By Nirva’ana Ella Delacruz
As if peering into a virtual telescope, the Philippines should brace itself for what will happen with the newly-minted Reproductive Health [RH] Law by looking at familiar realities like promiscuity, teen pregnancy and divorce in the United States that had their RH Law decades ahead.
“Fruits of the sexual revolution”
This is according to [Filipino] expats who have lived in America, where Catholics are currently challenging the state’s Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate, which requires private health insurance providers to include contraceptives, sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs in their coverage, using tax payers’ money.
“All I can say is, brace yourselves. Easy access to contraception and abortion didn’t decrease abortion in the US in the four decades it’s been available here,” said Steffi Ofhs, a [Filipino] homemaker living in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Ofhs, who has lived in the U.S. for 26 years, talked about how her adopted country is not any better off with the “fruits of the sexual revolution” — promiscuity, teen pregnancy, divorce, euthanasia.
Less value on life
Tracy, California resident Jay Balza, on the other hand, blamed the prevailing “contraceptive mentality” for the massive increase in abortions in the U.S. over recent years.
Recent statistics peg that some 54,559,615 abortions have been made in the U.S. from 1973–2011.
U.S. figures estimate that a baby is aborted every 26 seconds.
Balza, who works at the University of California, Berkeley, said the U.S., which like the Philippines, initially welcomed contraception, but went on to institutionalize a “right to abortion” and has a society that generally “put(s) less importance on the value and sanctity of human life.”
Both Balza and Ofhs, who live with their [Filipino] families in the U.S., are worried over the implications of the Obama administration’s HHS.
“That money would have been better spent in other things, given already the dismal state of the [U.S.] economy,” Balza said in an interview.
The RH Bill was quietly signed into law in the Philippines last December 21.
