Gibo’s wife withdraws support for RH bill

Nation
Written by Fernan Marasigan / Reporter
Sunday, 29 November 2009 20:56


SAYING that it has been “defanged and is now toothless” the legislator-wife of former defense secretary Gilbert Teodoro, the administration bet in the 2010 presidential elections, has withdrawn her support for the controversial reproductive-health bill.

In pulling out her support for House Bill 5043, Lakas-Kampi-CMD Rep. Nikki Prieto Teodoro of Tarlac said the measure does not directly address the problem of poverty in the country, where about 5,000 Filipinos are born daily, most of them ending up poor.

“I don’t want to give poor Filipinos, especially children, the false hope that this bill will solve the problem of poverty because it does not. I’d rather spend our meager resources in directly feeding the poor, clothing the naked, giving shelter to the poor and educating them so they grow up productive and independent,” said Teodoro.

She said that with the country’s population standing at 92.2 million this year, it is the impoverished children who suffer the most. “Children’s innocence is broken because they have to struggle to meet their basic needs,” Teodoro said.

She said the people should be told that it takes more than population control to reduce poverty and spark socio-economic development in the Philippines.

“Population growth is not a problem if resources are available and well-managed to cope with the additional people requiring public services, employment, housing and so on,” said Teodoro.

The reproductive-health bill, now in the period of interpellation for second reading at the House of Representatives, is expected to be one of the top items on the agenda when Congress resumes session on December 7.

It aims to grant public funding to family-planning methods using artificial contraceptives and sex education for students. It also gives access to reproductive-health information to avoid unwanted and untimely pregnancies and maternal deaths to limit the country’s population.

But Teodoro said majority of maternal deaths are caused by the lack of proper medical facilities and care. She said the reproductive-health bill does not address this lack of basic health-care services, and will allow the problem to persist while it wastes funds on abortifacients and other ineffective reproductive-health measures.

She said that population policy should not concentrate too narrowly on contraception alone. She said the government should also look into women’s rights and education because they are also critical elements of the population-development equation.

Rather than focus on the artificial form of family planning, Teodoro said that heightened emphasis should be placed on informing, educating and providing the poor with better access to education.

She said that her new stand on the issue is consistent with her husband’s platform of government to fight against the “four faces of poverty: poverty of the mind, poverty of the pocket, poverty of the environment, poverty of relationships.”

“We shall protect the life of each and every citizen. Respect for life shall be from the moment of conception to the moment of death of our constituents. The protection of life is guaranteed by our constitution and on this principle there is no compromise,” former defense secretary Teodoro said in his speech during the Lakas-Kampi-CMD convention recently.