Philippines autonomous region passes health Bill

Manila: The autonomous region of Filipino-Muslims in the southern Philippines passed its own conservative version of the radical health bill that called for the use of artificial contraceptives for the governemnt’s population control programme for poor people, which the two houses of Congress passed on third and final reading on Monday, a TV report said.

Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) signed the Muslim Autonomy Act 292, known as the Regional Reproductive Health Law which called for “natural means of birth spacing of children based on [Islam’s] spiritual context of respect for life”, ABS CBN, a TV network, said.

The law, signed before members of ARMM’s Regional Legislative Assembly (RLA), also demanded that parents must sustain their children to ensure their welfare and make them become responsible and peace-loving adults.

The use of natural means of birth spacing and the promotion of responsible parenthood, the law said, are parents’ obligation and a basis for them to make “quality application” of the Islamic law’s tenets on child and maternal protection and health care.

“This law is not about espousing the use of artificial and unIslamic means of birth control. It’s more about educating our people on the importance of birth spacing, as espoused by Islam, to assure ARMM’s children of seeing a bright, peaceful future,” Gov. Hataman said.

ARMM’s law is “absolutely biased to mothers” whether they are Muslims or non-Muslims, said Assemblywoman Samira Gutoic, representative of the women sector to the RLA.

“When you take care of the mothers, you take care of a society. When you educate mothers, you educate a household and, eventually, a generation of people in the autonomous region,” Gutoc explained.

Noting how the law was made, Assemblyman Khadafy Mangudadatu said, “It was crafted with the extensive participation of our Muslim and Christian religious leaders, medical practitioners and `halal’ experts.”

Anything not halal is ‘haram’ or forbidden among Muslims, he explained.

“That law has the imprimatur of the ARMM’s Islamic religious community. We will help enforce that law,” vowed Ustadz Esmail Ebrahim, a commissioner in the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos.

Noting its universality among residents in the region, Speaker Rasol Mitmug, of ARMM’s 27-member RLA, said, “This law is supported by the region’s Muslim and Christian religious sectors.”

It will be jointly implemented by the region’s health and social welfare departments, the local media communities and local government units, through the office of the ARMM’s newly-appointed interior secretary, lawyer Makmod Mending Jr, Mitmug said.