Wednesday, February 3, 2010

killed bill

Reproductive health bill dead in Congress

MANILA, Philippines - With only one session left today, the House of Representatives has shelved the Church-opposed reproductive health bill. The bill was supposed to be debated in the plenary, the closest it has ever gotten to being passed in its 23-year existence.

"We cannot accommodate that (House Bill 5043) in the last two session days. There are 20 congressmen who have lined up to interpellate (on the measure)," Speaker Prospero Nograles said in a press briefing yesterday...
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Well, there goes the RH bill down under.

It is pitiful that a lot of time, energy, money and acrimonious debates were spent on a proposal that produces nothing in the end. This kind of thing translates to wasted, precious legislative resources (read: gazillions of taxpayers' money) getting burned to death. What we really need are concrete legislative actions that push productivity: not grand privilege speeches, endless legislative inquiries, internal wranglings, and bills that are bound to die. Or bills that are bound to kill, rather.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The so-called reproductive health bill is as deadly as it is stupid. The bill explicitly funds abortifacients, which will result in thousands of pre-born deaths. It also does violence to our civil rights by forcing persons to dispense artificial/abortifacient contraceptives against their conscience and punishing those who speak out against the bill.

This idiotic bill is deadly, both to persons and our democratic rights. Lagman, Hontiveros-Baraquiel, Garin, et al deserve to be voted out of politics for good.