Philippine bishops fighting trends, and own flock, on reproductive health bill
Majority of Catholics polled have long supported bill to provide contraception and sex education, leaving Philippine church at risk of a backlash for opposing it
The Vatican's last bastion of Catholic conservatism looks likely to be breached as a controversial law to make contraceptives freely available to the poor nears passage in the Philippine Congress.
The Philippines is among the few mainly Catholic countries with restricted public access to contraceptives. It is now the lone Catholic nation without a divorce law, after Malta's parliament passed one last year.
House Bill 4244 or the Reproductive Health (RH) bill aims to give poor couples free access to family planning methods, including contraceptives and condoms, and would require schools to teach students sex education. The Philippine Senate is deliberating on a similar bill. It is expected to be passed before end of this year.
President Benigno Aquino has openly backed the bill, and its defeat would also weaken him politically as the powerful Catholic Church hierarchy opposes artificial birth control.
A Filipino prelate stressed the importance of firmly holding the line against the controversial bill.
"If the RH bill becomes law, the DEATHS bills will follow next - Divorce, Euthanasia, Abortion, Transgender, Homosexuality or gay marriages, and Sex education," the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) secretary general Joselito Asis told the Sunday Morning Post. "Actually, a divorce bill has been filed and it's pending."
The stance of the CBCP - the church's governing body - finds little favour among the country's 76 million Catholics, who comprise 82 per cent of the population. As early as October 2010, private pollster Pulse Asia found 69 per cent of respondents backing an RH law and 79 per cent saying couples have the right to choose their family planning method.