Filipinos would’ve ‘killed’ Roe before it turns 49

“If you're a pro-lifer, please remember: if life begins at conception, it sure as hell doesn't end at birth.” 

― Quentin R. Bufogle

 

By Alex P. Vidal

IT took America 49 years to put away Roe v. Wade (born 1973; died 2022).

If the same judicial phenomenon happened in the Philippines, Filipinos wouldn’t wait for 49 years; they wouldn’t even allow Roe v. Wade to prosper.

In fact, Roe v. Wade wouldn’t exist—or, it’s “dead on the spot” if the sensational Supreme Court landmark decision which generally protected a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion occurred in the Philippines in 1973.

Roe v. Wade would be a misnomer in the Philippine statute—because, in the first place, there would be no Filipino Jane Roe and Filipino Henry Wade; and, therefore, no abortion litigation.

If a Filipino Jane Roe wants to have abortion, she will never approach any lawyer to challenge the Revised Penal Code that criminalizes abortion in the Philippines.

She will do it secretly or incognito even at the risk of her life (the original American Jane Roe, actually, didn’t have abortion. Before Jane Roe, a fictitious name, died in 2017 at age 69, she was able to talk to her grown up daughter, the fetus she failed to abort, on the phone. Jane Roe wanted to abort the baby when she got pregnant in 1969, but the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision came in 1973. The baby, who was given for adoption, was born in 1970.)

Henceforth, there’s no case for the Filipino Jane Roe and, ergo, there’s no Filipino Henry Wade who will act as “district attorney” for the government.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 800,000 abortions performed in the Philippines, even as it reported that 70 percent of unwanted pregnancy ends in abortion despite legal restrictions.

According to the Department of Health, 100,000 people ended up in the hospital every year due to unsafe abortions.

As punishment for the patients, some hospitals have reportedly refused to treat complications of unsafe abortion, or operate without anesthesia.

For Filipino women who want an abortion, to hell with Roe v. Wade.

Abortion can never be legalized in the Philippines where its system and customs, to some extent, almost always tilts to full theocracy due to the age-old influence of the Catholic Church.

Many American and Filipino women have mixed views and stand on abortion mainly because of differences in culture, beliefs, demography, orientation, and even values.  

It’s hard to assert the reasons of pro-choice advocates who have lamented the overturning by the Supreme Court of the United States of Roe v. Wade by a 6-3 vote on June 24 however “acceptable” and relevant they may be in today’s age vis-à-vis the Christian values.

In an opinion she wrote in the New York times dated June 20, 2022, Pamela Paul stressed that “there are good reasons American women overwhelmingly choose having an abortion over giving up a child for adoption. Childbirth is the far riskier medial procedure. America has one of the highest material mortality rates in the developed world.”

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Mark Brown, in the Journal of Medical Ethics, pointed to an influential essay titled Why abortion is wrong, written by Donald Marquis, who argues that killing actual persons is wrong because it unjustly deprives victims of their future; that the fetus has a future similar in morally relevant aspects to the future lost by competent adult homicide victims, and that, as consequence, abortion is justifiable only in the same circumstances in which killing competent adult human beings is justifiable. 

“The metaphysical claim implicit in the first premise, that actual persons have a future of value, is ambiguous,” Brown wrote. 

“The Future Like Ours argument (FLO) would be valid if ‘future of value’ were used consistently to mean either ‘potential future of value’ or ‘self-represented future of value’, and FLO would be sound if one or the other interpretation supported both the moral claim and the metaphysical claim, but if, as I argue, any interpretation which makes the argument valid renders it unsound, then FLO must be rejected. Its apparent strength derives from equivocation on the concept of ‘a future of value’”.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)

 

 

  

 

Abortion, ano pa?

“Come, let us kill him.”

—Bible 

By Alex P. Vidal

I GREW up in a country that views abortion as a mortal sin. Nothing more, nothing less.

Belonging to the only Christian country in Asia for hundreds of years now, majority of the Filipinos would’ve clapped in unison the recent demise of Roe v. Wade if the Philippines were part of the United States.

Even while the Americans erupted in fury June 24 after the United States Supreme Court overturned the 49-year-old landmark decision which generally protected a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion, many Filipinos remained skeptical whether the SC’s 6-3 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade was a “tragic error” as described by President Joe Biden.

For the predominantly Catholic Philippines, Roe v. Wade was all about abortion. 

When it comes to issue of abortion, the Catholic Church is firm; it is uncompromising. 

No amount of semantics can change the true meaning of abortion according to the views of the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church’s official teachings oppose all forms of abortion procedures whose direct purpose is to destroy a zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus, since it holds that "human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.”

“From the first moment of his existence,” the Church argues, “a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person—among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life."

In other words, abortion is a mortal sin, according to the prelates and other high ecclesiastical dignitaries.

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But Roe v. Wade, for many Americans, was deeper and more elaborate than the perspectives of the minority Catholics in America. 

It’s more than faith and religion. 

It’s also about health and science. 

The main principle pro-Roe v. Wade advocates wanted to put forward was that women and men should have equal control over their own bodies, as many of them believed in 1973 and a majority believe until now.

They believed that without a right to abortion, women would be forced to make terrible choices, and the burdens might disproportionately fall upon poor and working-class women without the means to travel across state lines to receive the care they need.

Abortion will soon be illegal in around half the states now that Roe v. Wade is history.

There are fears that some women will be forced to give birth against their will; some will travel to states where abortion remains legal; some will have illegal abortions and some women will end up in prison.

“Some, facing pregnancy complications, will see necessary treatment postponed. Some will probably die,” wrote Michelle Goldberg in a New York Times opinion dated May 4, 2022.

“Post-Roe America will not look like pre-Roe America,” she added. “Before Roe, women were rarely prosecuted for abortion, though they were sometimes threatened with prosecution to get them to testify against abortion providers.”

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American had actually anticipated the shocking verdict after it was reported that a draft opinion two months before the end of the SC session had been leaked.

In another New York Times opinion on the same date, Jesse Wegman called the leaked opinion as “a work n progress; t is dated Feb. 10, and it’s possible that one or more of the justices have since changed their minds, as sometimes happens as draft rulings and dissents are circulated.” 

Before the leak came that caused a stampede of critical opinions among pro-Roe v. Wade advocates, the court has been reported to be chipping away at a woman’s right to choose what happens to her own body, for decades, but the core holding of Roe v. Wade managed to survive.

On Friday (June 24), it didn’t.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)

  

 

Roe v. Wade stuns America like a zombie apocalypse

“I'm against abortion. On the other hand, I believe in a woman's choice.”

—Nancy Reagan

By Alex P. Vidal

EVEN if I am not comfortable with this subject matter, I am obligated to make a stand and say something about the hottest topic that has rocked the United States in the past 48 hours: Roe v. Wade.

But, first, why would Roe v. Wade suddenly occupy the front seat of the national discussion when America is grappling with the issues on all-time high inflation, immigration woes, Ukraine invasion by Russia, the come-backing Omicron sub-variants, and the midterm election multi-state primaries?

Who would have thought that a “zombie” slumbering for 50 years suddenly rose from the cemetery and terrorized America in 2022? 

Nobody but that’s exactly what is happening in the United States today now that the Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe V. Wade, the genesis of all this hysteria, was leaked in public.

The controversial Roe v. Wade, a 1973 lawsuit that famously led to the United States Supreme Court making a ruling on women's right to an abortion, or the attempt to overturn it, has been resurrected and the wave of panic among the stakeholders has become like a zombie apocalypse. 

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As of press time protest rallies have continued to be staged in the U.S.  Supreme Court and it appears the issue won’t die down easily in the next few weeks.

Fears and disbelief suddenly gripped the liberals and those who support legal abortion especially when the Supreme Court confirmed the draft’s authenticity.  

For starters, the landmark SC decision emanated from the case of Jane Roe, an unmarried pregnant woman, who filed suit on behalf of herself and others to challenge Texas abortion laws. 

A Texas doctor joined Roe's lawsuit, arguing that the state's abortion laws were too vague for doctors to follow. He had previously been arrested for violating the statute.

Abortion was illegal in Texas at that time unless it was done to save the mother's life. It was also a crime to get an abortion or to attempt one.

In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decided two important things:

—The United States Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy" that protects a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion.

—But the abortion right is not absolute. It must be balanced against the government's interests in protecting women's health and prenatal life.

The Court split the difference between the two arguments presented. First, the Court recognized that abortion does fall under women's privacy rights.

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The constitutional right to privacy comes from the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Due Process Clause does not explicitly state that Americans have a right to privacy. 

However, the Supreme Court has recognized such a right going all the way back to 1891. 

Just one year before Roe, the Supreme Court held that "in a Constitution for a free people, there can be no doubt that the meaning of 'liberty' must be broad indeed." 

In Roe v. Wade, the Court decided that this right to privacy extends to a woman's control over a pregnancy.

The justices acknowledged that being forced to continue a pregnancy puts a lot at risk for women, such as: Physical health, Mental health, Financial burdens, Social stigma.

The abortion debate is mainly within right-libertarianism between cultural liberals and social conservatives as left-libertarians generally see it as a settled issue regarding individual rights, as they support legal access to abortion as part of what they consider to be a woman's right to control her body and its functions.

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EVEN if President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered an end to on-line sabong “effective immediately”, we doubt if some of the operators who have invested heavily like Atong Ang, will obey him.

For the big time gamblers and operators, it’s not a joke to lose hundreds of millions of revenues in one fell swoop.

Aside from money they amass, big time gambling operators also gain power as they are also hailed like demigods by corrupt policemen, government officials, and media personalities who get regular payola.

As a sign of respect to the president’s authority, they might stop for a while, but might proceed once more with the gambling activity surreptitiously in clandestine operations when no one is watching, or when everyone has forgotten the praiseworthy edict.

Especially when Mr. Duterte is no longer in power. 

(The author, who is now based in the New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)

‘God’s will’ to kill Roe v. Wade?

“We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion in this country.”

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

FILIPINOS must also pay attention to some of the major and controversial issues being tackled and developing in the United States nowadays prior to the November 3 Presidential Election because some of these issues aren’t only relevant, but will also affect many of us in one way or the other.

For instance, it’s a common knowledge that when some Philippine celebrities, politicians and VIPs are embroiled in scandals like unwanted pregnancies and illicit affairs and they want to keep the “putridity” under wraps, they fly to the U.S. where they believe their problems will have a permanent solution.

Like abortion.

With the most recent appointment of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 87, the liberals, especially those who invoke their constitutional right to have access on safe and legal abortion, fear the Roe v Wade will be overturned or further eroded once the conservatives will become the majority in the SC.

President Donald Trump named 48-year-old Barrett to the SC on September 26, setting in motion a rush by Republicans to cement a conservative majority on the court on the eve of a tense and potentially disputed U.S. election.

 

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Barrett “will defend your God-given rights and freedoms,” Mr. Trump told the crowd in Middletown, where supporters enthusiastically received news of her nomination.

Senate Judiciary Committee hearings to consider Barrett’s nomination are expected to begin October 12.

If confirmed, Barrett will fill the seat of late liberal justice Ginsburg, likely steering the court to the right for years, expanding the current conservative wing’s sometimes shaky 5-4 advantage to a solid 6-3.

A majority of Americans—by 57 to 38 per cent—oppose the push for confirmation before the election, according to a Washington Post/ABC poll.

Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court on January 22, 1973.

It affirmed that access to safe and legal abortion is a constitutional right.

According to Planned Parenthood, 73 percent of Americans don’t want to see Roe v. Wade overturned.

Planned Parenthood fears one-third of all women of reproductive age in America could lose the ability to access abortion in their state once Roe v. Wade has been overturned.

 

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“The data is clear: Despite attacks on our rights, Americans support Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to access abortion,” Planned Parenthood bewailed.

It added: “Roe wasn’t the beginning of abortion in America. The ruling allowed people to access abortion legally and prevented people dying from unsafe, illegal abortions, , as happened before Roe v. Wade.”

It explained that “in 1965, illegal abortions made up one-sixth of all pregnancy-related deaths—and that’s just according to official reports; doctors think the actual number was a lot higher.”

Prohibition of legal abortion particularly hurt people with low incomes; a survey conducted in the 1960s found that among women with low incomes in New York City who had obtained an abortion, eight in 10 had attempted a dangerous, self-induced procedure, added the Planned Parenthood.

“Now that abortion is a legal right thanks to Roe, it’s become one of the safest medical procedures in the United States—with a safety record of over 99 percent,” Planned Parenthood further stressed. “Also, because abortion is legal, people who decide to have an abortion can receive support throughout the process from medical professionals.”

Advocates of Roe v Wade insist that “the right to safe and legal abortion has been the law of the land for more than 45 years, and is a part of the fabric of this country. Roe v. Wade is clearly established precedent, and it shouldn’t be up for debate. Yet opponents of abortion have made it increasingly difficult for people to access—and these threats are not slowing down.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two dailies in Iloilo)