Enrile: A pro-life statesman
By BERNARDO M. VILLEGAS
November 7, 2010, 2:41pm
Manila Bulletin
MANILA, Philippines – I remember feeling a little nervous when I faced the panel constituted by the Jaycees to interview the candidates for the Ten Outstanding Men for 1972. A member of the panel of judges was then Secretary of Defense Juan Ponce Enrile, the most powerful man after President Ferdinand Marcos who had just declared martial law. One of the judges (not Enrile) asked me what I thought about population control (at that time President Marcos still used to quote Pope Paul VI in the famous lines of Humanae Vitae, "we should not limit the number of participants in the banquet of life"). I replied with conviction, as I do now, that a large population means human resources with hands and minds to work and an attractive domestic market for goods and services. To my relief, Defense Secretary Enrile added with approval, "and a large pool of men for the military." As a master of the art of the possible, Secretary Enrile was being pragmatic and common sensical.
Today, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile continues to be pro-life. His reasons go beyond pragmatism. They are both philosophical and theological. In introducing Senate Bill No. 2497, the good senator intends "to give life to the Constitutional right of the unborn child to protection, to accord the unborn child the basic right to life, to the protection of his or her welfare and against acts which place the unborn child in danger of being harmed, injured, or killed, bearing n mind that the unborn is totally incapable of protecting itself."
S.B. No. 2497 comes at an opportune time when all over the world, leaders are discussing the attainment of the so-called Millennium Development Goals. In fact, that was the main reason President Benigno Aquino III traveled to New York. He attended a meeting, the main agenda of which was the assessment of how countries are coping with the challenge of meeting the MDGs set for 2015. Very prominent among these goals is maternal health. It must be pointed out, however, as Senator Enrile comments in the Explanatory Note to the Bill that "a 2008 gender study emphasized that the health of the mother and child are inextricably linked for biological and social reasons. While the government has called for the strengthening of maternal and child health care and nutrition and has, in fact, included the same among the top 10 priority areas of reproductive health, the promotion of the right and welfare of unborn children, the most defenseless as they are, has not received adequate attention."
The bill also comes at a time when a country like Mexico, fearful of contamination of the pro-abortion mindset and culture of death now rampant in the country to its north, is seeing more and more of its states passing laws that would criminalize the killing of the fetus from the moment of conception. This very positive pro-life trend in Mexico, in which society has been secularized for more than a century and in which religion hardly influences political decision making, can only be attributed to leaders using their natural gift of reasoning to arrive at the unquestionable fact that human life begins at conception. The Mexicans, whose culture is the closest to that of the Philippines for historical reasons, are wittingly or unwittingly emulating the contents of our 1987 Constitution which states in Article II, Section 12 that as a matter of national principle and State policy the State "shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception."
As a consummate lawyer, Senator Enrile cites the very concrete circumstances that motivated him to sponsor the bill: "Over the years, many incidents of abortion have been reported, with mothers resorting to induced abortion for various reasons, while others suffered from spontaneous abortions, or miscarriage, due to acts, violent or otherwise, and practices that are harmful and fatal to the unborn child. Worse, the deleterious and often fatal consequences to the mothers of such acts of abortion performed in abortion clinics or elsewhere and by abortion practitioners that have proliferated, while clearly criminal in nature, have been used as a convenient excuse to advance the population control under the euphemism called 'reproductive health.'"
Not leaving things to free interpretation by those who want to define the beginning of human life at implantation, rather than conception, Section 5 of the proposed bill gets down to specifics: "The unborn child shall be protected from abortifacients, abortive acts and practices that induce abortion, including the use, administration, dispensing, injection or delivery by whatever means of substances, medicines in any form which endanger or expose the unborn child to damage, injury or death, whether committed with or without violence, and whether committed with or without the consent of the mother."
Not content with motherhood statements about the evils of killing the unborn child during any of the stages from conception to birth, Senator Enrile is making sure that the bill will impose heavier penalties for abortive acts defined under Articles 256, 257, 258 and 259 of the Revised Penal Code. For intentional abortion, for example, the penalty has been increased from "reclusion temporal" to "reclusion perpetua" for those convicted of using violence upon the person of the pregnant woman. Penalties--both imprisonment and fines--will be imposed on physicians, midwives, pharmacists and other health workers who practise abortion.
Let me set a target for all pro-life members of Congress, whether in the lower or upper houses. They should give the highest priority to the passing of this bill, consolidating it with House Bill No. 13 sponsored by Congressman Roilo Golez. Asking for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially under the advocation of Our Lady of Guadalupe, let the bill be enacted into law by December 12, 2010, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Secondary Patroness of the Philippines and the Patroness of Mexico and the entire Americas. I have no doubt that Mrs. Cristina Castaner Ponce Enrile will be our ally in praying to the Mother of God for the successful passing of this Bill. I still remember her as a beauteous colegiala from St. Paul's College, Manila, playing the role of the Blessed Virgin in a tableau directed by Fr. James Reuter, S.J., on the occasion of the centennial of the declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1954. Our Lady will never despise our petition, as we say in the Memorare. For comments, my email address is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph.
