Why The Reproductive Health Bill Is An Affront To Morality?

Author: Walter Nuñez

The Reproductive Health Bill is a house bill authored by Rep. Edcel Lagman, et. al. and filed in the 14th congress. Its Full title is: House Bill No. 5043 “An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development and for Other Purposes. ” Its shorten title is: the “Reproductive Health And Population Development Act of 2008″ But it is more widely known, so to speak as the Reproductive Health Bill.

By and large,  the human reproductive health bill intends to protect and uphold the rights and interests for the benefit of the greatest welfare for the greatest number insofar as the reproductive health of women is concerned.

In an article “Reproductive Health Bill: Facts, Fallacies “written by Rep. Edcel Lagman for the Inquirer.net in 3rd of September 2008, he underscored the following salient points about the bill:

“The reproductive health (RH) bill promotes information on and access to both natural and modern family planning methods, which are medically safe and legally permissible. It assures an enabling environment where women and couples have the freedom of informed choice on the mode of family planning they want to adopt based on their needs, personal convictions and religious beliefs”.

“The bill does not have any bias for or against either natural or modern family planning. Both modes are contraceptive methods. Their common purpose is to prevent unwanted pregnancies”.

“The bill will promote sustainable human development. The UN stated in 2002 that “family planning and reproductive health are essential to reducing poverty.” The Unicef also asserts that “family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race.”

“Coverage of RH. (1) Information and access to natural and modern family planning (2) Maternal, infant and child health and nutrition (3) Promotion of breast feeding (4) Prevention of abortion and management of post-abortion complications (5) Adolescent and youth health (6) Prevention and management of reproductive tract infections, HIV/AIDS and STDs (7) Elimination of violence against women (8) Counseling on sexuality and sexual and reproductive health (9) Treatment of breast and reproductive tract cancers (10) Male involvement and participation in RH; (11) Prevention and treatment of infertility and (12) RH education for the youth.” (Copyright 2001-2010 INQUIRER.net, An INQUIRER Company)

At first sight, it seems there’s nothing wrong with the ”Reproductive Health Bill” at least on the outside. The authors must have done a great job in carefully choosing the right words that tends to evoke a conditioned positive response. On the surface, it seems innocent and harmless-one would not even think that it poses a threat to morality. But underneath lurks a hideous intention to undermine the foundation of morality which has the potential to create havoc and disorder insofar as the state of moral order is concerned. When the bill that has the potential to become a law threatens to infringe or cross the line on the hallowed grounds of morality, then it is deemed warranted to draw the lines, and ascend into the moral high ground.

No amount of euphemism or positive phrasing can change the fact that the reproductive health bill is an affront to the absolute and universal moral ideals of man.

What are the moral issues involved behind the reproductive health bill? The human reproductive health bill, among other things,  is a legislative measure set to  contain population growth with the use of all means necessary to arrest the growth of the population. The underlying premise as alleged by the proponents is that unchecked population growth is the cause of poverty. But it would do well to note, for the record  that this working assumption is highly debatable. Although, it is not within the parameter of this writing that such issues shall be dealt with.

On the one hand, the reproductive health bill presents and teaches the natural method on family planning, but on the other, it also endorses the use of  morally questionable method for preventing pregnancy, (e.g. the artificial method on family planning). This includes the use of: condoms, tubal ligation, vasectomy, pills and among others. Although, in the end, it is the person who decides which method to subscribe.

The use of artificial method on family planning is not only a sin against the law of God: because it transgresses the very commandment to procreate, but, at the same time, it is also a violation against the law of nature itself. Since the perpetuation of the specie is also a biological need. Hence, any artificial means to prevent it is deemed a violation of the natural processes of the law itself.

Man is a stuff of nature, hence, he is at the mercy or under the confines of its laws. The perpetuation of one’s own kind is one such law. Even the morality of the action of man is subject to the natural law. Should an act be not in accord with the natural processes of  the law, then there are  equivalent consequences to be meted out. According to the law of interaction, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

God being the one who sustains nature, maintains the delicate balance of life and death over living things. While God giveth life, He also taketh away. Thus fertility balances itself with mortality. Athough, the trend now is that fertility is much higher than mortality. But, in the end, the rapid rise of fertility is checked and interrupted by mortality from man-made (e.g. wars, accidents, genocides, etc.) and natural dissasters (e.g. calamities, diseases, epidemics, etc.). This effectively restores the balance of things.

Nature has its own way to trim and populate itself. For example, life exploded in the cambrian period bringing about different kinds of species, but then it was punctuated from one massive extictinction to the other. The most recent of which, happened 65 million years ago, when most of the living organisms, including the dinasaur was wiped out in the face of the earth, but then again, life found its way to populate the world, until to date.

To digress, there is a dictum in law that what is legal may not necessarily be moral. While the law is designed and made to protect and uphold the rights and interests for the greatest benefit of the greatest number of people, but the law does not care so much and distinguish or even concern itself between what is right and wrong. The law is founded on utilitarian principles which means that the welfare of the greatest number of people is considered as the greatest good. It does not recognize the moral fact that the goodness of an act is intrinsic and inherent into the thing itself.  Therefore, it does not subscribe to the fundamental principle of morality that the end does not justify the means. Irregardless of the means, whether it is bad or good as long as it brings  about the desired end, then the law could only care less.

But what shall become of the law if it clashes with the ideals of morality? Then such a law is doomed to lose the so called moral high ground. Hence, the spirit of the law ceases to exist, and so does the law itself.

Man is endowed with a universal moral grammar. Even without learning it, he can tell outright, out of instinct, what is right from wrong? It seems, he has an embedded or built-in mechanism to automatically identify and distinguish between right and wrong.

The Church made it certain through the tools of rational inquiry and the agency of philosophy to embrace the in-depth and intensive study of morality under its province. Thus, the Church leads the way in the pursuit of the ultimate goodness of things. The Church then becomes the beacon of morality. It is the measure and the standard in which to judge whether an action is right or wrong.

On the contrary, morality can never be arbitrary that are only based on the whims and caprices of some people. Morality is absolute and universal. Had it been that morality becomes subjective, then there’s no morality to speak of in the first place since morality becomes relative and everyone therefore shall have its own standard measure of right and wrong.

Why the reproductive health bill is an affront to morality? There is no better way to answer it except to cite the fundamental law of morality: The end does not justify the means!