Sex video vis a vis RH bill
June 1st, 2009 at 11:20 am
by Primer C. Pagunuran
The proposed reproductive health (RH, for short) is a step toward modernity – the level of acceptance of which has yet to be validated using certain community standards. It is now pending in both chambers of Congress for deliberation and debate onward to its eventual approval or demise – depending on the voting mood – or the tyranny of the majority. Once passed into law, it sure will have to crush all traditional moral barriers laid in its path.
Advances in the area of IT technology, to include audio-video recordings, flow with the currents of fast-paced modernization. In general, it changed our usual ways of doing things in very dramatic pace. Who wouldn’t be tempted to film a sex act – light, sound, and all – with a tiny gadget like a digital camera or a high-end cell phone? All facets of human life, after all, can be stored electronically and in entirely awesome volume – photos, videos, texts, et cetera. So who would not love to carry electronic gadgets easy on their pockets – to document an ongoing scene, hear an ongoing conversation – all may be turning points to change mankind’s future?
The gadgets that make sex videos are the very same instruments to national survival. And with the RH bill, matters relative to – sex, pregnancy, population, morality – are but effectively relaxed. Once the bill becomes law, we are introduced to a regime that allows the flood of information and full access to a widening variety of natural or modern family planning methods. And logically, the filming of sex videos in infinite number will form part of the territory.
By then, Senate-driven investigations will fall flat in its face precisely because the law, in fact, prescribes an ‘enabling environment where women and couples have the freedom of choice on the mode of family planning they want based on needs, personal convictions or religious beliefs’. Since so-called reproductive health rights may well include all other sexual rights, whatever couples, partners, or individuals want to do with their own bodies may be beyond prescription. The emerging moral order consequent to the enactment of this RH bill would be beyond legislation.
Contrary to claim, RH bill shakes the moral foundation of the family under the guise of having empowered individuals to choose the course or decisions they wish to carry out. Contrary to claim, RH bill may in fact encourage individuals the vicious use of contraceptives under the guise that these are essential medicines. Contrary to claim, RH bill will not address the problem of population and poverty as these have already become social givens.
Truth is, population increases at a rate of 2% or we have an increase in population of 2 million more people ever year. The two-child policy enshrined in the RH bill is simply normative and therefore the State is yet to come up with a ‘zero population control’ strategy’ if it aims to really control population as the precondition to effectively resolve the problem of mass poverty. But then again, poverty is more multi-faceted than one ordinary thinks.
There is grave doubt whether any reproductive health focus could succeed in the immediate future given that our population programs and policies leave much to be desired. The RH bill alone does not appear to seriously address concerns in reproductive health as it should affect society writ large. Can this government really do the job?
From where I stand, the RH bill is only intended to break the old moral order. The government’s performance in the area of public health alone is found wanting. Can it really provide the services, products, and care that individuals would be seeking from a legislated program from across the general population?
As soon as the rate of unwanted pregnancies from the general population increased from say, to 30%, it necessarily follows that more government funded reproductive health care systems must be able to absorb the shock.
From where I stand, the government is left with no option but to in fact increase its number of abortion clinics throughout the country preparatory to the final legalization of abortion.
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