House tackles RH bill after 5-hour delay

Anti-RH legislators in the House of Representatives tried their best to stall the Reproductive Health bill until late Monday evening, December 3 until advocates managed to push it forward to the period of amendments. The antis proposed amendments line by line, even as it took a long 5 hours for the House to tackle just the first sentence of Section 2, page 2 of the consolidated bill. While the antis vowed to introduce “killer amendments,” RH advocates said they would block them. Before reaching the period of amendments, oppositors to the bill delivered privilege speeches which are allotted an hour during Monday sessions. Palawan Rep Dennis Socrates managed to delay deliberations when he sought to deliver a 10-minute privilege speech questioning a previous approval of the substitute RH bill and the early termination of debates. But the whole process that eventually led to the disapproval of what would have been a 10-minute speech took much longer: 1 hour. By a vote of 99-91 and 1 abstention, Socrates’ bid to deliver a privilege speech was denied, as the period of debates had ended last week. It could very well have been a preview of actual voting on the RH bill.


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