“Everyone against the RH Bill is stupid.” True story.

Stupid is a word I will never learn to swallow. Stupid is a word reserved for certain people—the President, Willie Revillame, Floyd Mayweather Jr., & co.—which, by virtue of balancing out our rights and privileges, has been bestowed on us—ordinary, insignificant people—for the taking. It is ours to use against the harsh realities we just have to accept. Like the President having a Porsche 911 while you ride a crummy jeepney with an 8-peso minimum fare. Or Willie Revillame being so good at persuading the public while only your mom “likes” your status on Facebook against child abuse. And don’t get me started on Wussweather. Let’s call them stupid all we want to. We win some, we lose most.

It’s a different story, however, when we throw the word at people who simply do not share the same sentiments as ours on certain issues. But we do. With the RH Bill being discussed not just in Congress, but on the streets and the internet, stupid is the most popular cuss word. What we don’t realize is that different does not mean lacking sense. Different does not mean one labored less in looking for answers. In short, different does not mean stupid.

I am against the RH Bill and I’ve often been thrown the S-word for it, be it directly or indirectly. With a fresh diploma in BA Creative Writing from the University of the Philippines-Diliman, I wonder what that would mean: Do I blame myself or our country’s educational system (again)?

A tabloid-worthy article by the Filipino Freethinkers became almost viral in the internet for making a mockery of people who are against the RH Bill. Long story short, it used satire unskillfully to say a simple message: Everyone against the RH Bill is stupid. With a quick scan over the article’s comments and the net, it is not hard to find similar opinions. It woke me to the fact that most, if not all, “non-believers” of the RH Bill are looked down as stupid. And I have never learned to swallow that word. As I have said, I never will.

I oppose the RH Bill for a number of reasons. I oppose the RH Bill not just for the Marxist belief that contradiction of the thesis with the anti-thesis produces a much better synthesis. Ultimately, I oppose the RH Bill because I don’t believe there is a need for it.

First and foremost, the question of population is one which deserves a lot more thinking and re-thinking. The Scientific American – Earth 3.0 published an article entitled “Population and Sustainability” dated 2009 and I share its well-studied thesis. Yes, it said that a booming population is a problem in terms of consumption—a little less for everyone so no one would need to jump overboard. Naturally, that idea would be easy to understand considering that birth comes at a much faster rate than death. Naturally, the world’s population can only go higher. Naturally, there would be a need to provide for more people. It’s simple logic. By the Laws of the Sciences, Entropy is a force always present and unstoppable. Population growth is entropy. It cannot be controlled or stopped. Population control is like saying you can reverse ageing when truth is, you’re only using some “Age Defying Cream.” Truth is your birth date can never be altered. And yes, we will all die one day. Blame Entropy.

By using the term “overpopulation”, however, we are taking the easy way out and blind ourselves to the reality that it is only population growth taking its toll. This is entropy at work. An attempt to stop or control this is futile considering that it will only slow down a tidal wave already in motion. It’s just like saying, “Not in my lifetime am I going to downsize my consumption! The next generation should handle the additional 3 billion of them!”

What we can do, however, is to harness what is already given to us for our use—this is Sustainability. By principle of Sustainability, the Scientific American says, it is not necessary to control this population growth as it is only a haphazard band-aid solution. What is necessary is to provide for the needs of the growing population—to provide jobs, education, food, etc.—which would make the quality of life better. Going back to the metaphor of the tidal wave, what we have to do is to make houses 8 miles away from the shore. What we have to do is to think Sustainability. What we have to do is to think long term.

Long term plans don’t only look forward. Long term plans, contrary to its connotations, have been there since the beginning of time. Long term plans are tried and tested. As far as I can recall, the long term plans have always been these: close the gap between the rich and the poor and give what you can for society. In short, social justice.

If we’re talking about consumption and the sight of the “overpopulated” poor biting off more than they can chew, then it is only logical to talk about its inverse. Can we honestly say that we’re only consuming what is right for us? Can we honestly say that our families of four, five, or six, leave the table with no leftovers? We have to realize that some people have less because some people have more. And most of the time, they have less because we have more.

It infuriated me when Ballsy Aquino was quoted that the farmers in Hacienda Luisita are living such downtrodden lives because they keep conceiving babies. It’s as if that was the cause of their poverty. The attitude is fatalistic aside from condescending. When what the Aquinos should be doing is giving the farmers what they deserve—a just salary and the necessary compensations. What the Aquinos should be doing is social justice. Or as their father himself called it: Christian Socialism.

The case is not confined to the Aquino’s remark. More and more, with the RH Bill reaching the ever agitated Netizens of the Philippines, pity and sympathy are mass produced. Often, the story of a family in the slums reaching a hefty count is retold and the solutions offered are condoms, contraceptives, or castration. This is mere tolerance of the structural problems: miseducation, uneducation, and the rich keeping to their ivory towers. Worse, these solutions were to come from our ever-reliable State. Why don’t we take it upon ourselves to be with the poor, to educate them with Life, and not rely on a single lesson on sex and the use of this slimy, flavored (?) thing called condoms?

With all the flaws in its very foundation, it is necessary to ask the question whether the Bill should ever end up as a Law? Laws are Laws and not I, not the Gentleman from Albay, not the Archbishop from Pampanga, not the Balding Man up there should ever cross it. Everyone must abide.

If the RH Bill should end up becoming a Law, then there is no reason for anyone to feel excluded or unaffected by it—especially when our money is on the line. Section 23 of the RH Bill (Appropriations) states that a hundred million pesos must automatically be appropriated for its enactment. True enough, Laws cannot function without the proper funding. However, if it is against our beliefs, should we allow the taxpayer’s money, our money, to end up funding the bill? Should we allow our money to end up in the pockets of transnational pharmaceutical companies without question? And what with pulmonary diseases which kill more Filipinos than reproductive illnesses do? With no Law making a sure allotment for other diseases, funding for these diseases are set aside for the 100++ million annually which will go for the manufacturing and distribution of condoms and contraceptives. Do we honestly need that much condoms? Are we that addicted? Or are we giving too much for the benefit of DKT International (Trust and Frenzy Condoms), Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, etc? This, amidst their crimes against Filipino scientists.

I must admit, nonetheless, the RH Bill has its good points—like the right to information, especially for women. But it also has its bad points. And if we enact this into a Law, there will be too plenty of ambiguities that would mean life or death, literally. Any good lawyer can argue his way out of an abortion case. I myself can argue at the point wherein life begins. Indeed, civil disobedience is wholly justified since the Bill tackles such sensitive views on Life.

While the RH Bill and I share the same view that women should be empowered, I do not believe that this empowerment should come at their own expense. The case often cited is that women are made factories of babies (ginagawang pabrika) which men take advantage of. True, this is present today. But condoms would not solve this. It’s even more fatal that the RH Bill fosters this form of consciousness—that the condom is a weapon against the primitive desires of men. Condoms and contraceptives would only put a plug on the factory, but the view of making factories out of women is not erased. The violence doesn’t stop. A condom or a contraceptive does not and will not uplift the state of women as long as society remains a frozen structure which looks at women as such. Again, I reiterate: Education.

The practice of making Laws is the practice of defining Common Good and Social Consciousness—not majority rule or compromise. If we are to fill the minds of the people with weak arguments, this achieves nothing. The direction we are to take remains unfounded, even divided.

It is a comforting thought that educated boys and girls these days already know that having more children makes it difficult to raise a family without the RH Bill being institutionalized. The direct proportion is easily learned anyway without the superficial help of condoms and contraceptives. What remains, through thick and thin, is the fact that good education saves.

We can’t pass the RH Bill when such solid arguments remain standing against the idea of overpopulation itself, the methods of teaching sex education, and the differing views we all have—Catholic or non-Catholic—on Life. We can’t turn the RH Bill into a Law while Germany celebrates reaching the same population as ours while we, on the other hand, are told to despair over it; we can’t make the RH Bill a Law when it is clear that the only difference between Germany and us is that international trade laws are working for their side, not ours; we can’t put the RH Bill into Law when even the US State from which it was modeled after could not be proud of its results; we can’t say that the RH Bill would save us from poverty while the State abandons Education; we can’t say that the RH Bill would help the state of women when our children are allowed to live by the same institutions wherein laboring men are favored over women. Ultimately, we can’t pass the RH Bill for it has divided our nation.

If there’s anything I should commend the RH Bill for, it is that it has strengthened the call for structural change by attempting at it. And it is for this reason that I admire the Church. The Church is an institution with set principles—an institution where Laws are Laws. Father Zossima, an iconic character from Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, says it best with his beliefs that it is the State which should strive to one day to become the Church, not a separation. For the Church sticks to its mission, not without its faults, to bring God’s Kingdom into this Earth. And this, the Church strives to achieve with an unwavering and consistent structural approach to its problems. If there’s anything we could learn from the Church’s stubbornness, it’s that you can’t be inconsistent—you have to look at the structural picture. We can’t be activists for or against the RH Bill and be apathetic of other things at the same time.

It is strange that the media is venerating our country’s divide as “a sign that Filipinos are now thinking.” The Filipino has always been thinking. They do not need an RH Bill to tell them that. It’s as if everything else prior to this was stupidity. But it’s not. Intelligence has always been present in our country.

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