Philippines Reproductive Health Bill: Update

The president of my beautiful Philippines is a lawyer, the son of an icon political family-sort of like the Kennedy's-and even very much like President Obama (The One) here in the states. He is also made of awesome.

The Reproductive Health Bill in the Philippines is totally needed and I wrote about it, previously, here. That is not really what I want to talk about now. President Benigno Aquino III, the current president, is also Catholic. There is freedom of religion in the islands and it seems most have freely chosen Catholicism. I really don't know much about how devout P-Noy is, but I imagine that he is really Filipino about it. That is why this is so epic...

"In the end I must listen to my conscience and do what is right," Aquino said in an address to university students. He said that he felt duty-bound to continue pushing for the acceptance of the family-planning legislation even "at risk of excommunication (CatholicCulture.Org)."

The Catholic Bishops of the P.I. have not officially said the "E" word, but it is out there and it is known. The Bishops have also stated that if the bill is enacted then they would "support a campaign of civil disobedience." WTF. What does that mean? So not only will they go all "civil disobedience", even though the peeps (voters) supported the bill thus far, but they will not "go gently into the night."

"A spokesman for the Laguna archdiocese said that Aquino suffers from a "false conscience" on the issue. While the president spoke lightly of excommunication, said Father Jerry Oblepias, "I am very sad that he does not know the meaning of it."

Wow. Did that spokesperson just say that the president doesn't even know what he knows. If that is not controlling, then I do not know what is. Not only do they know his "conscience" better than he does, they also know his vocabulary better than he does (he doesn't even know the meaning of 'excommunication'). So frackin' bad.

Mr. President you have my support. I believe that with the economy, the extreme poverty of the Philippines, and over population (the elephant in the room), that the choices offered by the RHB are tremendous and absolutely...absolutely the correct thing to do. As for the Catholic Bishops Union....They are like wild animals cornered, faced with demise. Their numbers are dwindling  and they are ready to take anyone down with them. That is called desperation.

#prochoice,yo