MANILA, Dec. 5, 2011—A former lawmaker appealed to Filipinos to live the true spirit of patriotism by upholding the rights of the family and the country and rejecting the foreign-backed reproductive (RH) bill that has been dividing the nation.
“[The RH bill] will mean the total surrender of our national sovereignty, for it is not of Filipino origin. Nor is it meant to strengthen or enrich the culture, character and conscience of the Filipinos. It is dictated by foreign population controllers using so many of our unfortunate countrymen as proxies and cats’ paws,” former Senator Francisco “Kit” Tatad stated during a Cebu pro-life conference in November.
In a separate interview, Atty. Jo Aurea Imbong, Executive Secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) Legal Office reiterated the foreign origins of the P13.7 billion-legislative measure that mandates taxpayer-funded, government-promoted procurement and distribution of birth control supplies, and provision of sterilization and all other services that fall under “reproductive health.”
Imbong pointed to the Sixth Country Programme to the Philippines formulated by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)—a document that details the agency’s goals and directives on population and reproductive health policies in the country—as indicative of the foreign origins of RH legislation.
Publicly available documents which reveal the UN’s directives for countries such as the Philippines support such assertions of cultural imperialism, said the lawyer, a recipient of the recent Family Values Award 2011 given by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Foreign backing obvious
“Based on the documents, the laws and ordinances for the local government councils are already ready, so the officials wouldn’t have to bother drafting these from scratch. They are responsible for the template that was used,” Imbong pointed out.
International bodies United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and UNFPA are the ones primarily involved in this, the lawyer added.
Recent reports have revealed documents exposing the massive funding sought and obtained by RH lobbyists from foreign groups for the RH bill’s passage. The documents reveal budget allocations for generating nationwide support via mass media mileage, “nurturing legislators,” and ensuring targeted crowd attendance at mass mobilizations, among others.
Tatad pointed out that the 20th anniversary of the Senate’s rejection of the treaty that would have extended the US bases in the Philippines was met with much jubilation by “many reputedly ‘nationalist’ politicians. A few others struck nationalist poses by questioning America’s suspicious role in the MILF issue as an infringement of Philippine sovereignty.”
“But far too many of them do not mind calling on their benighted followers to march behind the foreign-dictated RH bill, which seeks to impose a new colonial regime upon the Philippines, by taking hold not necessarily of the land but of the minds and souls of the Filipinos,” he lamented.
The former senator appealed to the participants at the pro-life conference “to pray that these friends of ours be converted back to true Filipino patriotism eager to uphold the rights of God, family and country.” (CBCP for Life)
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