No doubt that the current debate on the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill serves as an anvil where we, Filipinos shape and strengthen our sentiments and condemnation against the clergy and the CBCP, if not the whole Philippine Catholic Church hierarchy. My “we” here pertains to the Catholics who are pro-RH bill. And while we curse from the top of our lungs our priests, the bishops and the lay people of being “hypocrites”, “gender insensitive”, “anti-poor and anti-women”, “sexual molesters”, “Modern-day Fathers Damaso” and other accusations – no matter how legitimate they are - let us also remember that aside from the two contending forces- those who support the HR bill and those who are against it – we tend to loose sight on how wealthy and powerful and nations that influenced such local legislative initiatives. As we lambast our priests, bishops and lay people, we ignore the questionable foreign policies of such powerful and dominant countries, cultures and corporations who support such policies. Especially Uncle Sam. Allow me to direct you to two important and recent events on Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates of the Gates Foundation on population control.
And no matter how we deny it, there are still invisible foreign hands in every major Philippine political affairs. And even series of social changes since the beginning of our supposedly independence from foreign domination, particularly the US, was not able to generally change such reality.
In minds of the US policy makers, as far as you understand, does “reproductive health/services/rights” include abortion, or doesn’t it? Let us hear it directly from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Last April 21, 2009, as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Congressman Chris Smith as the alter ego of President Barack Obama : "And so we have total transparency, does the United States' definition of the term 1) "reproductive health" or 2) "reproductive services" or 3) "reproductive rights" include abortion?"
Reportedly she answered: "We have a very fundamental disagreement. It is my strongly held view that you are entitled to advocate, and everyone who agrees with you should be free to do so, anywhere in the world and so are we." But like a fish, she was caught through her mouth : "We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health and reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal and rare." See? But our pro-RH Bill legislators are denying to their teeth that it will ultimately fall to abortion. Saying that the US, or Clinton, has nothing to do with the RH Bill. Clinton, by the way is one (5th) of Forbes' 2010 World's 100 Most Powerful Women list.
The same thing happened some years ago when a despotic Philippine political leader justified his declaration of Martial Law saying it has nothing to with Uncle Sam or something to that effect. Or that the sorry state then (and now) of our economy has a little thing to do with transnational and multi-national corporations and the injustice and inequality that they bring. The people in the government then lead us think that it was just a product of the wild imagination of the Communist-leaning labor unions including the left-leaning radicals in the 50s up to late 80s. They made us believe that the poverty that we are experiencing as a nation is self-created by us, Filipinos.
But there we have it from Clinton herself, one of the highest authorities on the subject. At least there now is no doubt that the Obama administration will be endorsing legalized abortion as part of its policy towards developing nations like the Philippines. It seems that in the controversial RH Bill, the terms “reproductive health”, “maternal care”, etc. are juxtaposed to imply the need to legalize abortion. It echoes from Washington to Manila.
And to fuel up this grand “Contraceptive Imperialism”, to borrow the word from Atty. Jo Imbong, the world needs the ever-reliable American philanthropy.
Annually, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) give the so-called Population Award on a person and organization that has met its criteria for population control. And the 2010 Population Award goes to Bill and Melinda Gates. But Bill Gates and his wife Melinda were not there to receive the award and it was accepted in his behalf by William H. Gates, Sr., Bill’s father. The couple were in Mexico for a business trip.
According to Vincenzina Santoro,- an international economist who represents the American Family Association of New York at the United Nations, just few days after the said award, the Gates foundation pledged a considerable sum to support the UN led initiative called “The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health” which is “hosted and administered by the World Health Organization” and includes approximately 300 NGOs such as Planned Parenthood and organizations like the UN Population Fund. Of the 300 NGOs, how many of them are from the Philippines? And how much money being poured from it to the Philippines? Nobody knows. One thing is certain, worldwide, resource generation and fund campaigns such as this is initiated and gaining popular support from topnotch corporations in exchange of a future global society of “few, chosen and quality” citizens and nations.
As early as 1983, Ray Ravenholt, a former official of the US Agency for International Development or USAID, an agency actively funding population control in the Third World, has given an insight into the real reason behind US concern : “Population control is necessary for the normal operation of US commercial interests around the world.” Is that reality no longer true today?
Why would innocent words such as “maternal and child welfare”, “reproductive services” “reproductive rights” and “reproductive services”, and even “family planning” would always lead to population control through abortion or contraception?
I maybe wrong but maybe the stipulations in the RH Bill are perhaps the true “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and not only our erring priests and bishops as claimed by many (?) of us Catholics as result of this recent debates on RH Bill…
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(Photo from Shots)
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