using overpass walkways, avoiding unnecessary trips and creating better planned neighborhoods are some of the ways we reduce the number of times people and vehicles cross paths.

The reproductive health (RH) bill’s approach to reducing maternal deaths follows the same dual strategy: minimize risks and minimize exposure to risks.

A woman’s lifetime risk of maternal death is a product of two factors: the risk of death from each pregnancy and birth, and the number of times she gets pregnant. The most successful countries in the world have managed to bring down both, and some of our ASEAN neighbors are on the way to making maternal death a rare possibility in a woman’s lifetime (see chart below).

Source: World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNFPA and The World Bank,
“Trends in maternal mortality: 1990 to 2008″, Annex 1 & Appendix 14, 2010.

To reduce the risk of death from each pregnancy, the RH bill mandates:

• sufficient number of skilled birth attendants (SBAs, referring to midwives, nurses or doctors) that can provide antenatal, birthing and postnatal services (Sec. 5 in both House and Senate versions);
• enough facilities, equipment, supplies and health personnel to provide emergency obstetric and neonatal care (Sec. 6 in both House and Senate versions);
• the maximum level of PhilHealth benefits for women with obstetric complications (Sec. 14 in Houseversion and 11 in Senate); and
• a review process to learn lessons from maternal deaths that do occur (Sec. 9 in House version and 8 in Senate).

Opponents of RH have expressed mixed reactions to this aspect of the bill. Some have accepted it as beneficial and have focused instead on their key issues of contraception, abortion and sex education. Others have branded it as unnecessary or a mere sweetener because the government has been doing maternal health programs without a law; or maternal death is not among the top-10 causes of deaths; or both. To check these claims, let us look at a key indicator of safety during pregnancy and birth: skilled birth attendance.

[Read the full article at FilipinoFreethinkers.org]

After hearing all kinds of nonsense in Congress, from the religious arguments of Rep. Pablo Garcia to the superstitious ones of Rep. Roilo Golez, it was inspiring to listen to Senator Pia Cayetano’s sponsorship speech on the RH Bill.

It took more time for Garcia and Golez to blabber about what was not in the bill than for Sen. Cayetano to expound on what was actually in it. She even addressed common misconceptions and objections about the bill’s controversial provisions.

But what I liked most about her speech is that she spoke about secularism — the separation of church and state mandated by our constitution — and she did justice to it, a topic other legislators either misunderstand or disregard altogether.

[Read the full article at FilipinoFreethinkers.org]

The RH Bill did not come from Filipino legislators but from foreign organizations, Atty. Jo Imbong of the CBCP explained in English.

“It’s really introducing a different culture and replacing our own” — a culture which has been influenced by our Spanish, American, and Japanese colonizers — “with something else,” said Imbong.

“It is a cultural intrusion [in which] you supplant a beautiful thing with something that is alien,” said Imbong, possibly alluding to how our pre-Hispanic indigenous Malayo-Polynesian culture was supplanted with Spanish Catholicism.

Imbong and the CBCP oppose the RH Bill because it violates democratic rights — which originated in Greece — and religious freedom — which originated in Europe. They believe contraceptives are not a valid solution, let alone evil, consistent with the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which was promulgated by an Italian pope from Rome.

[Read the full article at FilipinoFreethinkers.org]