Much Ado Over The Reproductive Health Bill

I can’t help but wonder why the church is fussing so much over the House Bill 96. The church is threatening civil disobedience and one bishop even threatened to excommunicate President Noynoy for his stance on giving the Filipino couples the choice to use contraceptives.

Recently, well-known Manila tour guide, Carlos Celdran, was arrested for disrupting a Catholic mass at the Manila Cathedral. He was protesting against the Church’s staunch negative stand against the passing of the RH bill.

There is so much fuss about the bill but can the Church help our neighbor, Helen, who has eight children because she said she can’t use contraceptives as the church is against it? Helen whose kids stopped going to school because her husband-jeepney driver can’t feed them all much more buy them their school needs.  How about another neighbor, Baby, whose teen-ager daughter got pregnant at the age of 14? You would’ve thought the teen learned her lesson after giving birth at such young age but she did it again at the age of 16. She said, she was afraid to use contraceptives because the Church forbade it but she conveniently forgot that it was also a sin to fornicate.

The thing is, the church is causing much ado against the Reproductive Health Bill but it’s really counterproductive to population control as well as poverty prevention. To use artificial contraceptives maybe considered as sin but to let a child into this world without giving them equal opportunity to live a good life, to get to good school, to eat 3 square meals a day, to have a roof over their head and to have clothes on their back can also be considered big sins.

Our population explosion is one of the highest worldwide, no thanks to the church’s stance against contraceptives, general ignorance of the sexually active Filipino homo sapiens and the male machismo mentality of the Filipino society.

If the church is raising much furor over a bill that would help arrest the population explosion, that could improve our national economy and also improve the lives of the future Filipino generations, where is now the separation of the Church and the State? Where is now the thrust of the church in helping its flock rise above poverty, ignorance and suffering?