House to double Aquino’s P1b family planning fund

THE Aquino administration will have P2 billion for its population management program next year, lawmakers vowed Monday, raising the stakes in the battle between church and state over contraceptives.

Church leaders over the weekend warned President Benigno Aquino III that they could support a civil disobedience campaign if the government carried out his plan to distribute condoms and birth control pills to the poor as part of its population management program.

The President on Monday said he wanted to come up with “definitions and solutions” to the country’s ballooning population and efforts to promote both natural and artificial family planning methods during his coming dialogue with Church leaders.

The Health Department has set aside P932 million for family planning and development next year, but Congress would work to double the funding for reproductive health to P2 billion, House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman said.

“In 2008 Congress appropriated P2 billion for reproductive health programs[,] [but] P932 million for 2011 is not enough, so we will have to beef up the allocation,” said Lagman, author of the reproductive health bill that the Church opposes.

On top of its budget, the Health Department would also be able to draw on a $1.2-million grant from the United Nations Population Fund for reproductive health projects in the rural areas, said House Senior Assistant Majority Leader Janette Garin.

Garin said the Palace had also earmarked a portion of a $434-million grant from the United States to allow the Philippines to reach its Millennium Development Goals on maternal and child health care.

Lawmakers who support the Church view against all contraceptive drugs and devices were wary of the new funding.

“Malacañang has a P1-billion war chest to transform government clinics into groceries of pills and condoms,” Zambales Rep. Maria Milagros Magsaysay said.

She said that would allow President Aquino to “ignore the RH bill debates” and order public health facilities to dispense pills and condoms as early as January next year.

“The belief that you need an RH bill for government clinics to start giving out condoms and pills is a myth,” Magsaysay said.

“It can be quietly done through appropriation. If Congress cannot give birth to an RH law, then [President Aquino] can father an illegitimate offspring through administrative conception.”

Lagman said 87 percent of all Catholics preferred that the government imposed a national policy on reproductive health.

Citing the latest Social Weather Stations survey, Lagman said 71 percent of Filipinos favored the reproductive health bill, and 76 percent agreed there should be a law requiring the government to teach family planning to the young.

He disputed the Church view that contraception was equivalent to abortion.

Research by the Allan Guttmacher Institute showed that contraceptive use reduced abortion rates by 85 percent, Lagman said.

Also on Monday, the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development Foundation criticized Catholic bishops for threatening the government with civil disobedience, saying it amounted to an abuse of religious authority.

“They are talking about the moral option, but I don’t think it is a moral thing for them to do it,” group executive director Ramon San Pascual said.

“It is more moral to give couples the informed choice of methods to use to plan their family.”

Christine Herrera, Manila Standard Today