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ROBBING HEAVEN

Today, the 2nd of July, we celebrate the "Fiesta" of Our Lady of the Visitation of Piat. A Basilica honors Her image in Piat, Cagayan toward which thousands journey on wheels/on foot. Our grandmother Dorothea was one of them, about a hundred years ago. She travelled on horseback, bobbing with the undulating roughness of miles of virgin dirt-roads, bearing the sorrows of thirteen years of empty womb. Kneeling before the Lady's image, Lola Ati prayed:

My Lady, please give me a child so my husband will love me more as I love him so much. For this sacred favour I shall dedicate my remaining years to a promise: I will never again have meat for food. I shall kneel before you every year; and it is my wish to bind our future children to this vow

Lola lived meatless all the days of her life; as we, at traditional times, do - especially during Lent and on revered Holidays.

The blessings of the felt Marian intercession cascaded to Lola's descendants. She and Lolo Andres reared a son and three daughters; one, Mama Esteria, a retired Home Economics Teacher, left us at 93, on 20 July 2010, 26 years after Papa, father Lawyer Josefin, had continued to appear in Court until a few months before he departed on the 6th of December.

One of Mama's two sisters gave birth to seven, one of whom, with more than 25 years of monastic life, is a Mother Superior of a Carmelite Monastery abroad. Mothers only brother Pedro must now feel blessed with a grandson who will, on this 6th of August, celebrate his 25th year of Monastic life, now Head/ Prior of the Benedictine Monastery of the Transfiguration .

This grandson Priest- Monk has written many books that celebrate life. Pedro was a Labor Leader. His name is posted on a wall, in UP Diliman, honouring heroes of the Labor Movement.

Please allow this wish, from usually-preferred anonymous presence, to address the reader with thoughts that flow from what we have to be - from Marian beginnings: enjoined, by the naggings of Lolas bequeathed faith, to speak in prayer in disagreement with the RH law.

Pure animals do not pray. They do not plead for forgiveness - born irresponsible as sans conscience; no doubts and no debts to settle. They do not aspire for more than themselves for; after all, they are created to be at mans disposal, either by temporary petting or molecular consumption. Their offspring are their afterlives. They are to be cared for, kindly and tenderly as need be, yet not loved for they cannot love. Still, are we in shortage of neighbours/ humans to love that we prefer to love the sensual over the sentient? God is love and love is, therefore, non-molecular. We, humans, are different in that we aspire for Heaven; still more, we aspire to be with GOD who showed Himself to us as a Man Who personally promised rewards for righteousness pleasing to His Almighty Father's Will, Heaven awaiting us.

Having written in opposition to the RH Bill/Law on grounds of Faith and Morals, enough, it seems, may have been said in that regard with our 12 June 2011 GRAINS OF ALMIGHTY GOD and, tangentially, 12 June 2013 ENNOBLING SOLIDARITY.

Kindly allow this shift of burdens to legal issues with thanks to the Honourable Supreme Court for her initial, hopefully extended, burst of wisdom: staying the hands of RH Law implementers with the Court's providential "TRO."
It is submitted that the RH Law seems, in many significant respects, inconsistent with the Constitution and even contradicts itself. We respectfully, yet earnestly, note the following unsettling observations and related questions :

I. The RH Law adopts the title Responsible


Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act". But are not the terms distinguishable from each other? Does not the law, therefore, have two distinct intendments and thereby in violation of the Constitutional-Law jurisprudence that a statute should have only one title? And that is so because although Reproductive Health may be an incident of parenthood Responsible parenthood does not necessarily involve reproductive issues? The law appears to be opaque as regards its real purposes. Reproduction connotes intended birth or, under imperative circumstances, its avoidance. But it seems very, very clear that the law is only concerned with avoidance of birth -this is very, very clear from the fact that in defining the terms Reproductive Parenthood and Reproductive Health the related provisions make absolutely no mention of the word, pregnancy. And in provisions that mention pregnancy,
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albeit very rarely, the word does not fall under any context of really protecting, much less encouraging, it ! The law authorizes use of public funds for the purchase of contraceptive drugs and tools that , by their essence, are in fact used to avoid pregnancy. How can contraceptives insure reproductive health when they in fact avoid the occurrence of health issues (in the pre-determined absence of actual reproduction)? In effect, therefore, legislative intent is negated by hazy/equivocal definitions and contradictory aims, aggravating the law's double-intendment infirmity. It should be reasonable to assume that laws are made to improve a social situation or to solve a social problem. But what situation is meant to be improved by the RH Law? And how may it be improved by condoms and IUDs? Or, what problem is RH meant to solve? And would stockpiling of condoms and IUDs using scarce peoples' money solve such problem? II. The law apparently favors a random, speculated, undefined group of contraceptive-users for whom the government would use taxpayers money for the procurement/purchase of such contraceptives. And yet is it not a settled rule of Constitutional Law that laws should be for general application/ welfare? And that if laws are of special application, there must be a clear showing that the benefitted belong to a specified, particularly-standardized class? By what acceptable logic may we assume that there is a certain class of irresponsible Filipino parents that would automatically become responsible when given free condoms and IUDs? And free lecture on their use? And who are these irresponsible Filipino parents who would automatically become healthy with their reproductive concerns when given free contraceptives or free advice on their use?
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The RH Law clearly appears to authorize spending public funds upon its assumption that Filipino parents are not healthy and are not responsible as fathers and mothers unless they are assured of the availability of governmentprocured/purchased contraceptives of such nature as is yet to be determined by the Executive Department. Who are these unhealthy and irresponsible Filipino parents? Are the causes of this lack of health and lack of sense of responsibility only physical? And if there are mental and spiritual dimensions to such irresponsibility and lack of health, can condoms and IUDs address these dimensions? It would be good of government to spend for those actually sick or certain to get sick (free paracetamol, dextrose, dialysis tools, human blood of all types, aspirins, and the like) but what is the wisdom, the advantage to the government/the nation, of spending for surmised, speculated, uncertain irresponsibility/lack of health because of moderated/licit/restrained pleasures from lack of condoms and IUDs?

If the law wishes to be fair, as it should be (the Preamble of the Philippine Constitution banners truth , fairness and justice and love as policy bedrocks of governance), should it not, therefore, consider the reproductive health of thousands who need fertility pills? What about the excruciating longings of thousands who risk the embarrassment of the Obando dance or spitting Arbolaryos just to have the true responsible parenthood and reproductive health that rearing of offspring promises? The law does not prohibit them from such exotic remedies but does the law compensate them for the unnecessary insult from the moral equivalent of a taunt? And what about their taxpayers' money?

Is the RH law not repugnant to the Equal-Protection clause of the Constitution?

III. The law gratuitously proclaims availability of free


official family-planning advice. And yet the law does not define with specificity, as to range and limits of advice, its official concept of family-planning that the government is ordered to spend for. Is that not tantamount to delegating legislative law-making power to the Executive Department as implementer of family planning? And what about contraceptives? Is it the intent of Congress to give legislative authority to DOH and DSWD workers to improvise on the essential meaning of safe contraceptives, since what is safe to one may not be so with another? And in the productdemonstration stage critical to the procurement process, what Region of the country would volunteer for its citizens to participate in the so-called torture-test determinative of quality condoms/IUDs/injectable contraceptives? Do we have to violate the Constitution just so we could use public funds/resources to stockpile contraceptives?

IV. In one moment of, perhaps, literary freedom the


RH Law suggests for the Filipino to plan for his family according to balance and rhythm of nature How can/may nature be balanced by synthetics? Either our legislators and the Office of the President are trivializing on poetry or are simply oblivious of Environmental concerns seriously addressed by the Constitution itself.

Are scientists not concerned that much of what account for the so-called ozone-layer depletion/piercing are traceable to smoke/aerial particles emitted from chemical manipulations/
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burnings? Are we not accelerating such lethal chemical reaction by producing non-biodegradable products such as we imagine condoms and IUDs to be? What about the air we breathe? If, as some say, cigarette butts clog ducts and canals for flood waters, may we not assume that used/unused/"expired" plastic/rubber IUDs and condoms may themselves occupy/impede free-flow space? Must we drown, physically/ psychologically/spiritually, the innocent many for the pleasures of the few or undisciplined many? Do we have to violate the Constitution just so we could be authorized to spend peoples' money to stockpile IUDs and condoms and injectable pregnancy thwarters?

V. The doctrine of separation of Church and State is a commendable legal- fiction" It is, it is humbly submitted, a demandable assurance that the State should respect mans freedom of religion either by individual or collective observance of Faith. Such respect means that the State, much less its mere components (Government, and still much less only two of its three elements: Executive, Legislative, Judiciary) may not disburse its funds or use its powers to favor a particular religion to the exclusion of others. More pointedly the State , through the government, may not use its funds or other resources to prejudice a particular religion or all religions. Much more pointedly: the State may not frustrate a faithfuls observance of the tenets/precepts of his religion.

Is it respect of religious freedom to pass a law prejudicing a religion on the strength of the acquiescence of other religions furthering/tolerating such prejudice?
And yet does not even our modest and ancient Revised Penal Code frown upon "acts offensive to religious feelings"?
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Does the RH Law not violate the Constitutional doctrine of separation of Church and State when:

The State, through the Executive Department and Congress, compels, by modes and results, the Catholics to agree for their money (taxes) to be used to fund the procurement of contraceptives, the use of which is against the teachings of the Catholic Church? Still, does not the law punish public officers for speaking against family-planning that the law does not even define with sufficient clarity in terms of purpose and scope? And what if such officers heed Church teachings against family planning using contraceptives?
b. In effect the State, through its dominant

a.

components, uses its resources to encourage the

Catholic faithful to disobey their moral and spiritual leaders? c. The law unnecessarily disregards the social and political reality that the majority of the populace is composed of Catholics thus depriving the Church of
the confidence of evangelization with long-established moral ascendancy or goodwill? d. The State, by the foregoing positive acts and inducements, damages the Catholic Church? e. Catholics pray: to worship/praise; to petition for blessings of; to forgive and to beg for forgiveness for trespasses from; and, to thank Divine Providence, for is
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there justice, fairness and love in persuading the faithful to approach his sacred altar with the weight, physical and spiritual, of condoms and IUDs?

We are a predominantly-Catholic nation.


Government is just one of the four elements of a State (Territory, Government, People and Sovereignty). Congress and the Executive Department are only two of the elements of Government. In the People resides Sovereignty. How many citizens do the pro-RH Congressmen represent? How many "people" do the pro RH Party- Listers represent apart from their limited, special interests?

Let us remind ourselves that the Separation-of-Churchand-State doctrine is a "legal-fiction" in that it does not/cannot negate the fact that ours is a religious country. It cannot be our framing elders' intent to play a big joke on humanity when, by their collective wisdom, the Filipino people declared its dependence on God :

"We, the Filipino people, imploring

the aid

of Almighty God xx "


It may be true that even ephemeral Governments would not promptly crumble upon the lighting of blessed candles and the chanting of ancient sacred-scripture incantations. And it is also true that there is no government facility that can restrain thousands
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of Catholics who decide to observe civil disobedience in all its forms, in all its militantly-silent forms. Still, it is the better, more liberating, truth that we are not mere sex-crazed animals that are deaf/insensitive to the gentle summons of Heaven and the patience of God's love that even the most arrogantlydeceiving, hubris-locked robber cannot take away.

Respectfully Submitted, All for Almighty God Always.

Yours so in JESUS CHRIST and His Mother, Mary of The Immaculate Conception.

Roberto Siccuan De Alban Tumauini, Isabela 2 July 2013

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