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Date Posted: 20:43:34 09/17/12 Mon
Author: IMRD
Subject: Sept. 18, 2011 news


http://manilastandardtoday.com/2012/09/18/rh-advocates-lack-strategy/
RH advocates lack strategy
By Maricel Cruz | Posted on September 18, 2012 | 12:01am | 206 views

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One of the proponents of the controversial Reproductive Health bill has admitted that they do not have clear-cut strategies to quell the strong disapproval of various sectors, including the Catholic Church, to enact the measure.
But Ifugao Rep. Teddy Brawner Baguilat Jr. said that they already had ‘140 plus solid’ supporters of House Bill 4244 or the Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health, Population and Development Act, to have the bill pass through the scrutiny at the Lower House.
Baguilat said that they had no other recourse but to resort to the same level of filibustering that the anti-RH lawmakers had been doing to delay the passage of the bill.
“We will just push and push for the period of amendments. If the anti-RH lawmakers had done everything illogical to delay the proceedings, then we should do the same to fast track the bill’s approval,” said Baguilat, chairman of the House Committee on Cultural Communities.
Baguilat said that they were waiting for the formation of a technical working group which is tasked to draw up a compromise version of the measure that would be acceptable to everybody.
Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said that they would attempt to pass on second reading in October the highly divisive measure.
The House officially ended the debates on the measure last month and was scheduled to go into the period of amendments. But anti-RH lawmakers, mostly from the majority party, sidetracked the bill by delivering long privilege speeches on floods and other issues.
At the Senate, the counterpart measure has met the same fate. The bill’s main proponent, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, an independent, underscored the need for the country to have a national policy on reproductive health “to positively address the population problem.”
“The report of the Department of Labor and Employment and the ILO that the number of child workers in the Philippines has breached the 5 million mark comes in the heels of the aggravated maternal death rate of 162 deaths per 100,000 live births.
“Both maternal deaths and child labor will be reduced and prevented once the RH bill becomes a law,” Lagman earlier said.
But even as the RH Bill supporters pressed for its immediate passage, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines released a survey showing that half of the 284 members of the House of Representatives supposedly did not support the Bill.



http://opinion.inquirer.net/36924/philippine-media-playing-into-hands-of-pro-rh-groups


Philippine media playing into hands of pro-RH groups

Philippine Daily Inquirer
8:33 pm | Monday, September 17th, 2012
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Much has been said about Sen. Vicente Sotto III’s alleged plagiarism. From mainstream media to blogs and social media sites, this has been discussed ad nauseam. One would think that the debate on the Reproductive Health bill had been reduced to this singular issue.
It can be argued that it is not media’s fault that Sotto was caught “copying” the works of other persons without proper attribution. That he had to deny at first, then make a turnaround and insist that he did not commit a crime, deserved to be written about, to be sure, but this should not sidestep the valid issues he had raised against the RH bill.
For instance, only a few reported Sotto’s point that contraceptives could cause abortion, pose health hazards to women and have harmful effects on children whose mothers got pregnant while using contraceptives.
In the second part of his speech, Sotto challenged the faulty figures cited by the pro-RH groups and the credibility of those pushing for it. No one wrote about the actual improvement in maternal health and child care (backed by official figures) despite the absence of the RH bill, or about the real foreign agenda behind the bill.
Instead of rebutting Sotto’s arguments, pro-RH groups nitpicked on another plagiarism case, which the media again highlighted. Alas, media organizations appear to be playing into the agenda of pro-RH groups.
By focusing on the plagiarism issue, they have ignored the more important issues at hand—issues that the public also deserves to know, issues that the public has a stake in. By not reporting on the issues Sotto raised or, worse, by downplaying them, media organizations have betrayed the trust that the public has reposed on them.
Media’s role in shaping public opinion, which affects public policies, cannot be understated. Media’s influence has been demonstrated many times. Sometimes, media even dictate policies. That power is inherently imbued with responsibility: to promote the interest of the public they serve.
One of the major tenets of journalism is fair and balanced reporting. Fair and balanced reporting is not only a matter of presenting all sides, it is also presenting the actual issues at hand, with public interest as the sole standard.
Thus, we appeal to the media: Do not forget the public you serve. The public deserves to know all the issues. Anything less is a disservice to public interest.
—CHRISTIAN SISON,
christiansison671@
yahoo.com.ph

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