Chapter 2

Review of Related LiteratureCONCEPTUAL LITERATURE"Behold, children are

a gift of the Lord; the fruit of the womb is a reward". - Psalm 127:3About
once in every 28 days, ovulation occurs within human females. If the ovum
released is notquickly fertilized by a sperm cell from a man, it will die and
pass out of the uterus during anormal menstrual period. But if intercourse
takes place and the ovum is fertilized, conceptionoccurs. The woman
becomes pregnant, and nine months later, a baby will be born.Now, on the
occasion that the parents of the unborn child do not want to have a baby,
the parentsmay decide to use abortion, which expels the fetus from the
womb via drugs, either oral orthrough injection.But if a couple decides early
in a relationship to ultimately avoid having an offspring, they maypractice
birth control or contraception.

The first time birth control was introduced to history was in the 1900’s.
Population had increased

rapidly. Margaret Sanger, a nurse, believed that the poor needed to control
the size of theirfamilies. In 1916, Sanger established the first birth control
clinic and in 1917, founded theNational Birth Control League.Although
widespread use of birth control is visible throughout the world, particularly
in Europeand the United States, where birth control methods are legally
available, not everyone is infavour of contraception. The Roman Catholic
Church forbids artificial methods of birth control,upholding the belief that
sexual love in marriage should never be separated from the chance of
conception.RESEARCH LITERATUREThe Reproductive Health Bill has two
goals: to promote responsible parenthood through the useof birth control
methods, and to assure widespread access to medically-safe, legal, and
qualityreproductive health care and relevant information. It stands upon
the assumption that manyFilipino women die of childbirth and abortion
every day, and that the ballooning population of the country is in fact,
contributing to the worsening poverty that millions of Filipino families
areexperiencing.Bernardo M. Villegas, Opinion writer for the Manila
Bulletin, wrote on May 14, 2010 on his

article “RH Bill a dead issue” that a large population is indeed an asset. He
illustrated

thesituation of Thailand, which, despit

e birth control methods, is in high risk of “growing old than becoming rich”,
since its “aging population is now growing faster than its labor force”.
Villegas

also emphasized the fact that the “aggressive distribution of condoms” in

the said country made

it the worst victim of HIV-AIDS in East Asia.

And as for the RH Bill’s goal to ‘protect pregnant women against abortion
and death’,

Mercedes

B. Suleik, Business writer for the Manila Bulletin, disagrees. On her aptly
titled article “RH Billis unnecessary”

on May 11, 2011, she writes that we already have the Magna Carta of
Women ineffect, which includes all the benefits for women that the RH Bill
offers. In an earlier article on

March 24, 2011 titled “What the RH Bill is not”, Suleik strongly writes that
the RH Bill is “in

fact a tyranny of half-

truths”, stating that developed countries really are at a risk of a so

-called

‘demographic winter’, as in the situation of Thailand. Suleik also writes that

instead of safety,

contraceptives that the Bill is moving to be distributed in fact lead to health

risks for women,

such as breast cancer. She adds that “The State should govern, and not
meddle in the Filipino’sindividual decision” and concludes that the Bill is not
about freedom of choice or poverty

alleviatio

n. “It is about state control.”

Raul Nidoy, Opinion writer for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, writes on June
9, 2011 on his

article “

Breath-taking

infatuation for RH Bill” that

contraception falsifies sex, casually calling

children as “unwanted and unplanned”. Nidoy mentions Nobel Prize winner

and economist

George Akerlof, who, writing at the Quarterly Journal of Economics,

published by the MITPress, described the effect of contraceptives: more
premarital sex, more fatherless children andsingle mothers, and when
contraceptives fail, more abortions.In January 31, 2011, the House of
Representatives committee on population and family relationsapproved a
consolidated version of the Bill. It still has a long way to go, though, since it
needs topass the entirety of the Congress and the Senate, which is unlikely,
remarks writer BernardoVillegas (mentioned earlier), due to legitimate
questions being raised by Senate President JuanPonce Enrile, Senator
Vicente Sotto, and of course, the Roman Catholic Church in thePhilippines.

It is easy to understand where the Catholic Church’s anti

-RH Bill views are coming from, sincethe Bill promotes planning life through
artificial methods, something the Vatican has beenagainst ever since

. The Church’s stand has been very

visible, with prayer rallies attended by

thousands of Catholics, and gatherings of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference

of the Philippines

(CBCP). Church leaders raise the morale by encouraging the rhythm

method instead of contraceptives, taking up the standar

d of “Pro

Life”,

saying that even though the RH Bill doesnot directly legalize abortion, this is
where the path of contraception is headed.The Catholic Church is not alone
in disagreeing with the RH Bill. In fact, CBCP EpiscopalCommission on Family
and Life chairman and Pampanga Archbishop Paciano Aniceto statedthat

“This is not the fight only of Catholics. The Muslims…

the Evangelicals, and theEc

umenical Bishops’ Forum:

they are against it

.”

President Benigno Aquino III has been an active supporter of the RH Bill,
and Aniceto adds that

“There is no Catholic party but there is a Catholic vote. The one who placed
him there as president is the majority…
and the majority are Catholics. Since he is the President of the whole

country, he represents the vision of the whole Philippines; therefore he

should respect thesentiments, convictions, and religious beliefs of the
majority.

(As of 2011, 80% of Filipinos areCatholics.)In this moment of time when the
Philippines is sorely afflicted with issues of corruption, lack of education,
poverty and high rates of unemployment, the RH Bill is threatening to divide
theFilipinos, State and Church leaders alike. It is a topic that influences us
all, a topic that requireseveryone, even youngsters, to have a stand