Prayer1 Delivered at the Forum entitled “Academe and the Nation, RH Bill and Academic Freedom”.2

By Sylvia Estrada Claudio, MD, PhD3 My friends, in honor of our guests, let us pray. But since this is the University of the Philippines you may remain in your seats and choose not to make the sign of the cross or other ritual gestures. Dear Lord Jesus Christ, Savior of Ateneo and La Salle; Guarantor of the CBCP and editorial writers from the Varsitarian; BFF of the Vatican; the alpha and the omega of everyone except for those billions of others who have other beliefs; you whose Sacred Heart bleeds for the Filipino Freethinkers and others of their ilk, hear us Lord. Guide us today so that we may have peaceful and collegial discussions as true scholars who are committed to serving our society with our expertise. Bless this coming together of the faculty members of three universities who have chosen to speak out for the reproductive health bill. Reach out to the hearts of other members of academia who disagree with us that they may understand that we would never call for the suppression of their right to free expression. Please click the tab "superlike" that we are reaching across institutions for the cause of academic freedom. We offer up this effort to you in the belief that this struggle will help other universities, including pontifical ones, to remain as institutions of higher learning, discovery and progress. We thank you for blessing the Ateneo basketball team last night at the time they needed to prove that not everyone is a coward and a lemon in that school. Please enlighten the community of La Salle to the truth that if they had reached the finals, many RH advocates from UP would have found it difficult to find a team to side with. We the older people here, also known as professors, thank you also for the most wonderful responses of the students of Ateneo and La Salle to that Varsitarian4 article. It made some of us weep because we have fantasies that we somehow contributed to the greatness of these students. Please prevent UP from feeling superior because it is a secular university and no one seems to be upset whenever we say things against religion. As You know, Lord, this doesn't mean UP's freedoms are always secure and that we are not called upon to constantly to re-examine the parameters of ethical academic discourse. Besides, UP was at the bottom again in the basketball standings this season. Please bless the UP College of Law for this venue, the College of Social Science and Philosophy for its co-sponsorship, the faculty members and students from Ateneo and La Salle who are here, the media people whom you will inspire to file stories about this event and the audience herein gathered to hear our most distinguished panel. We beseech You and all the other Gods that people believe in to make this a safe space for the free exchange of ideas. Lord, we beseech You to pass the RH bill. Lastly dear Jesus, if I am to get in trouble for this prayer, let it not be because I exercised my generic freedom of expression; not because as a teacher of women's studies I exercised my academic freedom to talk about an issue within my expertise; but because this is being done in a government facility and my praying here violates the Philippine Constitution. Amen.

Pambungad na Salita sa Pambansang Balitaktakan ng Mga Lider Kababaihan Ukol sa Kalusugan at Karapatang PangReporduksyon ng Kababaihang Pilipino

(Oktubre 11 -12, 2011, Bulwagang Tandang Sora, UP Diliman, Q.C.)



Magandang umaga sa ating lahat at salamat sa inyong pagdalo sa Pambansang Balitaktakan ng Mga Lider Kababaihan Ukol sa Kalusugan at Karapatang PangReporduksyon ng Kababaihang Pilipino.

Nag-uusap tayo sa isang makasaysayang panahon. Makasaysayan dahil malapit ng matapos ang 16 taong pakikibaka para sa isang panukalang batas na magseseguro ng mga serbisyo sa pangreproduktibong kalusugan. Sa loob ng mahigit isang dekadang pagsisikap, nakakaseguro tayo dahil sa paulit-ulit na siyentipikong survey, na ang karamihan ng Pilipino ay sumasang-ayon sa ating adhikain. Sabi nga ni Dr. Junice Demeterio Melgar, ang taumbayan ay nag-desisyon na, Kongreso na lang ang hindi. Ang ibig niyang sabihin siguro ay marami-rami rin sa Kongreso ang hindi makapgdesisyun dahil hindi pa yata nababalitaan na trabaho nilang dinggin ang boses ng taumbayan.

Kaya't makasaysayan ito—kapag pumasa ang bill sasariwain nito ang maraming pang ibang adhikain natin para sa bayan---ang demokrasya, ang pananagot ng mga kinatawan sa kinakatawan, ang hindi pagbibigay pabor sa iisang relihiyon—marami pang iba.

Makasaysayan din ang panahon ito dahil ito'y ambag sa mga tagumpay ng kilusang pemista na sinimulan ng ating mga ninuno. Halimbawa nito ay ang mga babaeng nagtatag ng Assosacion Feminista Filipino nuong 1905 (AFF). Matagal din ang kanilang pakikipaglaban sa mga machong kongresista at kaparian para mapanalo ang karapatang bumoto ng kababaihan. Pipitsugin nga ang 16 na taon—sa kanila 32 years, 1937 nang naipanalo ang karapatang bumoto para sa kababaihan. Idinaan nila sa plebisito, hindi lamang sa paghain ng panukalang batas.

Nguni't alam niyo ba na ang mga ninunong peminista ay pro-RH din? Tinatag ng AFF ang Gota de Leche nung 1909, na itinataguyod ang papapasuso, nutrisyon at iba pang usaping pangkalusugan ng mga nanay at sanggol.

Kaya't mga kabaro, huwag ninyong pakinggan ang mga nagsasabing impluwensyado daw lamang tayo ng mga Kanluraning kaisipan. Aba, nauna pa tayo sa maraming kilusan ng kababaihan sa Europa at sa US na bansagan ang sarili na feminista at lumaban para sa RH!

Higit pa, huwag ninyong pakinggan ang mga nagsasabing labag sa kultura at kabihasnan nating Pilipino ang pag-usapan ang sekswalidad at karapatan nang malaya at hindi magpapa-kahon sa baluktot nilang mga pananaw tungkol sa pagkababae at pagkalalaki. Sila ang magsasabi sa atin kung ano ang pagiging Pilipino? Sila, na tinatalikuran ang kasaysayan at kasalukuyan?

Tayo din ang mga Pilipino. Tayo din ang mga relihiyoso. Tayo din ang may moralidad at espiritwalidad. Hindi nila nabili yan na para sa kanila lamang tulad ng pagbili nila sa mga malalaking bahay, kumbento, seminaryo. Sana nga makinig sila sa usapan natin ngayon ng makita nila na may daan tungo sa reproduksyon at sekswalidad na mapagpalaya para sa lahat—kasama na ang mga pari at relihiyosong sinserong naghahangad ng kabutihan.

Sa loob ng 2 araw, tatahakin natin ang mapagpalayang daan na ito. Pagkatapos ay magsasanga ulit ang ating landas. Nguni't dahil nagkasama tayo muli ngayon, uuwi tayong masaya dahil alam nating magkikita tayo ulit at baka naman sa susunod, pasado na ang RH bill.

Maraming salamat, magandang umaga at mabuhay tayong lahat!

The International Women's Health Movement in The Era of Globalization

(Plenary address delivered at the 11th International Women's Health Meeting, Brussels, Belgium, September 15, 2011)

Sylvia Estrada Claudio

Permit me a moment of personal sharing. Before I left the Philippines, Senator Vicente Sotto, during his interpellation of a proposed bill to ensure reproductive health services in the country, projected the website of the Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR). He chose particularly that part of the website which discusses abortion. He added that Dr. Sylvia Estrada Claudio is the Chair of WGNRR, and that she has been seen frequently with the authors of the reproductive health bill.

The proposed legislation does not, in fact, change the Philippine's restrictive law on abortion. The proposed law however, will mandate humane treatment of women seeking post-abortion care. It will also assure access to sexuality education, emergency obstetric services, modern contraceptives along with a range of other services such as those which treat and prevent reproductive tract infections.

I will add that Senator Sotto and other legislators who oppose any legislation related to reproductive health, divorce, LGBTI rights, are open about the fact that they are doing the work of God. Many advocates also state that they are doing it out of obedience and respect for the Bishops of the Catholic Church. And yes, in case any of you were wondering, the Philippines is a secular republic. But in the Philippines, as well as in other countries, legal guarantees on secularism have not restrained the fundamentalists from violations.

Perhaps I should move to assure you that I do not yet perceive myself in danger. I should also add that the rabidness of the religious fundamentalists at home is related to the strength of our efforts for the reproductive health bill. Two weeks ago, Philippine President Aquino certified the bill as a priority measure.

I mention this because this is the 11th IWHM, we are on our 34th year of the contemporary women's health movement since the very first IWHM was held in Europe in 1977. On the one hand we have achieved much as a movement. And yet on another, whether it be in Asia or Europe we are experiencing backlash and the continuing control of our bodies.

In 1977 and today regimes of control determine the way we work, love and live. Then and now, women have resisted. As long as there is a need for resistances there is a need for a movement. Where women work together to free themselves from class, caste, race, colonial, neo-colonial, heterosexist, and other regimes of control, there we shall find our movement.

In a paper of mine that has been put in our conference kits, I have mentioned a few reasons for our success. Permit me now to state where I think we must go. Why, despite our success, we are facing increasing poverty and control whether we be in Europe or Asia, or any other region of the world.

My dear sisters, I open my eyes and see that the world is poorer. There are large gaps between exist between the rich and the poor and the gap is ever-widening. Apart from this, the world is at war, led by a nation which reacted to the aggression of a few by punishing whole peoples. But big wars are not the only threats. Small wars are waged everywhere and the streets of our communities and the bedrooms at home can also be places of violence.

In places of worship, in the academe, in newspapers and websites, in village halls and international convention centers, whether these be in progressive democracies or known fascist regimes, women are experiencing serious attempts to roll back the gains of freedom. These are often led by religious groups but any type of group and individual may be the source of this.
In the meanwhile world organizations such as the UN, which we have invested in so that they may reflect our resistance and solidarity, have become increasingly bureaucratized and impotent. On top of the previous institutions of control like the Vatican, we see the rise of minor despots or major power institutions like the World Trade Organization.

In the meantime the environment is suffering and we are threatening the life of the earth itself.
Whether through militarism or environmental degradation we are being brought to the brink of destruction.

Please, I do not wish to raise a panic. Whenever there is a panic it is the women and children who are trampled in the stampede. Women are likely to be blamed for overproducing people causing poverty and environmental degradation. This is one reason we are told by some to stop making babies. Or, we are told the breakdown of our communities is caused by our licentiousness and that we had better go back to our homes to produce babies.

Shall I be honest now? As if I have not been honest before? Shall I have a small tantrum? For the last 21 years that I have been working with IWHMs I have watched as those of us coming from the global South had to speak louder when we said we wished to oppose the imperialism of the World Bank which made our governments cut down on health spending and impose user fees. I have also heard the criticism of lesbian women about their marginalization. And we may go on about others: the disabled, the women from various indigenous populations, etc.

I have seen how organizers has succeeded or failed to root our the very elements of the oppressive structures which the movement wishes to change. And as it is with the IWHMs so it is with our social movements.

But I am tired of recriminations and guilt. They are the power tools of the despots and the messiahs. We are a movement that understands that life means pleasure and that those who wish to create our lives for us will end pleasure for us, and that is where poverty starts. So resistance means an insistence on food, housing, health, but also pleasure.

And why is this so? Because I have come to understand that in the era of globalization control is not merely political it is also biological,

In magazines conceived in London but sold in the corner store in Bombay or Prague, people are told what bodies to have----what kind of hips, what kind of lips, what kind of sexual aspirations.

Fast and global systems of market surveillance all over the world make the gestures rebellion or alienation by people in any part of the world today, tomorrows chic and latest consumerist trend. Fashions are designed in New York, cut by women pattern makers in Manila and rolled out as clothes in Shanghai.
The extraction of profit at very moment of our human need to communicate or create has never been more efficient. Indeed, life itself is being patented for a profit.

This profit taking is so frenetic and so efficient that in capitalism's boom and bust cycles, trillions of dollars are lost or gained over very short periods of time.

We cannot delude ourselves that this efficiency in profit making is not resulting in global poverty.

We cannot delude ourselves that this enslavement of our human capacities to capitalist extraction happened independently of gender, race, class, cast and other dimensions by which they wish us to perceive our humanity.

Let me be clearer: class, sex, race, heterosexist and caste systems are not separate entities. There is no such thing as a less racist capitalism or a less heterosexist caste system. The feminist insight that brought us to reproductive and sexual rights has been validated by the evolution of the world's economy. Productive and reproductive systems derive from the same human creativity. When wealth is extracted from the poor, it begins by making us accept that these two moments of life, production and reproduction, can be separated. When power moves it dictates what we think of ourselves and our world. It does so only because it has to—because our lives are not like this and we resist.

But to understand the our own envelopment by hegemony is not a call to stop noticing the race, class, caste and other differences that cause divisions among us. I have no wish to excuse myself from my own shortcomings. I have no respect for those who would use political theory to excuse their own bigotry.

However, my ability to be bigoted is not the problem. Bigotry is the default option that biopolitical mechanisms of control instill in us. What is the problem, is my ability to accept the world according to their making. Where I exclude myself from others and their struggles, there is where I fall into error. Where I conceive of the women's health movement as not also a movement against globalization; where I conceive of the movement against sexism as not also a movement against heterosexism, where I conceive the movement against racism as not a movement against caste—that is where I fall into error.

Where I conceive that my ability to love can be stunted so that it stays in the confines of my home or tribe or nation, instead of allowing it to expand towards solidarity with all the world's poor, there is where I fail.

We cannot be blind to the fact that the world's economy is in trouble. Everywhere people are insecure about their futures and their jobs. In the meanwhile, the world financial crisis has not brought an end to capitalist greed because it cannot help itself. It falls to all of us to deal with this crisis.

It is wrong to think that world poverty comes about from the lack of democracy and equity in the area of production and not in the area of reproduction. The women's health movement must not feel itself out of its depth when it engages the movement against globalization. At the very least we must recognize that the medicalization of the bodies of women who can afford the expensive drugs and procedures, something I have seen discussed well in this meeting, comes from the same logic that denies life saving drugs to those who cannot afford to pay.

War, militarization and fundamentalisms are not distinct from the economic crisis. Wars have become police actions against leaders, nations or groups that would challenge the expropriation and concentration of wealth. But wars and intimate violence are never only about the free flow of goods and capital, it is also about how women must behave. Let us not be fooled by the rhetoric that those who would liberate us from our usual despots because these puppets can no longer to serve capitalism effectively, will also protect women's rights---as if our sisters from advanced capitalist economies were so liberated. We cannot throw off one set of dictators for a set of liberators who will instill the same norms for women's being. If real democracy is to be had it must be radicalized to extend to freedom for women as well.

Similarly do not let the urgent need to protect our environment blind us to the fact that it is not the world's majority poor who are the main polluters. The solution cannot be to lessen the population of a country by imposing sanctions on women's fertility.

But I do not wish to make a list of huge tasks addressed to some anonymous group called “”us”. Rather I would like us also to think how easy it is to work on all these issues because we are already in resistance. The movement for sexual rights and freedoms is everywhere. We can begin by refusing the identities that oppression wishes to impose-- “us”, “other” and “others”.

There is after all no need to submit our political actions to any unifying principle or hierarchy. As if our desires and our creativity have not always been polymorphous and unregimented. To ask a any woman to prioritize only this struggle or that is to say a woman is a good Muslim when she fights prejudice against Islam but chastise her when she criticizes the fundamentalists in her religion. Or it is asking a woman to be solely a lesbian and fight against heterosexism while denying that she is also a worker fighting against contractualization. We cannot fall into the these dichotomies.

In the Philippines, the Catholic spokespersons accuse us of going against Philippine culture and identity when we refuse Catholic norms for sexuality. Our response has been to insist that those among us who are not Catholic, and/or do not subscribe to their views on sex, must have equal citizenship rights and not be forced to live under their norms. To put it succinctly, I am a feminist and a freethinker and very much a Filipina. All women, as citizens, have a right to participate in social institutions and culture so that they may work to change the patriarchal norms embedded within them.

Second, we need not submit to any geographical hierarchies of struggle. Let me appeal to you that the local struggle in the Philippines maybe as important as larger regional and international struggles. Our struggle in the Philippines is important because we are one of the last bastions of Catholic fundamentalism in the old colonies. Here, the local is global. Similarly, the struggle of Dr. Agnes Gereb, imprisoned in Hungary for providing home births is of equal importance--as are a thousand other individual struggles.

At the same time I would not make boycotting or attending UN activities a litmus test for our alliances. As we go to the UN for the review of the ICPD for example, my question is whether those who go will speak of all our struggles. My question is whether those who will go to the UN will still do so out of a sense of joyous struggle rather than gloomy obligation. Because, as we grapple with the bureaucratization and isolation of the UN, we shall see how the global can be extremely parochial. Cairo and Beijing are not supposed to be the maximum, they are supposed to be the minimum. And we cannot forget what was not won in Cairo but knew we wanted. Sexual rights are not a matter to be compromised this time around.

Whereas the enemy prefers us to think of homogeneous and stable identities and institutions, we are actually a heterogeneous and nomadic movement. Whereas the enemy would divide the world into distinct arenas of struggle, we make the linkages, the confluences and the synergies. This is not a way of saying we must respect the diversity in the women's movement, as if diversity was a difficult but unavoidable condition. I am saying that it is only through diversity that we subvert the sterile homogeneity of fundamentalist prescriptions.

Lastly, we must trust our immense power to create what is positive. The first-ever IWHM did not speak of rights it spoke of self-help, the capacity of women to help themselves. Indeed, the regimes of power and control that envelope us survive only on our strength. This is why they lock us in their death embrace. As the world stands on the edge of increasing misery we must counter-pose a new regime of life enhancement for all the world's population. Universal health care, jobs for all, housing, clean water, food security these are not mere words, they are attainable social projects.

Thank you and good morning.

Stop the Witch Hunt of RH Bill Advocates

Sen. Vicente Sotto’s interpellation of the RH Bill at the Senate has deteriorated into a witch-hunt of organizations supporting the bill that, in his opinion, have an agenda to legalize or promote abortion in the Philippines. The organizations that he has named so far are the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP), Likhaan Center for Women’s Health (Likhaan), the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR), and the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines (DSWP). More could follow as the senator has asked for a list of all organizations that have expressed support for the bill.

Instead of arguing about the content of the RH Bill, Sen. Sotto has shifted to attacking advocates.

This crude antic is an implied admission of weakness in conducting a reasoned and respectful debate with fellow senators who are, in the final analysis, the authors and sponsors of the measure. Civil society organizations (CSOs) are formally invited to public hearings on proposed laws and asked to present and argue their position. This engagement of CSOs is a key feature of democracy, of governance through dialogue. Unfairly using the immense powers of the Senate to attack CSOs for their different points of view is the act of a bully and violates the tenet of responsive governance.

Some RH Bill advocates—like the organizations maligned by Sen. Sotto—are truly concerned about the harm to women and their families of unsafe abortion. Because of our work in very poor urban and rural communities, we know firsthand of women who have suffered severe complications—hemorrhage, infection and perforated bowels—some of whom survived, while others died. We know of women survivors who were subjected to verbal abuse, maltreatment, and neglect in hospitals by the medical people who were supposed to help them. We know too that the reasons that push women to have an abortion are desperate, that the decision to have an abortion is never easy, and that if women could prevent abortion, they would.

Beyond the RH Bill, we stand for openly and soberly discussing the impact of abortion in the Philippines and finding humane and workable solutions. Last time we heard it, discussing abortion is legal in this country. A century of criminalizing abortion has not stopped its widespread use, but only made it dangerous.

The RH Bill has at least three features that can substantially reduce abortions without even changing the law. Family planning—whether through natural or artificial methods—can address the root of abortion, unintended pregnancy, by enabling women and couples to plan the timing, spacing and number of pregnancies. Post-abortion care, including medication, surgery and counseling, can save women’s lives, preserve their health, and help them to use family planning that will prevent repeat abortions. School-based sexuality and RH education can address peer pressure and sexual coercion and violence, delay sexual experimentation, and promote responsible behavior so that unintended pregnancies are reduced.

Those who obstruct family planning while exulting in the Philippines’ extreme anti-abortion law—which has no exception even when a woman’s life is in danger—are morally responsible for the vicious cycle of unintended pregnancy and abortion that continues to kill and maim masses of women. If government-supported measures to reduce abortion or to treat and counsel women with post-abortion complications are denied, where else could women go? What else could women do?

Sen. Sotto, if he has a modicum of sympathy for women, should find solutions to the problem of abortion instead of maligning organizations that support RH. If he is against RH, what is he for?

Anyone concerned about the health of women and the families that they care for will find it unconscionable to object to the RH Bill. If Sen. Sotto is worried that the bill will legalize abortion, then he needs to simply study the text and accept or reject it based on what he actually reads, not on what he reads of advocates’ intentions.

Released 7 September 2011 by:

Roberto Ador
Executive Director,
Family Planning Organization of the Philippines

Junice D. Melgar
Executive Director,
Likhaan Center for Women’s Health

Sylvia Estrada Claudio
Chairperson,
Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights

Elizabeth Angsioco
Chairperson,
Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines

The Psychology of Moral Certainty

It has happened again. Someone begins a debate with me on my statements on the reproductive health bill, and then just drops me.

A young woman, a graduate of the university where I teach though never my student, tweets me. She is reacting to my proposition made during one of the televised debates that those who oppose the passage of the bill are seeking to impose one set of moral beliefs on the rest of the country.

The exchange below happens over a couple of days. I reproduce it below, edited slightly to make reading easier.

She: "Respect for diversity and opinion" of @seclaudio is standard relativist statement http://bit.ly/lanrdH =no single truth

Me: Not relativism but the Second Vatican Council on ecumenism and religious freedom http://tinyurl.com/6n68j If I am wrong in assuming you are Catholic, I can send you literature from other religious traditions.

She: Nowhere in Vatican doc says "respect for diversity of opinion". Opinion is not truth.

Me: Many times. section 2 para 3, whole of sec 4 latter part sec 7, etc. Demand for exact wording is bad argument. Tweets can be harsh. Do not mean to be disrespectful or hurtful but do think your demand for exact wording unfair. I am only asking for fairness. Long encyclopedia section accusing me of relativism doesn't say those words either.

She: Ma'm I didn't mean to be harsh & I wasn't looking for exact http://wording.But you're misreading a Vatican doc. Your camp's been asking for respect for opinion. We respect your opinion,your freedom, no coercion http://there.But ours is to http://truth. And RH Bill does not promote the truth about man.
CBCP only promotes what for Catholic teaching is right in fighting against this bill. If you're Catholic I suggest you try to study their matter closely.

Me: you can't just say I misread without explaining, that you agree with my call for respect while accusing me of relativism. As to truths, the Vatican statement is that each one may have his or her own perception of truth and we need to talk our truths and not claim that only one of us has commitment to the truth. sorry dear colleague, but your last few arguments seem to me like argumentation that tends to "lay down the law" to me, rather than meet me in good faith. this lessens the room for dialogue when you argue like this.

I have waited 2 weeks since my last tweet. I guess I will no longer get a reply.

Being a person whose formative years happened before the internet, I asked my 15 year old what this might mean. Have I offended? Am I being an old fuddy-duddy? In the good old days when we wrote snail mail, we broke off correspondences with proper goodbyes---even if “proper” could go like this:

“Dear John: I can no longer write you love letters. I heard you have taken Don into your bed. I am not homophobic, but you never said you were bisexual. The diamond engagement ring will reach you by courier.”

My 15-year-old says something like, “ask her if she needs a a mechanic. Looks like she got stopped in her tracks.”

Another young one says to me, “she got owned.”

For these young ones, failure to answer implies defeat. But I have no desire to treat twitter exchanges as contests.

As a teacher, a nerd and a psychologist, I feel only frustration and concern. Yet another person who thinks that, “because my God (or my Marx) says so,” is an acceptable form of engagement in democratic and secular society.

I am treading carefully here. Not all Marxists or religious people resort to this argument. Not everyone who has a religious or political belief finds it necessary to cling to the idea that his or her belief is the right one, regardless. I am not also certain that the young woman who had an exchange with me is one of these. I wish she kept engaging me, perhaps I could have known for sure.

But I am certain that the psychology of the ideologue permeates the views of the religious right that has gone all-out against the RH bill. This is also why, I get hate mail and hate tweets after each televised debate. The comments can be quite mean, making me wonder what it is that I have said, no matter how scandalous, would make them feel so threatened that they would lash out with such anger.

I have been challenged often too about my agnosticism. Even the nicest ones seem to think that being uncertain is some kind of a defect. But there is to me, a spiritual gain to be had by accepting ambivalence, ambiguity and uncertainty. For one thing, that is how things are. The truth about what those who believe in a God call “creation” is that it is ever-changing, immense and un-graspable.

Perhaps there is a Truth (yes, with a capital T) out there. But it is not something, little-old-me can ascertain. I remain humble about the presence and laws of what a horoscope writer I follow calls, “the Divine wow”. God is not my FB friend. I ask Her often enough if She is out there and She does not answer. When I die I may dissolve and lose the consciousness that will say that the atheists are correct . If I am wrong and I awake---ooohlala---I will have more questions than a curious 5-year-old.

But for now, I have no need for grand answers in order to lead a harmless, happy and hopefully meaningful life. It is a comfort to me that I do not need ultimate guarantees. I am not a high maintenance child of the universe. I have a brain and enough energy to keep on figuring things out as the need arises. I plod along and get by not having yet committed things like abuse, theft or murder.

On really good days, the idea that no one can know for sure when human life begins really makes me ecstatic.

The psychology of moral certainty is the psychology of fear and/or laziness. Maybe when they were growing up, the parents who nurtured those who are morally-certain-Dr. Claudio-is-wrong-on-RH (and therefore we will never yield her a point, besides she is a lackey of the big pharmaceuticals and the imperialist population controllers) laid down the law about what to do, what is right and what is wrong. That can be comforting when one is little.

Simple and unquestionable rules can be comforting while parents can control the external environment against the views of those who disagree or the harm brought by those who are mean or criminal. Perhaps the very young ones need not be asked for the courage to face the immense unknowable.

But those of us who are hoping to live happy lives in a just society must find it in us to face our limitations. Parents must change the parameters of what they teach as a child matures morally and intellectually. Children must be taught not to be afraid of heterogeniety, diversity and uncertainty. They cannot be afraid of difference. Fundamental differences.

If we are afraid to be unsure, to accept that perhaps we and our family, religion, tribe, institutions, science, political party can be wrong, then we will be unable to accept when we are defeated on twitter or we will lash out in anger against people we only see on television.

And I am frightened indeed by the man who is so angry at me because of what I have said on television that he takes the time to tweet me venom. My heart goes out the woman who cannot find the grace to end a debate she started with some decorum.

Perhaps someday, we will raise all our children with enough moral courage so that they can face profound uncertainty with good cheer. At least we can rejoice that there are enough brave and moral people out there such that the scientific surveys show that the RH bill has wide support.

Science and Philosophy Lessons for the Pro-Birth (who call themselves Pro-Life)

Several of my friends do not particularly like discussing the question of “when life begins”. I refer to this debate in relation to the reproductive health bills pending in the Philippine legislature. These friends would include non-Filipino veterans of abortion rights struggles in their own countries.

My friends, some of whom are philosophers by training, know that the “where life begins” question is really unresolvable. The philosophically sophisticated understand that a question like that is the stuff that has driven and will drive philosophy through the millenia. It is similar to other questions like, “does matter exist?”. The question is unresolvable. I am aware that the philosophy of natural science, (I love science!) merely assumes this without attempting proof: “matter exists”. I am also aware that the Buddha (love the Buddha) takes a different view: “all is illusion”. You have got to love philosophy for tackling the eternal questions and the calm philosphers bring to facing immense uncertainties.

Of course, the reproductive health bills do not change the punitive Philippine laws on abortion. So this “when life begins” debate should not be pertinent. But the pro-birth (I do not concede the term pro-life to them as my advocacy for the passage of RH bills is to save women's lives) opposition keeps insisting that contraceptives are abortifacient. They also insist that conception is equal to fertilization. According to the pro-birth people, contraceptives should be banned because the Philippine Constitution states as a matter of policy that the state, “shall equally protect the life of the mother and the unborn from the moment of conception”.

This argument alone is is more an example of the lack of scientific and philosophical training of those who espouse it. It is not an argument that should be dignified in the public debates. I know that certain advocates of this position are doctors, scientists and philosophers. But I have no fantasies about the guarantees that academic degrees confer. “Nil admirari”, my philosopher mother used to say. Admire no one. Certainly I am unhappy when people use their academic degrees to claim they are speaking the truth when they are not.

So let's see what science says and what logic demands. Science tells us that the argument that “contraceptives prevent the implantation of the fertilized ovum” is an unsupportable generalization. I cannot go into the scientific literature for purposes of brevity, but many lay people know that the condom prevents fertilization. Looking at the literature, there is SOME evidence that some contraceptives MAY prevent implantation of the fertilized ovum as possibly ONE OF SEVERAL mechanisms for their contraceptive effects.

But even if we were to concede this rather flimsy basis for their claim that modern contraceptives prevent implantation, it is a misrepresentation to say that these are abortifacient. There is a wide-ranging consensus in the scientific community that pregnancy begins at implantation. An abortifacient, by definition, terminates pregnancy prematurely. Thus, none of the contraceptives are abortifacients.

When pro-birth advocates like Rep. Anthony Golez claim that contraceptives are abortifacient they should at the very least specify that this is a minority opinion. When Rep. Golez states, as he did in the last public hearing at the House of Representatives, that he is giving his opinion as a medical doctor, he borders on the unethical. I am a medical doctor too and I am ethically bound to tell the public and my patients what the majority of experts are thinking on the medications I recommend or discourage. This is especially true if my position is that of the minority.

The last misrepresentation in this argument is that “fertilization equals conception”. As I mentioned in my intervention at the last hearings in the RH bill, conception is not a medical term. Terms like fertilization and implantation are scientific terms. But whether we can tie this to the term “conception” and the larger question of “when life begins” is a whole other matter.

Indeed advances in embryology show us that fertilization is not a “moment” but is a process that takes some time. Thus, to equate fertilization to “the moment of conception” is something of a fudge.

Pro-birth advocates, like ex-Senator Francisco Tatad, also take the line that “moral natural law” is a universal truth that should guide our personal and collective decision-making on this debate. Their version of this philosophical argument says that it is inherent in all of us to recognize a God. Additionally, their version of natural law states that it is inherent in us to recognize that we do not kill another human being, herein defined to include the fertilized ovum. I have no argument against the presentation of this philosophy. What is problematic is that they present this as if it is the only philosophical tradition that is pertinent to moral decision-making. The truth is it is a philosophy that tends to be overvalued in Catholic schools and largely relegated to a minor discussion in the secular University of the Philippines. Again, the point here is the misrepresentation. For philosophers like Mr. Tatad one wonders whether he was not taught other frames in the pontifical University of Santo Tomas; he forgot what he was taught or; he has failed to stay current with the changes in his discipline.

I agree with my philosophically sophisticated friends that debates around when life begins are probably futile in the determination of social policy. Constitutions of a number liberal democratic states inculcate this wisdom by working on a definition of “personhood”. But I do feel duty-bound to help increase our people's scientific literacy and to help craft social policies that are enlightened by the advances of human knowledge.

Yet I shall end this with a salute also to the wisdom of my philosopher friends who insist that we weigh the correctness of a political and philosophical premise on the basis of its effects. I always wonder why the pro-birth are blind to the unequal effects of their insistence that life begins at fertilization. To insist on this premise is to tie yourself to a position that allows you to argue for the control of women's bodies for your political purposes. Meanwhile, men's bodies remain free.

And so, I have been proposing to friends to think of the implications of a premise that states, “life begins at sperm production”. I doubt whether the pro-life religious men, philosophers and scientists would like the restrictions on their bodies such a premise would imply.