A Reflection: Theocracy, Rights, and the Fight for RH

I am racing against time. Time is winning right now.

It is now 7:49AM on Thursday, October 30th. I am still in my pajamas, writing (my first ever) blog entry on some topic related to reproductive health…or related to anything really. This is the assignment we have been given. We, participants of a 2.5-day media workshop entitled “News for a Change: RH Advocates’ Training Workshop on Writing for Media”. We, who have traveled from near and far to Quezon City in the Philippines. We, united advocates for this issue we fondly call RH. It stands for reproductive health, but it is really so much more; meaning, it would be difficult (and frustrating) to try to answer a beat reporter who asks us “so what is RH?”

Earlier this week, as I took in the gems of Carlos Celdran’s walking tour of Intramros (which I highly recommend: http://www.celdrantours.blogspot.com/), I agreed with his central driving theme. It was two-fold:

• The City of Manila has the look of being soul-less. The answer lies in the walls of Intramuros, where its soul once was.
• Theocracy, or a form of government in which a god or deity is recognized as the supreme civil ruler, can be a very, very dangerous thing. You can see its remnants in the history of Manila.

In my mind, the raging debate around passage of a national Reproductive Health Bill (RH Bill) is the next step in Manila’s unsettling history of theocracy. The issues are far more complex than separation of Church and State, however.

To a person who finds comfort in belonging to both Church and State, this is no easy issue.

When I worked on a similar RH Bill in the State of New York last year, the battle was not so different from its Filipino counterpart. What we on the RH side call “mis-information” from the conservative Catholic side ruled the law of the land. In New York, where the perceived social norm is quite liberal, it is the Catholics who have a united front. They are the ones flooding the congressional halls with letters, phone calls, educational materials…at the rate of hundreds every week. More importantly, they are the ones who have the money to fund such efforts.

In my mind though, their most important advantage is their “united front.” If you view this as raging a battle, you will see that on the Catholic side everyone’s weapon is pointed in the same direction. That army is well-prepared, well-armed, and well-convinced of their core message: “killing unborn babies (not early fetuses) is evil, and all practices associated with it must go.” Of course there are subtleties and slight differences of opinion, but the message is clear. The victim is the unborn baby, a creation of God, and therefore the battle is one in the name of God.

On the other side, you will see that there isn’t much of an organized army. The ones fighting are extremely committed to their cause of defending reproductive health as a fundamental human right. This side of the battle is scattered. The unifying message is far more vague. Some believe in all forms of contraceptives for all. Some draw the line at abortion. Some only believe in availability when rape or incest has happened. Some also consider themselves Catholic, and some are of other religions or of no religion at all. Some are part of the army because their fight is for larger issues of gender equality, not just women’s reproductive health.
Meanwhile, women continue to suffer.

I ask myself, “What is sacred?”

Is the fight to defend the health and rights of women (and by extension, help curb poverty and overpopulation) so immoral in the Catholic eye? Why did the history of the fight switch from a fight for RR, or reproductive rights, to RH, or reproductive health? Does the Bible have anything to say about rights? And what of separation of church and state? Must the fight for RH be a fight against the Church?

But alas…it is 8:25am and I still need to shower, so the answers to these and other questions must wait until my next entry.
I will just close with this because I found that in fact, the Bible does have something to say about rights.

Proverbs 31:8 says “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.”

Now of course, this can be used to defend either side, but that’s a discussion for another time…

The author, Aita Amaize, is a volunteer at the Save the Children office in Manila. She joined the Media Training conducted by HAIN last October 28-30.