Monday, November 15, 2010

The 'sincere' Congressman

Bill Clinton, speaking here recently on “the challenge of globalization” makes a comment on the Philippine population, practically saying that more babies are a boon to the Filipinos:

“you [Filipinos] have a huge population, which is [something] positive, and you have massive natural resources.”

This raised the hackles of main RH-bill sponsor/advocate Congressman Edcel Lagman.

Lagman chides Clinton for comment on Phl population

Clinton’s population growth idea nonsense, says Lagman

Lagman said that Clinton's stament should not be taken “hook, line and sinker as it is a careless commentary, not a sincere compliment.”

He adds: “Clinton’s passing statement may be typical of patronizing platitudes heaped by Americans on Third World countries,”

To counter former US President Bill Clinton's statement, Lagman pointed out that Clinton’s wife, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is an ardent advocate of family planning and reproductive health.

He quoted Secretary [Hillary] Clinton as telling a US congressional hearing in April 2009:

“I have been in Asian countries where the denial of family planning consigns women to lives of oppression and hardship. We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women’s health.“.

While Lagman is correct in saying that State Secretary Clinton advocates family planning, he conveniently omits that Secretary Clinton also advocates abortion in equal measure.

At the G8 summit in Canada this year, Hillary Clinton famously said:

“I’m not going to speak for what Canada decides, but I will say that I’ve worked in this area for many years. And if we’re talking about maternal health, you cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion.”

We know of course that Lagman has repeatedly and emphatically said that he is against abortion,
so it is quite crafty for him to cherry-pick US State Secretary Clinton's quotes when it suits him, ignore her other famous quotes on the same subject when it disfavors him, while hysterically denigrating her husband Bill Clinton's recent statements as "careless, patronizing, nonsense, and insincere".

Insincere. Take that.
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3 comments:

petrufied said...

It just struck me now how ironic it is to call the whole shebang "family planning" when the people who promote it aren't thinking about the family at all--only the woman as an individual who should not care a whit about her family, just herself. In fact, the methods of this so-called family planning have a way of breaking up families by changing how parents look at their children and children-to-be (i.e. "wanted" and "unwanted").

btw, have you seen jess abrera's editorial cartoon on this in inquirer? Pictures say a thousand words :-D

WillyJ said...

N,
Pikon talaga itong si Lagman. Akalain mong patulan pa yung sinabi ni Bill Clinton when it was obvious Clinton said it tongue-in-cheek. He insulted Bill Clinton but he should have known better that they belong to the same camp. Bill Clinton's past actuations as avid pro-abortion president bear this out. Ininsulto nya pa yung kakampi nya, naka.

I haven't seen the cartoon. what page and date? is there an online version?

petrufied said...

Oh I can email you a scanned version ;-)

Oo nga, Clinton is pro-choice or he'll never hear the end of it from Hillary. haha