Coercive Population Control proposed for Philippines
We reported last week that the Catholic Bishop's Commission in the Philippines is opposing legislation currently being debated in Parliament. The proposed legislation, "An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development, and For Other Purposes", would create a new agency called the Commission on Population that would institutionalize artificial birth control, implement sex education for students as early as the fifth grade and pave the way for legalized abortion. It also recommends that a two child policy should be adopted and obliges all health providers to provide for male and female sterilization regardless of conscientious objection. The bill requires collective bargaining agreements (CBA's) between employers and employees to provide reproductive health care services. Where there are no CBAs, employers are compelled to provide the same. It is also a direct attack on parents as the primary educators of minor children
The Bill provides for the use of abortifacient hormonal contraceptives and injectables, intrauterine devices and other allied reproductive health service products and supplies, which will be considered essential medicines and made available for free by all national and local hospitals and other government health units. The legislation also proposes dismissal, imprisonment and heavy fines for anyone who fails to comply with the measure. This Bill is a direct attack on human life, the family, marriage, the freedom to found a family and to decide on the number and spacing of children, freedom of conscience, and parent's rights in respect of minor children.
This bill is a completely unacceptable totalitarian measure, bordering on the coercive methods of population control used in China's one child policy
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