GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc, The Philippine Star, Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Both the Senate and House versions of the reproductive health bill reject abortion. Sen. Panfilo Lacson states right off that abortion, being illegal, shall not be among the full range of family planning services to be granted couples. So does Rep. Edcel Lagman’s, with a qualifier that women suffering post-abortion complications shall be treated at once — a humane act. Throughout the text both stress the criminality of snuffing out the life of the unborn. So why do Catholic bishops deem the authors promoters of abortion?
To be sure, the bishops are against birth control. For the Church, sex should only be between married couples, as obligation, mainly to procreate and then be intimate. Anything that goes against that purpose of sex, say, withdrawal or masturbation is a sin (of Onan). To couples that do not wish pregnancy as yet, for a valid reason, the bishops prescribe abstinence, akin to chastity. They allow the Rhythm or Billings Method only because by natural odds the wife won’t conceive anyway even if the husband aims to procreate.
The bishops ban artificial means. Condoms, surgeries like vasectomy or tubal ligation, intrauterine devices, and injectable, topical or oral birth controls are immoral. It gets messier. For the bishops, all contraceptives are also abortifacients. It is not just out of fear that “once artificial methods are practiced, then legalizing abortion will not be far behind.” Anything that prevents the formation of a fetus is, for the bishops, killing the fetus itself.
Thinking Catholics find it illogical. Contraceptives counteract conception, that is, life, so how can it destroy life? Ah basta, the debate turns dogmatic, that is the moral law, and anyone who doubts or disobeys shall burn in the eternal fires of hell.
The Catholic laity is not as obstinate as their bishops. They try to see things from the clerical viewpoint, and review the Pill and IUD. IUDs may on rare occasion induce abortion, like if a user already is conceiving when trying it the first time. In such event, the tool does become abortifacient, though by accident. The lost fetus, more likely to go unnoticed, is one life too many, so out with IUDs. Chemical contraceptives could accidentally and unacceptably abort too. Say, if the active ingredient lingers in the body too long and fatally weakens a fetus. Out with Pills too.
But condoms and surgical birth-prevention cannot by any stretch of imagination abort. It’s absurd. Pray tell, faithful Catholics beg the bishops, how can soft latex or knotted passageways of human egg or semen kill an unborn babe that wasn’t formed?
The bishops’ line defies science. It doesn’t matter to them. They’ve always clung to unscientific notions versus empirical evidence. Earlier bishops had suppressed Copernicus, a monk who observed in the early 1500s that the Sun does not revolve around the Earth as they thought. It simply went against the view that Creation was centered on the human world. A century later Galileo and Kepler separately upheld Copernicus’ findings and boldly began to define the universe. Galileo was tried in Inquisition and Kepler excommunicated for suggesting that the world might only be a speck in the Divine scheme of things.
Science forged ahead despite priestly resistance. In the 1850s
Following the footsteps of earlier thinkers who eventually prevailed, today’s family-planning advocates push on. Bishops’ threats of withholding from them Communion and other Sacraments, they fervently pray over to melt. They remain steadfast Catholics trying to reform the Church thinking. Those of them who are old enough have seen it all before. In the early ’60s bishops had called rock n’ roll the work of the devil, yet the new art form found its way into the Jazz Mass and bouncy Gospel music. Today’s bishops in the end will come around to accepting that spaced pregnancy is being pro-life as well as pro-quality of life. It saves mothers and infants from morbidity, and improves their families physically, financially and spiritually.
Before that happens, though, there might first be a breakdown of the Separation of Church and State. That principle was conceived not so much to prevent churchmen from involving in politics, than government setting up a state religion. Bishops understandably will try to influence politicians’ thinking on reproductive health. But what if state leaders acquiesce only to Catholic clergymen, ditching other Christians and religionists who want family planning services? Then things will get worse before they get better.
* * *
