The Senate as a Protector of the Unborn

SHOULD SENATE BILL 2497 becomes law, the Upper Chamber would once again distinguish itself as a bastion of rationality and moral discernment in a Congress that has been confused over whose right must be protected the most--that of the mother, or that of the unborn child?

The mother bill House Bill 4244, sponsored by Representative Edcel Lagman, believes that mothers must be protected with the protection of the unborn child given only a lip service. While Section 3(i) recognizes that "abortion is illegal and punishable by law," it does, in a twist of linquistic doubletalk, not support the idea that such is a serious break of the law; and instead proposed that "all women needing care for post-abortion complications shall be treated and counseled." It is like giving treatment and counseling to a serial killer after murdering a child, and then simply saying, "You may go now. Just come back to us for a regular check on your wounds."

HB4244 is an all-mother bill. It is silent to the need of the unborn child for protection. That explains its silence in providing a clear and definite review of contraceptives so as to outlaw those that are abortifacient, prevent those that are potentially abortifacients, and consider potential dangers of those that are not.

Senate Bill 2497 goes beyond "pro-Choice" euphemisms. Section 3(d) ensures that any health services given to the mother during pregnancy does not "prejudice" the unborn child. This provision when passed can demand from RH bill supporters look deeper into the true safety implications of all contraceptive gadgets and "medicines" to ensure that no harm shall come to the unborn child.

This bill must be clear though that any health care services (e.g. contraceptive use) that prevents implantation is an abortifacient too. Fertilization already occurred--thus life already existed--but failure to implant still kills the fertilized egg (zygote); thus, an abortion. The sponsoring senators may not be aware of this medical fact.

Section 6 is also critical in the long-term protection of the unborn child. It hands to the parents of minor pregnant mothers the right over the protection of the unborn child over the right of the State. The State can only interfere should the parents and the pregnant mother will not protect the life and welfare of the unborn child. In addition to the provision of the 1987 Constitution, it can prevent the disastrous ruling in Roe v. Wade on 22 January 1973.

The currently debated HB4244 shows strong vulnerabilities to the introduction of pro-abortion legislations later on through the argument on the right to choose and the right to reproductive health care. Its definitions in this area are so broad that injecting abortion later on will not be a problem. With Western countries, like the United States of America, defining abortion as a method of reproductive health care, who can argue that abortion is scientifically sound means to protect the health of the mother as well as protect her right to choose? 

Section 7 places stronger teeth to Section 12 of the 1987 Constitution Article II. It revises four articles in the Revised Penal Code, increasing penalties for the crimes against abortion. Intentional abortion with violence upon the person of the pregnant woman can now be metted life imprisonment.

The confusion among the Filipinos engendered by the proposed RH Bill came from the corrupted use of the freedom of choice. The right to choose is a right that needs to be protected. But a person who knows himself, and is honest about it, knows very well that our choices are not always the right ones. A right without limit will be like handing a gun to a licensed gunholder empower with the right to choose whom to shoot.

The issue is not whose right should be given priority over the other. The real issue is that both the mother and the unborn child has the right to life and health care. And no mother has right to suppress the right of the unborn child for whatever reason.

The right to choose must be tempered by the right to life. No person has any right to take or prevent life in the same way that that person has no right to take his or her own life.

At the end of the day, human being has no true power on the emergence of life. With such a natural fact, a person has no right either to end life or prevent it from becoming.


[This article appears in Kuro-Kuro on 31 May 2011.]