PHNO-HL: SENATOR VIC SOTTO TO EXPOSE RH BILL LOBBY GROUPS

SENATOR VIC SOTTO TO EXPOSE RH BILL LOBBY
GROUPS
MANILA, AUGUST 13, 2012 (STANDARD) By Macon
Ramos-Araneta - RH supporters slam Enrile's delaying tactics.
Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III (photo) on Sunday said
he will reveal today the international lobby groups behind the reproductive
health bill and expose a "hidden provision" that would allow abortions to be
performed.
"I will also explain why the RH bill is unnecessary in our country," Sotto
said in an advisory on the speech he will deliver today.
He earlier threatened to quit as majority leader to pursue an all-out
campaign against the RH bill, but Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile (photo
at right, below) said there was no need for him to do so.
"Of course, we are replaceable. Any time I can be replaced as Senate
president also," Enrile said.
The RH bill seeks to establish a national policy on population management and
to educate the Filipinos on the family planning options available to them.
The House of Representatives last week voted to end the debates on the
proposed measure, which has been in Congress in varying forms for more than a
decade.
In the Senate, the bill is already in the period of amendments, but Enrile
said he wanted to reopen the debates so that he could ask further questions, a
move that the RH supporters have criticized as a delaying tactic.
Enrile said he would not impose his stand on the RH bill on his colleagues in
the Senate.
"My position on the RH bill is personal to me," he said.
"I'm not convincing anybody to join me. It's a matter of faith, conscience
and, above all, it involves my notion of what is in the highest interest of the
country," Enrile said.
On Saturday, Senator Franklin Drilon said the Senate must wait for the
results of the House vote before they acted on the bill.
The bill's principal author in the Senate, Senator Pia Cayetano, vowed to
press her colleagues to vote for the passage of the bill.
Cayetano said she was no longer surprised at what Enrile and Sotto were
doing.
"They really don't like the RH bill. We all know…they will do whatever they
are capable of doing just to block its passage," she said.
Cayetano, the bill's co-sponsor Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, and Senator
Panfilo Lacson are the only senators who have openly supported the bill in the
Senate.
Cayetano admitted she did not know where the rest of her colleagues stood on
the issue.
Last week, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to end the
plenary debates on the reproductive health bill, setting the stage for
amendments and a vote on 2nd reading–dealing a blow to the Catholic Church that
has lobbied heavily against the measure.
While the advocates of the bill claimed victory, President Benigno Aquino III
reminded them that they needed to "perfect" the proposed law by including
amendments aimed at appeasing the Church.
Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, the bill's principal author in the House, described
the termination of the debates as an "emphatic validation by the people's
elected representatives of the periodic surveys that Filipinos want the
enactment of the RH bill."
The House has formed a committee that will work on the amendments to the
bill, which will then go to the plenary for a second reading.
In a clear reference to the Catholic bishops who have launched a vigorous
campaign against the bill, Lagman said the bill's expected passage would be "an
affirmation that public funds have no religion and can be used for the general
welfare independent of the dogma of any church."
But at a meeting Monday ahead of their vote to end the debates, the President
reminded lawmakers of five of his own proposed amendments to the bill, and seven
others that were the result of discussions with Catholic bishops last year.
Those included the removal of a provision that targets two children per
family and specific population targets, which have already been excised from the
consolidated measure that has been renamed the responsible parenthood bill that
is still pending before Congress.


Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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rights reserved




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