Tag: December 12, 2008

IT ALL started with a moving rebuttal on paper.

Former Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) Rhoel Raymundo Mendoza was browsing a Riyadh newspaper more than two decades ago when he got enraged by a letter from a British reader: “Filipinos, because they have no culture of their own, tend to be a fickle and shallow people.”

HISTORY would tell us that early civilizations sprouted beside rivers: the Nile, Yangtze, Tigris-Euphrates, and Ganges, among others. In the country, Pasig River hosted the early kingdoms of Luzon. This means that water supports life; without it, subsistence will cease to exist.

Sadly, the rivers that brought life to civilizations are being killed. A look at the eastern bank of Pasig River from Sevilla Bridge that connects Manila and Mandaluyong is a clear picture of how people can be so neglectful of the environment that sustains them.

THE CROOKED science of numb intellectuals has time and again struck humanity with blight, reducing men to figures and formulating general equations that basically miss the point about everything. This is again evident at this time, when in the name of “development,” “family planning,” and “women’s empowerment,” some people have convinced themselves that it is all right to serve innocent lives — the women, the youth, and the unborn — at the altar of death.

APPETIZER: The misplaced public indignation caused by this paper’s recent editorial titled “Dishonest, mediocre, anti-poor” which judiciously refuted the erroneous declaration of the 14 Ateneo professors that “Catholics can support the RH bill in good conscience” has allegedly prompted some quarters in the Ateneo community to demand my resignation as well as that of the two advisers for, as one infuriated letter-sender said, “publish(ing) crap.”

SUPPORTERS of the Reproductive Health Bill have one thing in common: out of utter disdain, they tell their opponents to read the bill first. Comfortable with their fashionable advocacy, they simply dismiss the other camp as conservative and old-fashioned, or too orthodox for the challenges of the modern world.

Of course, the opponents of House Bill No. 5043 have read the text, and indeed its previous incarnations which had been thrown into Congress’s wastebasket. And you don’t even have to read between the lines to realize its true objectives.

BIOETHICS experts, doctors, and other health professionals criticized Reproductive Health Bill 5043 for reducing maternal health into a matter of “pregnancy prevention” or fertility control and for styling itself as anti-abortion while promoting birth-control methods that are “potentially abortifacient agents.”

They also criticized the bill and its proponents for exaggerating maternal health problems contrary to the government’s own statistics that show pregnancy complications are not a leading cause of death among Filipino mothers.

“GRAVELY mistaken.”

This was in essence the response of an international group of Catholic educators – which includes two Jesuits, two Dominicans, experts from the Jesuit-run Fordham University, Cambridge, the London School of Economics and others – to an Oct. 15 statement penned by 14 Ateneo de Manila professors that claimed Catholic teachings support the Reproductive Health Bill because it will ease poverty.

November 14, 2008

l . We commend efforts to improve the quality of life of the Filipino people. 2. There is a need to address the present problems in reproductive health. We are all of the same intention in protecting the mother during her reproductive years. This bill, however does not address/answer these problems in a holistic manner. It focuses mainly on pregnancy prevention. It must consider the rights of others involved specifically the unborn and those tasked with their care.

YOUNG people can bring change to a corrupt government, and the first step is to register as voters.

Election officials and voters’ watchdog groups called on the youth to make their voices heard in the 2010 elections as they launched a national voter registration and education campaign at the Quadricentennial Park last Dec. 2.

UST IS now working on its own intellectual property policy and will soon put up an office to secure patents for inventions and scientific discoveries by University researchers, officials said.