SPECIAL REPORT: CHURCH ON BIRTH CONTROL

Capalla to Davao City Council:
No birth pills for children
By ROGER M. BALANZA

Davao Archbishop Fernando Capalla has supported a Davao City government 3-year program for children development, but has squirmed on a proposal that would provide access for children to contraceptives.

With this, city councilors on Tuesday pedaled back out of a plan to approve the Local Development Plan for Children of Davao City for 2007-2010, resetting discussion of the proposal to a special session the following day.

But the provision to provide full access by children to birth control apparently had dimmed legislative support for the measure authored by councilor Angela Librado-Trinidad. In a two-hour executive session presided by Vice Mayor Sara Duterte before the special session on Wednesday, the proposal failed to earn a majority in a straw vote, forcing councilors not to tackle the measure at plenary and sending it back to Trinidad for amendments.

Pastoral letter

Capalla’s position spelled out in a March 23, 2008 Pastoral Letter was at the center stage of discussion of the council Tuesday session that ended up with councilors stymied by the Catholic Church’s strong advocacy against all forms of artificial birth control.

In his Pastoral Letter, Capalla described the development plan as an attempt to bridge the gap between government’s and society’s, including the Catholic Church’s, common effort to ensure the welfare of children.

But Capalla scored a provision in the 3-year plan that mandated free and unhampered access of contraceptives by children.

Free access

Chapter 2 of the development plan provides that “all children will have equal chance for survival by making sure that everyone will have access to affordable services and accurate information that will promote pregnancies and produce and nurture health babies.”

“Does it mean that all children will have full access to all means of artificial birth control…in the guise of so-called “safe pregnancies”? Does it also include the immoral and insensitive display of contraceptives anywhere and anytime so that they will be available to children? Does the promotion of safe pregnancies also include abortion?” asked Capalla in his Pastoral Letter.

Ploy to sell birth control

Capalla said the Church’s concern is not unfounded, government program for safe pregnancies having proven to be nothing but a ploy to sell contraceptives and other methods of artificial birth control.

(We) have confirmed that the reproductive health services of the government are principally the venue for the promotion of the different artificial birth control methods, as confirmed by Church lay workers, said Capalla, citing the Ligtas Buntis program and the city government program to grant of P5,000 cash incentives to those who undergo vasectomy or tubal legation.

If this children development plan is approved, we would make children “prey to the so-called modern technology of safe pregnancy” and we become a tool for the “promotion of promiscuity and free sex for as long as it is safe,” said Capalla.

Capalla in the Pastoral Letter advised Davao City councilors to refine the plan into one that “respects the integrity of human sexuality and interpersonal relationships” and against the “active promotion of artificial means of birth control.”