WITH less than a week to go before the May 13 elections, Ang Kapatiran party senatorial candidates JC de los Reyes, Lito Yap David and Marwil Llasos, and UNA bet Rep. Mitos Magsaysay got a boost after getting the endorsement of the prolife group FILIPINOS FOR LIFE (F4L).

In a statement, F4L, a national association of prolife professionals, entrepreneurs, academics, health workers, students, church workers and religious, proclaimed Reyes, David, Llasos and Mitos Magsaysay as “genuine prolife candidates.”

For the partylist election, Ang Prolife also got F4L’s endorsement.

“We have decided to endorse the four, plus Ang Prolife Partylist, on account of their proven and untiring service in the defense of life, family and Filipino values, things which F4L also espouses,” F4L President Anthony James Perez said.

Perez called on all prolife Filipinos to rally around Reyes, David, Llasos and Mitos Magsaysay, who he said could be trusted to carry out a consistent prolife agenda in the Senate. F4L carefully scrutinized the records and public pronouncements of all four senatorial candidates and Ang Prolife, he noted.

“This endorsement was not borne out of compromises or accommodation. Their records bear them out. We can trust these candidates to fight the deceptive and pernicious anti-life agenda of reproductive health, divorce, and same-sex marriage,” said F4L Chairman Mike Mapa.

De los Reyes, a former Olongapo City councilor, has been consistently prolife while David is known for his prolife legislative advocacy in Congress. Llasos, a UP-trained lawyer, is a consecrated lay Dominican.

Mitos Magsaysay, meanwhile, staunchly opposed the controversial and patently unconstitutional Reproductive Health Bill, which was rammed through Congress by President Benigno Aquino and his Liberal and leftist allies using pork barrel politics.

“This election is crucial because anti-life forces are looking at building a formidable majority to push forward their anti-family and anti-Filipino agenda. We need to unite around genuinely prolife candidates and reject those who have no record of supporting the prolife cause,” Perez said. ##

They explained that they had not fully understood that the Church was serious about this teaching until the blowup surrounding the HHS Mandate; before then, they explained, it was easy to assure themselves that contracepting must be fine since so many other people in the pews were doing it. For example, after Amanda’s second child was born, her Catholic mother warned her sternly that it would be irresponsible not to get on the Pill. Laura once had a confessor assure her that contraception was a matter of personal preference, not an objective moral issue. Neither Amanda nor Laura had heard anything about the topic in their many years of Catholic school and religious formation classes. And so for all of their married lives they’d used various forms of contraception, never questioning how it might jibe with the doctrines of their faith.

The problem, to be blunt, is government. You have a choice, in Tocqueville’s view, between a government that protects freedom and a government that provides material security. You cannot have both. And if you choose comfortable slavery you cannot have community.

Tocqueville explained this phenomenon in his discussion of “soft” or democratic despotism. By doing too much for the people, benevolent centralized governments sap local communities’ lifeblood, their very reason for existence. By destroying the practical need for voluntary community, the welfare state destroys community itself, for people no longer feel the need to interact and bond with one another. In so doing, government also destroys good character, for it is only in the families, churches, and the various associations of local community life that men learn genuinely to care for their fellows.

Lots of food for thought, here.

Such non-discrimination would mean changes in marriage laws, adoption laws, and even the use of public restrooms. It would mean such notions couldn’t be kept out of any level of schooling including grade schools. As often as not, such claims of non-discrimination end up discriminating against Christians and others who have moral and religious objections to such notions.

We do not object to ensuring that homosexuals are not discriminated against in any unjust way. And we certainly oppose laws that make homosexuality or homosexual acts capital offenses. And we call upon all people of good will never to harm homosexuals in any way.

But opposing the homosexual agenda is a far cry from favoring the harm of homosexuals. And even though we favor protecting homosexuals from harm, it does not mean we hold that sexual orientation and gender identity are protected classes in international law. There are already international treaties that specifically protect such harms including the 1966 covenants that brought the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into legal force, the treaty against torture, and others.

The fact is that sexual orientation and gender identity are not accepted categories of nondiscrimination in UN treaties or other aspects of international law. It does not matter that the Secretary General of the United Nations says so. He is not only wrong; he oversteps his authority in saying so. It is also irrelevant that UN committees say so, or that law professors say so, or that the High Commissioner for Human Rights says so. It is a false claim that is backed up by the UN General Assembly that has never agreed to such a notion.

More here.

The issue of homosexual “marriage” is a controversial one today.

It is being voted into law, or imposed by courts, across the United States and across the world.

What does the Catholic Church have to say on the subject, and why does it teach what it does?

Read the rest here.

Marriage has its roots in the mutual attraction of the man and the woman which leads them to conjugal love. This love is at the root of the marriage partnership. Although Christianity has raised marriage to the level of the personal love of spouses, this phenomenon is a universal one. It is enough to see how love songs are found in all cultures.
So if marriage is based on human nature and human nature has its origins in God the Creator, then we can say that God created marriage. And he has endowed it with its specific characteristics. Neither the State, nor the Church, nor society nor culture is the creator of marriage.

More here.

President, Filipinos for Life

Two organizations representing medical doctors and citizen pro-lifers trooped to the Supreme Court at 10 a.m. today to file the eighth petition against the new “reproductive health” or RH law, branding the measure unconstitutional and “ultimately detrimental to our society.”

The petition, filed jointly by Doctors for Life and Filipinos for Life (F4L), seeks to declare Republic Act (RA) 10354, or “The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012,” unconstitutional, as well as to stop its implementation and the release of government funds. It also seeks a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction.

The groups, represented by Atty. Howard Calleja, debunked the mantra of the pro-RH lobby that increased contraception will improve the lives of Filipinos, aside from discouraging abortions.

“[A]ctual experience proves the contrary. A study conducted in Spain shows that despite the use of condoms and birth control pills by two-thousand (2,000) women over the span of ten (10) years, the incidence of elective abortions doubled,” the petition read. “There can only be one explanation for this. The overdependence of individuals on contraceptives promotes irresponsible, reckless and imprudent sexual behavior. In the event of failure or misuse of the contraceptive method, unwanted pregnancies occur, forcing women to turn to elective abortion to terminate such unwanted pregnancies.”

The petition presented six arguments. First, RA 10354 violates the Doctrine of Benevolent Neutrality under the Freedom of Religion Clause, which is safeguarded by the Bill of Rights. “Although no law should establish or promote any religion, the law should also accommodate the religious beliefs of individuals and not force them to act against their beliefs. R.A. 10354 completely disregards the fact that majority of the Filipino people are devout Roman Catholics, who firmly believe in procreation and do not subscribe to the belief that pregnancies should be controlled or prevented,” it said.

The RH law also violates the constitutionally protected right against involuntary servitude “by mandating that health care services cannot be denied to any person and in case of refusal due to religious beliefs or ethics, the health care provider must refer the patient to another health care provider.”

Moreover, the title of the law embraces more than one subject – Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health, another constitutional violation.

The constitutional right to life is also violated by the RH law’s aim of promoting artificial contraceptives that work to prevent conception. “The Constitution itself says that the right of the individual is protected from the moment of conception. Expert embryologists and scientists agree that conception begins at the moment of fertilization (Alcorn 2007). Thus, medicines such as hormonal contraceptives, intrauterine devices, injectables and even birth control pills, which prevent or impair fertilization are considered abortifacient,” the petition read.

The petitioners also attacked the law because it would allow the state to control the private education sector and medical industry, for instance by making it mandatory for reproductive health to be part of every school’s curriculum.

“Lastly, R.A. 10354 encourages the establishment on monopolies, which is not only unconstitutional but stunts the growth of the manufacturers and service providers in the Medical Industry. R.A. 10354 makes hormonal contraceptives, intrauterine devices, injectables and other safe, legal, non-abortifacient and effective family planning products and supplies essential drugs, and thus producers of these products are already given an advantage over all others, thereby contributing to the uneven distribution of wealth in our Country,” the petition read.

Anthony James Perez, F4L president, said: “The high tribunal must carefully scrutinize the RH law considering it was rammed through Congress by the Aquino administration to please the well-oiled pro-RH lobby.”

Named respondents were Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa, Jr., Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, Health Secretary Enrique Ona, Education Secretary Armin Luistro, and Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II.

“What we are presenting here are medical and legal arguments against the RH law. We believe the Supreme Court will listen to us and correct this grave error imposed by the executive and legislative branches on faithful and freedom-loving Filipinos,” said Dr. Rey Echavez, ad-hoc chairman of Doctors for Life, a group that is open to professionals holding doctoral degrees including doctors of medicine, doctors of jurisprudence, doctors of philosophy and doctors of theology. #

Our young men need to take this to heart!

For this month’s list of events, click here.

A Chinese official demanding a couple pay a fine for violating the country’s one-child policy crushed their 13-month-old boy to death with a car, a local spokesman said Tuesday.

Under China’s population controls, instituted more than 30 years ago, couples who have more than one child must pay a “social upbringing” fine, while in some cases mothers have been forced to undergo abortions.