Thanks for your support at the T@tt Awards!

by Kenneth Keng

Right now I so very badly want to be exploring the Winterfell-esque beauty contained in Bethesda’s latest action-RPG epic Skyrim, but as it stands now I seem to have traded in fighting this :

to save this:

for fighting this:

to save this:

Read the full article at the Filipino Freethinkers website.

by Red Tani

Yesterday, I wrote about how an anti-RH group tried to do a demonstration in SB park without a permit. An anti-RH reader (we probably have a few) responded to the post by doing what the anti-RH seem to do best — lie about it:

[aj] You might have read the news from a certain group of people who thinks [sic] they are smart and support RH that the Anti-RH group that went on vigil last night did not have a permit to rally. I won’t post their site, but let me tell you that this is an outright lie. These guys are liars of the highest order and would heckle their way into any decent discussion. The truth is that the pro-life side had a permit issued by the baranggay. The other side also had a permit – coming from Vice mayor Herbert Bautista who is pro RH. So para walang gulo, the vigil was just held somewhere else near the area, pero hindi po totoo na wala tayong permit at nagsinungaling tayo tungkol sa permit natin.

So I issued a simple challenge.

The Challenge! —> Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

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.

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.]

Of around 3.37 M pregnancies that occurred in 2008, 17% led to induced abortions and 14% to unwanted births—more than a million pregnancies that women did not want. Some 92% of these occurred while using no method of family planning, or relying on a traditional one like the withdrawal or rhythm.

The fist half of this article likened maternal risks to similar risks when crossing busy streets. Risk reduction can be done two ways. One, make the process safer. Two, avoid it whenever possible.

Family planning (FP) is the second way. Using artificial or natural methods, it is a means to avoid unintended pregnancies. Using the road crossing analogy, effective FP methods are like overpass walkways that government builds to keep people away from harm. In turn, people need to learn and choose to use them to be of any good.

Relative Risks

An overpass is safer for most people, but is not risk-free. Nothing in life is. The overpass stairs may be slippery. Snatchers may declare the site as their emerging market. Civil engineers may have been sloppy. An earthquake, lightning or bullet from a cop’s warning shot may just strike while you’re in the middle of it. You simply compare all these with the risk of matching your footwork with running vehicles.

The same weighing of risks and benefits apply to all FP methods. For example, users of combined pills do have an increased risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE), a blood clot in veins deep inside the body that is 1–2% fatal. Anti-RH folks have often used this to scare people. What they fail to mention is that drug regulatory agencies have concluded that the increase in absolute risk is small, and that pregnancy confers higher risksof getting VTE than pill use:

Contraindications

Using an overpass is also not safe for everyone. Someone on wheelchairs who will try the atrociously steep ramp at the Quezon Avenue-EDSA overpass will probably careen down and break more bones. Urging someone with fear of heights or an asthmatic attack to climb up is courting trouble. Other more sensible methods should simply be made available.

For FP methods and all other medicines, the user may have a condition which makes the drug or procedure riskier than usual. If the risks outweigh the benefits, the medicine is contraindicated, meaning not recommended for use. Since people have unique genetics, medical histories and current conditions, the decision can only be done on a case to case basis.

For example, natural family planning (NFP) is effective for motivated couples.

[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]