 |
 |
| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Pro Any Life
By Antonio C. Abaya Written May 13, 2007 For the Standard Today, May 15 issue In my article Boycott of May 08, I had complained that both the candidates and Philippine media have not made population and birth control a political issue in the elections held yesterday. As a consequence, I complained, voters did not know where the candidates stood on such an important matter that impacts on the future of this country. Manolo Quezon emailed me a URL that is said to contain the candidates� positions on the population issue. But, unfortunately, I could not get the URL to open. But not to worry. Reader Emmanuel Amador emailed me a list of �pro-life� and �anti-life� senatorial candidates prepared by one Rene Bullecer of Cebu for Human Life International Pilipinas. The list came too late to be inputted into Boycott, but it nevertheless gives an idea of the mindset and thinking of people who consider themselves �pro-life.� Bullecer white-lists the following nine senatorial candidates as �pro-life�: Joker Arroyo (TU), Martin Bautista (KP), Michael Defensor (TU), Zosimo Paredes (KP), Koko Pimentel (GO), Sonia Roco (GO), Adrian Sison (KP), Vicente Sotto (TU), and Manuel Villar (GO). Either Bullecer or Amador blacklists the following 16 senatorial candidates as �anti-life�: Noynoy Aquino (GO), Alan Peter Cayetano (GO), Nikki Coseteng (GO), Francis �Chiz� Escudero (GO), Richard Gomez (Ind), Gregorio Honasan (Ind), Panfilo Lacson (GO), Loren Legarda (GO), Vicente Magsaysay (GO), Cesar Montano (TU), Tessie Aquino-Oreta (TU), John Osmena (GO), Francisco�Kiko� Pangilinan (Ind), Prospero Pichay (TU), Luis �Chavit� Singson (TU), and Juan Miguel Zubiri (TU). Amador editorializes: �If elected, we can expect these candidates to support bills directly or indirectly promoting abortion, divorce, euthanasia, contraception and homosexual unions. Do we really want that?� The list does not say where candidates Edgardo Angara (TU), Jamalul Kiram (TU), Ralph Recto (TU), and Antonio Trillanes (GO) stood on the issue. . The folly of dividing the candidates into �pro-life� and �anti-life� camps � with the hope of influencing voters into making the �right� choices - will become apparent when the list of winners are proclaimed one or two weeks from now. This early, it looks like more �anti-lifers� will be elected than �pro-lifers.� I am surprised that Noynoy Aquino was classified as �anti-life.� I had categorized him in Boycott as �totally under the influence of his mother Tita Cory, the walking saint of Philippine politics.� I may have misjudged him, for which I apologize. But I am still surprised that any of the candidates are blacklisted as �anti-life.� This is a sweeping generalization that is not warranted by any facts or statements presented by the accuser. Just because Noynoy or any of the others are in favor of artificial methods of contraception does not necessarily follow that he or any of the others are also in favor of abortion, divorce, euthanasia and/or homosexual unions. The dichotomy between being �pro-life� and �anti-life� does not exist except in the minds of the Talibans of the Christian world, the Catholic fundamentalists who see everything in black or white, with no possibility of infinite shades of grey in between. This may be the reason why the Roman Catholic Church has been losing many of its members � something like 10% or more � to the Born Again Pentecostal movement in Brazil . As far as I know, the Born Agains are not as morbidly fixated on condoms as the Roman Church is. So their sexual morality is more in synch with the lifestyles of the many, even and especially among the poor in the favela slums. Brazil , which gave birth to the string bikini, has a raw sexual energy that manifests itself in its national dance, the samba, especially during the carnaval, ironically just before the Catholic Lenten season. To preach to the Brazilians to abstain from sex rather than use condoms, as Pope Benedict XVI did during his recent visit, is like plowing the sea, to use a figure of speech attributed to the South American liberator, Simon Bolivar. In 1994, Pope John Paul II also urged Black Africans to abstain from sex rather than use condoms, but his words went in one ear and out the other without connecting the neurons in between, and the Africans continued to multiply like Nile tilapias.. At least in Brazil , where the government distributes millions of condoms free of charge, countless unwanted pregnancies have been prevented. As President Inacio Lula da Silva explained � pointedly, just before the Pope arrived - population control in Brazil is a public health issue, not a moral one. The population growth rate of Brazil has been substantially reduced from 2.2% in 1988 to 1.04% in 2005. (In the same period, that of the Philippines went down from 2.4% to 1.95%.) To demonize those who favor population control as �anti-life� is unfair and inaccurate. They are also pro-life, but they are �pro-quality-life,� meaning they want to give their children and themselves a minimum decent quality of life commensurate to what they can afford or what they choose to have.. Those who claim to be �pro-life� are really �pro-any-kind-of-life,� meaning, they accept any kind of life for their children and themselves, even if it means living it in hovels along the railroad tracks, under the bridges, on the esteros, along the sea-wall, and in pushcarts parked on the sidewalks, on the grounds that this is their immutable destiny decided for them by God. Or they just do not know any better. Happily, more and more people are opting to be pro-quality-life.***** Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles in www.tapatt.org or acabaya.blogspot.com OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |