When RH law is thicker than blood

MANILA, Philippines – A niece of an anti-reproductive health law legislator has asked the Supreme Court to dismiss petitions questioning the constitutionality of the controversial measure.

Lawyer Joan de Venecia, niece of re-elected Pangasinan Rep. Gina de Venecia, filed a motion for intervention at the SC on May 20 along with law students Korina Manibog and Jan Robert Beltejar. They asked the High Court to junk petitions seeking to invalidate the RH law.

Republic Act 10354 or the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012 mandates the state to promote the use of artificial contraception. The SC stopped its implementation in March. 

De Venecia said that she filed the motion even as her aunt is against it (Rep. De Venecia voted against its passage in 2012), because it has been her advocacy to push for an RH law in the country since  2009. “I’m doing this for my daughter,” she said in an interview.

She added that she has not talked  to her aunt about the motion, saying that in their family, they “respect” each other’s opinions on a variety of issues. 

In the motion, De Venecia and her fellow intervenors argued that there is no natural law against non-reproductive sex, contrary to what those who want to have the law nullified say.

They also pointed out that the Catholic Church itself is inconsistent in its position on non-reproductive sex. 

Sex not just for procreation

Nothing in the Old Testament or Jesus Christ’s teachings states that sex is only for procreation, they said. Citing James Brundage, author of “Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe,” the intervenors said that such belief came from Pagan Greek stoics.

This belief was adopted by the Catholic Church, but even as it denounced sex for reproduction it also pushed for the rhythm method to prevent conception, they said.

They noted that a commission formed to study this conflicting positions in 1963 recommended to Pope Paul VI to accept the use of modern birth control methods and to dismiss the notion that sex is only for procreation. Pope Paul VI however chose to reject the majority report and uphold the ultra-conservative minority position. He then issued the encyclical letter Humanae Vitae in 1968, which rejected artificial forms of contraception.

The intervenors also said there are population control programs even in other countries and that modern contraceptives are being sold in the Philippines.  “If sex only for procreation were truly a fundamental natural law precept, then neither of those would be the case,” they said. 

They said that even the existence of a “natural law” or a universal set or rules governing cultures is “debatable.” But assuming they exist, the “determinable fundamental rules of natural law would and does not include a rule against humans having non-reproductive sex,” they said.

De Venecia and her fellow intervenors said the petitioners against RH law also erred in making “sweeping statements” that the RH law forces all “Catholics to commit or perform acts that are contrary to their faith.”

They cited a study “Truth & Consequence” which stated that in 1999, almost 80% of Catholics believed that a person could be a good Catholic “without obeying the church hierarchy’s teaching on birth control.”

Fighting chance

They also stressed that the RH law will not violate the constitutional freedoms of expression, choice or speech of Catholics because it does not require them to use artificial contraception, but only gives them the option to do so.

The intervenors said the RH law also also gives the country a “fighting chance to control its  population and its adverse impact on environmental survival.”

Without the law, they said, the population growth rate would remain at 1.9% rate every year and its population of 92.43 million will grow to 141.67 million by 2040.

This would put a strain to already limited resources.

“The Honorable Court must therefore act in a manner consistent with its record of environmental protectionism. It must uphold the obvious constitutionality of RA 10354 if the country is to take the most fundamental step to environmental sustainability and survival.” – Rappler.com