IN A DEMOCRACY, the banging of ideas in the hall of learned opinion puts in motion the equality of people among people in contributing for the best of the greatest number. It is therefore immature to condemn the adversary simply because he is winning the argument. If truth has to win the bearers of truth must succeed in arguing for it. A proponent of truth that cannot argue successfully must be the last person to be considered in such a critical occupation.
Never was a time in our history as a Christian nation that the life of the unborn hangs in the balance of a word's definition.
The House Representatives is entering the phase of the legislation process where amendments of the very controversial and highly divisive RH Bill can be done by the proponents of the opposing camps. In this stage, a proponent who sleeps in the cause will bring the cause into a tragic end.
Instead of staging social unrest, it is now the right time for the Roman Catholic Church and the proponents against the RH Bill to make their mark in the history of this legislation in the country. Their brightest members must be there to assist the House Committee to make the final touches of the legislation before it reaches the floor for the readings.
Anti-RH Bill advocates must not minimize this opportunity to make a lasting and final safeguard against the potential excesses of this bill in its present form. Make no mistake, in the same way that pro-RH Bill protagonists will maximize this slim and final chance to do something in favor of their proposition, the anti-RH Bill must ensure that they defang this Bill for all provisions that makes it a detestable one for pro-lifers.
One important information to be incorporated in this bill is a clear definition of abortion as the destruction of life conceived at the time of fertilization. For their own twisted reasoning, pro-abortionists who are active in favor of this piece of legislation will make an effort either to make the definition of the conception of life ignored or to define it as the time of implantation. Much of the debate of abortion and abortifacient contraceptives unfortunately hang on this definition. If life gets defined properly, much of the problem regarding the RH Bill will disappear into the legislative oblivion once and for all. Otherwise, the spectre of abortion will continue to haunt the hall of legislation as well as the consciences of Filipinos of good will.
Another definition to be clarified is that of pregnancy. Instead of treating it as a disease that requires drug therapy, it must be defined with the dignity it deserves to have. That of a healthy process of biological development akin to but immensely more significant than the growing of a wisdom tooth. No dentist of a sound mind will recommend destroying the emerging wisdom tooth or removing it surgically because it has to be defined as a disease. Proper definition of pregnancy will remove much if not all the need for contraceptive drugs from receiving financial support from the government through this legislation. If pregnancy is a not a disease, what's the point of prescribing contraceptive pills for it?
Finally, pro-life proponents must ensure that the Bill defines healthcare for childbearing women apart from the perceived "danger" that the unborn child has been theorized to bring. Care for women must center on women without endangering the life of the unborn child. That's what our Constitution believes and protects. That is what must reign in this bill.
At the end of the day, much of the problems surrounding the RH Bill rests upon the many definitions that had been twisted long ago by interest groups in some far-flung countries that sought to bring profits to manufacturing firms on the expense of the unborn child, or to stealthily short-circuit the protection clause in the Constitution against abortion, and orchestrate an abortion law in the only Christian nation in Asia. It is the task of the day. It is the task that pro-life advocates must not shrink at this very critical point of legislation.
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