professors of 3 of the top universities, Ateneo, La Salle and University Of The Phlippines support the rh bill

click to read:

• based on serious evidence, the RH Bill is pro-poor and authentically pro-life & pro-family – UP Economics Professors
• UP School Of Economics : Population, Poverty, Politics and the Reproductive Health Bill

• joint statement of ateneo and UP professors : Pass The RH Bill Now
• UP and Ateneo professors issues support on RH Bill

• de la salle university professors support the rh bill – “rh bill is pro-life”

• ateneo president fr villarin ignores bishop, upholds independent thinking and appreciates ateneo professors efforts on rh bill
• 33 more ateneo professors support rh bill, now 192 professors
• bishop wants pro rh bill Ateneo professors fired – hahahaha
• 160 Ateneo De Manila University Professors declare support for the RH Bill
• Catholics Can Support The RH Bill In Good Conscience – Ateneo Professors’ Position Paper RH Bill 5043

professors of 2 catholic schools, la salle and ateneo announce support for the rh bill

a couple of days ago. professors of de la salle university, a catholic school published their support on the rh bill. la salle joins the professors of another catholic school, the ateneo de manila university in supporting the rh bill.

the support of the ateneo professors has created controversy as the CBCP and  the ateneo president reacted to what the ateneo professors did. with the la salle professors joining the ateneo university, this will be an even bigger controversy in the coming weeks.

read their statements here (click to read) :

• de la salle university professors support the rh bill – “rh bill is pro-life”
• ateneo president fr villarin ignores bishop, upholds independent thinking and appreciates ateneo professors efforts on rh bill
• 33 more ateneo professors support rh bill, now 192 professors
• bishop wants pro rh bill Ateneo professors fired – hahahaha
• 160 Ateneo De Manila University Professors declare support for the RH Bill
• Catholics Can Support The RH Bill In Good Conscience – Ateneo Professors’ Position Paper RH Bill 5043

the de la salle professors:

Prof. Ma. Arcadio G. Malbarosa, Political Science
Dr. Antonio P. Contreras, Political Science
Prof. Louie Montemar, Political Science
Prof. Anna Malindog, Political Science
Dr. Grace Roldan, Political Science
Dr. Antoinette Raquiza, Political Science
Prof. Gina Lomotan, Political Science
Dr. Francisco Magno, Political Science
Mr. Levita A. Duhaylungsod, Political Science
Mr. Robin Garcia, Political Science
Prof. Mark Evidente, Political Science
Prof. Allen B. Surla, Political Science
Prof. Antonio Pedro Jr., Political Science
Prof. Michael Angelo B. Promentilla, Chemical Engineering
Prof. Ma. Carla Pacis, Literature
Mr. Anthony Lawrence A. Borja, Political Science
Dr. Luis F. Razon, Chemical Engineering
Mr. Anton Simon M. Palo, Psychology
Dr. Robert E. Javier Jr., Psychology

The following members have signed the Statement by e-mailing us their scanned signatures:
Dr. Allan Benedict I. Bernardo, Counselling and Educational Psychology
Prof. Ronnie Holmes, Political Science
Atty. Avelino M. Sebastian Jr., College of Law

The following members have expressed support through e-mail, and have indicated they will sign:
Dr. Arturo Pacificador Jr., Mathematics
Dr. Rochelle Lucas, English and Applied Linguistics
Dr. Danilo Dayag, English and Applied Linguistics
Dr. Jeane Peracullo, Philosophy

The following has expressed support and e-mailed an authorization to consider him a signatory to the Statement:
Atty. Arno Sanidad, College of Law

Via RH Bill Portal:
Atty. Emily Sanchez Salcedo, Commercial Law Department

(the following as shared by Louie Checa Montemar)
Redento B. Recio, Polsci/LSIG
Arnel B. Galgo, COSCA
Rey Pomarca, COSCA
J. Bartolome, COSCA
Jon Alcazar, COSCA
Ma Ella Oplas, Polsc

the ateneo professors:

1. Marita Concepcion Castro Guevara, PhD, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies
2. Marlon J. Manuel, JD, Ateneo Law School
3. Amparita S. Sta. Maria, LL.B., LL.M, Ateneo Human Rights Center, Ateneo Law School
4. Joy G. Aceron, MPA, Ateneo School of Government, and Department of Political Science

a disruption to family’s dreams and aspirations – what unplanned pregnancy is to filipinos

that is the final slide in the introduction to a qualitative research powerpoint presentation conducted for the purpose of developing advertising and marketing efforts to encourage the use of family planning in the philippines. a series of qualitatve research, focus group discussions were conducted in metro manila, davao and cebu.

the respondents said,  to them  the family is the most important, even over themselves. what they were presently doing were for their families. they said they will do anything and everything for  their families which is exactly what they were doing at the present.

they were asked – what will it mean to you when you find out you are pregnant now? their answers to that question was captured in the chart, above.

find out more about this research here:  http://bit.ly/ApfPVi 

Mo Twister’s “abortion confession” – how a hurt can hurt others

this video has been the talk of the town lately. mo twister is  a popular radio dj turned tv host who had a relationship with a young tv actress. he was 10 years her senior.

we all got to know of their relationship when they broke up some months ago. many tears were shed on tv, painful words exchanged and threats thrown. we have forgotten about it after some months until a few days ago when this video became viral in youtube and became the hot topic in twitter and facebook.

in the video, mo twister makes a tearful and emotional confession about the abortion his girlfriend was about to have. he apparently video taped the confession inside a singapore hotel while waiting for the abortion to take place.

the girl friend, rhian ramos, her lawyer and mother have come out on tv threatening to sue mo twister for defamation of character.

the video speaks volumes of mo twister’s angst on the abortion that was about to happen.  he shows a man in pain on the loss of apparently their child. abortion so it seems was an action  only the girl wanted, or at least the girl has insisted on.

he was hurting when it happened but more than a year after it occurred, now the woman mo twister was referring to is  also hurting. she is now seen as the woman who had her child aborted.

she may have not realized the gravity of her decision to abort the chi8ld then, but now for sure she realizes exactly what it means to have a child aborted. we do not know if she feels guilt but for sure shame is a big part of it.

while we recognize that it is her body and the baby did reside inside her womb and she could very well have the right to decide what to do with it, she now knows what it means to live in a catholic country that in many ways is still conservative where abortion at minimum is still frowned upon plus the fact that is is actually illegal to have an abortion in the philippines.

the male hurting and objecting to an abortion instead of the female is also an interesting twist in this story.  we have heard of a lot of real life stories where it is the female who objects to have her baby aborted while the male is the one who insists on it. the typical story is the male usually wants to escape from the responsibility of an unplanned pregnancy, rearing of the child and of course marriage thus, pushing for the woman to have the baby aborted.

in this case the woman wanted the abortion apparently under pressure from her family and showbiz. this young woman getting pregnant at her age and without the benefit of marriage was apparently seen as a constraint to her budding career in showbiz.

the actress in this story is just starting out in her career and is being groomed to be the next biggest star of the tv network she is under contract with. this tv network has also announced that they will also sue mo twister for damages apparently to protect the reputation of its next star.

is the complications of a an unplanned pregnancy, child rearing a real deal breaker for showbiz stars in the country?

it is  timely as the rh bill is a hot topic in the country today. the rh bill confirms with actual language that abortion is illegal in the country (and enshrined in the constitution of the country), it is nevertheless an issue that has been raised by anti-rhbill advocates.

whether the mo twister youtube abortion confession will affect the debate on the rhbill is open for debate and something we ned to just wait and see.

ad review: “Pangmadaliang Sarap, Pangmatagalang Hirap” has 2 fatal errors

in our ad review, the above ad suffers from two fatal errors -positioning RH as anti-sex and the bigger fatal  error, as anti-children. we think that error was brought about by a lack or no strategy and consumer insight.

rerad about it here: http://on.fb.me/niFq2p

millions of filipino catholics face excommunication

bishop odchimar

let’s assume the bishop knows what he is talking about and that he is not just bullying noynoy aquino, applying the same logic, based on an SWS survey. a high 71% of pinoy catholics will need to be  excommunicated as well as that represents the number of catholics who support RH Bill 5043.

for more, click here: http://2010presidentiables.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/71-or-millions-of-pinoy-catholics-face-mass-excommunication-by-cbcp/

carlos celdran “damaso” – protest action with class! bravo!

note to carlos celdran: when you do one more of your protest  action, please let this blog know so that we can arrange good video and photo coverage of  your protest. no charge for you.

from PDI: Holding up a placard with the word Damaso on it, tourist guide Carlos Celdran screams at the clergy to get out of politics during Mass at Manila Cathedral. Damaso, an abusive Spanish friar, is immortalized in Rizal’s “Noli me Tangere.” EDWIN BACASMAS

carlos celdran, one of  the best  tour guides in metro manila, pulled a brilliant stunt to protest the catholic church’s meddling with president aquino’s stance  on providing filipinos with a free choice on contraceptive method. we think celdrn’s stunt was not only brilliant, it was one of the most classy protest we have seen in many years.

it was brilliant as celdran was successful at putting his message across and got full media, tv and print and internet coverage. getting a wide audience is one of the primary measures of a successful protest action.

more than the mileage he was able to get, we give celdran’s protest action 5 stars for being very classy. first – he did his protest action at the cathedral itself. there is no better place than that. then, and this is important, celdran was properly dressed for the part – a suit and hat that mimicked jose rizal’s clothes. and then the stroke of genius – the word “damaso” on the placard he raised at the altar.

his protest action was well thought of, well packaged and the message and medium excellent for the purpose. this was a protest action done by someone who does a lot of very good thinking. aside from the poignant message, it had excellent theater.

we are not surprised with celdran’s action and genius. we have joined celdran in a tour of the cathedral and everyone in our group was in awe with celdran’s tour. celdran in his tour at the cathedral was very well informed and he delivered his spiel in a most engaging, intelligent and even funny way. it was both entertaining and informative. he delivered history in a most fascinating way that got everyone in the tour taking and apreciating his every word, including the theatrics he put into it. we recommend that every filipino should take celdran’s tour.

what celdran did for his protest he does for his tour. never a dull moment but all the right messages delivered very well and with theater. if all protests are done the way celdran does it, we  would like to see more of it and please on a daily basis.

carlos celdran – 5 stars!

5 stars!

who is padre damaso? click here –>http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20101002-295507/IN-THE-KNOW–History-101

UN committee to RP: Pass reproductive health bill

By Lira Dalangin-Fernandez
INQUIRER.net First Posted 11:40:00 10/30/2009

MANILA, Philippines – Voicing “serious” concern over inadequate reproductive health services and information, low rate of contraceptive use and difficulties in access to artificial methods that contribute to teen pregnancies and high maternal death, a United Nations panel urged the government to pass the Reproductive Health (RH) bill.

A report released this October containing the concluding observations on the Philippines of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that the government should “adopt as a matter or urgency the Reproductive Health bill awaiting approval by Congress and ensure that the bill reflect the rights of children and adolescents as enshrined in the Convention [Convention on the Rights of the Child].”

The recommendations came from the combined 3rd and 4th reports of the Philippines to the UN submitted early this year on its compliance to the Convention of the Rights of the Child, where the country is a signatory. A parallel report was submitted by the NGO Coalition made up of 15 organizations dealing with children’s concerns.

“The Committee remains seriously concerned at the inadequate reproductive health services and information, the low rates of contraceptive use [36 percent of women relied on modern family planning methods in 2006] and the difficulties in obtaining access to artificial methods of contraception, which contribute to the high rates of teenage pregnancies and maternal deaths,” the report said.

While it welcomes the passage of the Magna Carta of Women, the international body said that it remained concerned “over the lack of effective measures to promote the reproductive rights of women and girls and that particular beliefs and religious values are preventing their fulfillment.”

The RH bill remained pending for years in the House of Representatives partly due to the resistance of several Church groups. Two panels composed of congressmen were created in the chamber to debate on the bill in plenary when session resumes on November 9.

The bill pushes for, among others, the use of both artificial and natural means of family planning as a way to curb the ballooning population and to safeguard the health of mothers and children.

According to the UN report, the government has a lot to do to ensure access to reproductive health counseling and provide all adolescents with accurate and objective information and culturally sensitive services in order to prevent teenage pregnancies, including providing access to variety of contraceptives and improving knowledge and conscience on family planning.

It urged the government to strengthen formal and informal sex education for girls and boys with focus on the prevention of early pregnancies. It also called for the strengthening of HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns.

The committee said it remained concerned at the high infant and maternal mortality rates in the country even as it took note that the incidence has declined since 1990 (from 43 in 1990 to 23 per 1,000 live births in 2007-infant mortality rate and from 172 in 1997 to 162 per 100,000 live births in 2005-maternal mortality rates).

The UN said the government should “continue to take all necessary measures to lower infant, under-five and maternal mortality rates.”

Doctor Yvonette Serrano Duque, health specialist of the Children in Ministry of World Vision, one of the 15 members of the NGO Coalition, said the UN committee report should prod the government to act on the recommendations.

Serrano Duque said her group supported the RH bill and has programs advocating support for mothers from the pregnancy stage until the baby would be delivered.

“They always say that the children are the hope of the fatherland. This should be reason enough to give them attention, focus on providing them good nutrition to develop their full potential,” she said in a phone interview.

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20091030-233096/UN-committee-to-RP-Pass-reproductive-health-bill

one more reason to support the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill 5043 – environmental woes blamed on huge philippine population

how many times have we heard philippine government officials say “we do not have the budget” to explain its inability to provide for the population, both basic, medium term to critical services? we must have heard that thousands of times over many years across all types of services and problems.

the country is poor. it has scant resources. that is not being helped by the fact that the country’s population growth has been on a high clip, too fast versus the amount of funds the country can generate to provide for services.

that is related to the point of this article. lets face it – you just can’t keep placing more and more people on the same piece of land and expect nothing bad or nothing wrong will happen. the land can take only so much. couple that with scant resources and this is what we get.

read more on RH Bill 5043 here: http://2010presidentiables.wordpress.com/reproductive-health-bill-5043/

Environmental woes blamed on RP’s huge population

By Michelle Remo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 06:33:00 10/24/2009

MANILA, Philippines — An economist from the University of the Philippines has tagged the country’s robustly growing population as one of the factors that worsen environment-related problems.

Ernesto Pernia, former chief economist for the Philippines at the Asian Development Bank, said the environment problems that recently led to hundreds of casualties would not have been as worse had the country’s population been contained.

“Nobody has mentioned the population issue as one of the factors contributing to the country’s environmental problems. The capacity of the country’s ecology is already stretched to the limit,” Pernia told the Inquirer in an interview.

He said the country’s huge population, estimated at around 92 million, was one reason for overcrowding in the urban areas. In turn, overcrowding had lead to difficulty in managing wastes.

“The consequence of unabated migration to urban areas is haphazard human settlement. Too many people are staying in areas that should not be a place for settlement, like riverbanks, bridge waterways, and esteros (urban waterways)” Pernia said.

Climate change, caused by carbon emissions mostly from industrialized nations, was considered a major culprit for the heavy rains that led to hundreds of deaths in Metro Manila and northern provinces. However, Pernia said, factors that were within the Philippines’ control also worsened the impact of the heavy rains and the massive flooding they caused.

Pernia said population growth, together with weak urban planning, degradation of forests, poor disaster-preparedness and weather forecasting systems, made the environmental problem worse.

The country’s population growth rate is currently estimated at 2.1 percent, faster than the latest economic growth recorded at 1.5 percent in the first half of the year.

Pernia said that with the country’s population already nearing 100 million, a zero population growth rate would be ideal.

According to Pernia, the government has been trumpeting the country’s economic growth and its capacity to avoid recession but what should be of graver concern is the declining per capita income growth.

Per capita income is the total income of the economy, usually measured in terms of gross domestic product [GDP], divided by the country’s population. It basically measures the share of each individual to the country’s income.

The fact that population growth was already faster than the GDP growth meant that per capital growth had already been declining, Pernia said. This placed the Philippines worse off than countries who had fallen into recession, but whose population growth was slower than the decline in their GDPs.

Ateneo Faculty members support for Reproductive Health Bill

Dear friends,

Greetings of peace.

Please find attached the position paper entitled “Catholics Can Support the RH Bill in Good Conscience” by 14 individual faculty of the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU), on the Reproductive Health Bill (HB 5043).

The authors of this paper come from six different departments of the ADMU: Economics, Interdisiplinary Studies, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology-Anthropology, and Theology.

We would like to stress that the views of the 14 faculty, as expressed in the position paper, are solely theirs and do not necessarily reflect the views of their respective departments nor other Ateneo faculty. Neither do they represent the official position of the Ateneo de Manila University nor the Society of Jesus.

A brief summary of the entire position paper, as well as the stand of the authors on the RH Bill, can be found in the final section of the main paper, entitled “A Call of Conscience: Catholics in Support of the RH Bill.”

We hope, however, that you will be able to read the entire paper, as it provides research-based empirical evidence, upon which we built our position on this issue.

Thank you very much, and we hope that you can help us disseminate to the public our paper’s findings and our stand on the RH Bill.

Sincerely,

Marita Castro Guevara (Department of Interdisciplinary Studies)
Raymond B. Aguas (Department of Theology)
Liane Peña Alampay (Department of Psychology)
Fernando T. Aldaba (Department of Economics)
Remmon E. Barbaza (Department of Philosophy)
Manuel B. Dy, Jr. (Department of Philosophy)
Elizabeth Uy Eviota (Department of Sociology-Anthropology)
Roberto O. Guevara (Department of Theology)
Anne Marie A. Karaos (Department of Sociology-Anthropology)
Michael J. Liberatore (Department of Theology)
Liza L. Lim (Department of Sociology-Anthropology)
Cristina Jayme Montiel (Department of Psychology)
Mary Racelis (Department of Sociology-Anthropology)
Agustin Martin G. Rodriguez (Department of Philosophy)

15 October 2008

Get full text of paper: http://www.4shared.com/file/68329978…ve_Health.html

abuse of poor pinays : “nagpagamit na lang ako sa asawa ko. bubugbugin niya ko ‘pag hindi ako pumayag.” (i allowed my husband to use me. he will beat me up if i don’t allow him.)

“nagpagamit na lang ako sa asawa ko. pag hindi ako pumayag, bubugbugin nya ko.” (i allowed my husband to use me. if i don’t allow him, he will beat me up.)

yes, that’s something many poor pinays have to say and to suffer. and that is one of the reasons why there is such a high incidence of unwanted pregnancies in the country. read more about it here : http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/