MANILA, Philippines: A top Roman Catholic bishop in the Philippines on Tuesday backed action to deny Holy Communion to any politician who would support legalization of abortion, ramping up a rancorous debate on family planning.
No major Catholic politicians openly back legalizing abortion in the conservative Catholic country, but many support moves to increase sex education in schools and promote family planning methods that would include contraceptives — which are forbidden by the church.
Angel Lagdameo, president of Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, said Archbishop Jesus Dosado was right to order priests in his southern diocese of Ozamiz city to deny communion to Catholic politicians who would "consistently campaign for permissive abortion measures," thus denying them full church rites.
The unprecedented step, which so far covers only Dosado's diocese, comes as the bishops mobilize forces to campaign against birth control proposals pending in the Congress.
Abortion is illegal in the Philippines, where critics accuse President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of contributing to the burgeoning population and crushing poverty by following the church's policy of emphasizing natural family planning methods.
"It may sound very controversial, but I feel that the bishop is only acting according to canon law," Lagdameo told the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Tuesday, referring to the rules that govern Catholics worldwide on abortion.
Lagdameo said he would issue a similar statement on denying communion to abortion rights advocates in his central Jaro archdiocese.
House Rep. Edcel Lagman, the main proponent of a family planning bill pending in Congress, said Dosado's move was "completely without basis" because no lawmaker has advocated the legalization of abortion.
His bill and others include a provision for "mandatory reproductive health and sexuality education" in primary schools, which some of the bishops have frowned upon in the past.
Former President Fidel Ramos, the only Protestant elected to the highest office, chided Arroyo last week for not having a comprehensive family planning policy due to "unwarranted subservience to the Catholic church."
He said "mothers' lives and health, together with their babies, are now being put at risk for political expediency and religious narrow-mindedness."
About 473,000 abortions, or one third of the estimated 1.4 million unplanned pregnancies, still occur in the Philippines yearly, while two out of five women who want to use contraceptives don't have access to them, the UN Population Fund has said.
The country's population has been growing by more than 2 per cent per year and is projected to reach 90 million this year.
Arroyo spokesman Anthony Golez said the government's population policy program is founded on four pillars of "responsible parenthood" — respect for life, informed consent regarding family planning, responsible parenting and spacing out births in a family.
Source: International Herald Tribune, 15 July 2008