Philippines: “Reproductive health bill has totalitarian elements”

John Smeaton links to a Southern Cross Bioethics Institute commentary on a new Reproductive Health Bill before the Philippines parliament:

The Bill is overtly about state intervention into people’s private lives by strongly promoting contraception and its enforced provision, state run sex education with potential undermining of parental influence, and denying conscientious objection.

However, a critical subtext of the bill is that it has the strong potential to lay the ground for state sanctioned abortion, even though it appears to uphold the current illegal status of abortion. Other subtexts include targeting the poor for population control and promoting reproductive technology (which involves the routine destruction of human embryos).