The Sanctity of Human Life

There are voices clamoring for the amendment of the 1987 Philippine Constitution that can overturn its pro-life and pro-family provisions, with a vision of "revolutionizing family structures, marriages and child-parent relationships." 

By Dr. Bernardo Villegas

Part 1

                           

              Once more there are voices clamoring for the amendment of the 1987 Constitution in the name of dramatic and unprecedented economic, social, technological and political changes occurring in recent times.  Some of the leaders in the House of Representatives are renewing calls to introduce amendments to the current Constitution to adapt it to the dramatic changes in both global and national developments over the last thirty years or so.  In a Conference organized by the National Historical Commission and the National Museum of the Philippines in tandem with the 1971 Constitutional Convention entitled “Constitution Framing and Nationhood Conference”,  there is an implicit move to introduce some important changes in the 1987 Constitution, purportedly only focusing on the restrictive provisions against Foreign Direct Investments.  In the wording of the announcements of the two-day conference scheduled for January 16 to 18, 2024,  however, it is clear that the speakers will have the freedom to discuss other provisions beyond the strictly economic ones. 

              There are very suggestive references to “the shadow of disruptive changes” looming large:  “The delicate equilibrium of our ecology is under threat from global warming, climate change and pollution, jeopardizing the very livability of our magnificent blue planet.”  There is also the very meaningful reference to the VUCA world:   volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, calling for us to fully understand, moderate and embrace its complexities.  Even more ominous is the reference to the so-called brave new world which is leading every society to unchartered territories such as the very morally controversial in vitro technology which allows the creation of a three-parent superbaby: “By selecting the best embryo carrying the biological parents’ DNA and correcting any genetic mutations without destroying it, we stand at the cusp of revolutionizing family structures, marriages and child-parent relationships.” The Conference organizers could not have been more explicit in referring to issues which the large majority of drafters of the Philippine Constitution of 1987  held sacred and subsequently ratified by 80 percent of those who participated in the referendum.

              At the very beginning of this discourse, let me already go for the jugular and ask the question “Is in vitro fertilization  (IVF) consistent with the Constitution.  First, let us explain what is IVF?  The basic principle of IVF is the hormonal stimulation of female ovaries to create an optimum number of follicles, from which eggs are subsequently obtained.  The eggs thus removed are subsequently fertilized in the embryological laboratory by the sperm of the partner.  What is the intrinsic morality of this act? The answer given on the basis of natural law (regardless of religion) is the IVF is morally objectionable for a number of reasons:  the destruction of human embryos in the process of finding the “right” one; the danger to women and newborn infants, and the replacement of the marital act in procreation. Artificial insemination (which can ethically be applied to animals), in vitro fertilization and surrogate motherhood are immoral because they involve sexual acts among humans that are procreative, but not unitive.  IVF is morally objectionable because it leads to the massive destruction of embryonic life, an assault on the meaning of the conjugal act  and the treatment of the child as a product or commodity and not as a gift.

              Since the Philippine Constitution clearly states that life begins at conception, the embryo already has moral status as a human being.  Although this is also the traditional Christian view, it has already become a constitutional mandate since its incorporation into the Declaration of State Policies in the Philippine Constitution which provides that the State shall  equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. Since life begins at conception according to the Philippine Constitution, modern techniques used in assisted reproduction like IVF, ET, surrogate mothers and embryo cryopreservation are all considered unconstitutional.  As long as that provision remains in our Constitution,  the Philippine State must offer its protection to the human being starting with its first seconds of existence.  The State (like the Catholic Church) considers the zygote as persons and is against research on any type of human embryos.

              If the ending of the life of an embryo outside the womb of the mother goes against the Philippine Constitution, how much more would it be unconstitutional to abort a fully formed fetus after the female egg is fertilized by the male sperm.  An entire Article on the Family (XIV), Section 2 of Article II (State Policies) clearly declares:  “The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect the family as a basic autonomous social institution.  It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.  The natural and primary duty  of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the development of moral character shall receive the support of the Government.”

              As a lesson to those few in the Philippines who may want to amend the Constitution to allow abortion in the future (once the amendment process begins, there is no telling what provisions in the Constitution will be subject to questioning!), let me quote from a famous American Bishop, Robert Baron, about what ending the life of an unborn is in its most lurid and gory reality.   Before the recent healthy trend in a good number of States in the U.S. to ban abortion,  the Roe vs. Wade decision to allow the killing of the fetus only at the very early stage of gestation eventually led to the legitimization of the murder of a baby at birth.  In an article published in 2019 entitled “Bishop Barron:  Seeing abortion”  taken from Catholic Voice,  we read the following:  “The legal protocols now in effect in New York, Delaware, and a number of other states allowing for the butchering of a child in the womb at any point in his or her nine-month gestation—and indeed, on the clinic of hospital table, should the child by some miracle survive the abortion—have sickened much of the country….”

             "Unplanned, the story of Abby Johnson’s wrenching transition from director of a Planned Parenthood clinic to vocal opponent of abortion, has proven to be surprisingly a popular film, despite its rather grim theme and despite considerable institutional opposition….The film opens with the event that proved decisive to Abby Johnson herself.  As director and administrator of a Planned Parenthood clinic, she was certainly aware of what was happening on the premises, but she had rarely been involved in an actual abortion.  One afternoon, she was summoned to the operating room and asked to hold the device that allowed the doctor to see the ultrasound image of the child in the womb.  As the physician went about his work, Abby could clearly see the child resting comfortably and then reacting violently as a suctioning device was inserted into the womb.   To her horror, she then saw a tiny arm sucked off, only to reappear, moments later as a bloody soup in a catheter next to her.  As she watched, unable to take her eyes off of the horrific display, she saw the severely wounded baby continuing to evade the device, until a leg disappeared, then another arm, and finally the baby’s head.  And again, the remains of the living child surged like slush into the catheter.”

              Needless to say, Abby Johnson resolved to dissociate herself forever from Planned Parenthood.  The film, though gory it may be, made clear that Abby had heard arguments against abortion all of her life, for her parents  and husband were ardently and vocally pro-life, but she made the decision after she saw what it meant to end the life of an unborn child.  I hope that Filipino society does not have to go through the stage of first allowing such criminal murders of unborn babies before being once again converted to the pro-life cause upon experiencing what Abby saw on the operating table.    What bothers me is that the organization Planned Parenthood is very active in the Philippines in the so-called Reproductive Health movement.  

Part 2

              If the reader, like the former  Planned Parenthood Director Abby Johnson, feels like vomiting after reading the piece-by-piece killing of the baby being aborted in the account of Bishop Robert Baron, let me say that such a horrible scene was never contemplated even by the most heartless Americans when I was residing in the U.S. prior to the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court Roe vs. Wade decision allowing the aborting of the fetus in case of rape and limited to the first trimester of pregnancy.  Those who were vehemently against that decision already had enough common sense to predict that sooner or later, once you disregard the right to life of the fertilized ovum, there is no limit to what will be permitted in infanticide sooner or later. Their fears actually were confirmed by subsequent decisions of the courts that progressively allowed abortion at later stages of gestation until a baby about to be delivered by the mother could still be killed in such a horrible manner.  That is why, whatever our religion or no religion, Filipinos should never allow a constitutional amendment that will remove the provision that “the State shall equally protect the mother and the unborn.”  We should defend that provision literally with our lives if we don’t want to be a nation of murderers of infants in the way the U.S. has become because of the Roe Vs. Wade decision.  We should be wary about the presence of such international organizations like Planned Parenthood, the UN Population Commission and similar agencies pushing for what they euphemistically call “responsible parenthood” or “reproductive health.”   The worst kind of colonization in today’s circumstances is what has been called “ideological colonization” that can be surreptitiously introduced through so-called development aid programs.

              As one of the framers of the Philippine Constitution of 1987, I can authoritatively state that such a basic law of the land was written with the strong assumption that there are truths that are self-evident, that do not need to be supported by empirical evidence, whether from the physical or social sciences.  The sanctity of the family, the right to life, the right to the pursuit of happiness, the right to private property, the principle of subsidiarity, the principle of solidarity and the common good are all part of human nature. These truths are instilled in the mind of every human being, no matter how uneducated or illiterate.  They are part of what is commonly referred to as natural law.

              With very few exceptions (the leftist members of the Constitutional Commission of 1986 appointed by former President Corazon Aquino), the overwhelming majority of those who drafted the Constitution accepted the fact that there are truths that are based on human nature.  As fully explained by one of the most brilliant constitutionalists, the current Palawan Governor V. Dennis M. Socrates, in an article that appeared in the IBP Journal (April-September 2011), the sanctity of family and life proceeds from the natural-law thinking that is inherent to the Philippine Constitution of 1987. Let me summarize his lucid explanations.  He boils down the controversy to the pro-life vs. pro-choice debate, which in countries like the United States and practically all of Europe has been resolved in favor of the pro-choice proponents.  On one hand, according to Governor Socrates, pro-life thinking holds that the right to life demands respect and protection from pre-conception (marriage and the conjugal act)  through birth and education (family life), to its terminal stages (the aged and the dying).  The pro-choice proponents, however, take the opposite stand:  they argue that human life—and corollarily, the institutions of marriage and the family—may be subject to the free choices of individuals.  Pro-choice proponents assert the licitness of divorce, contraception, abortion, and so on.

              Governor Socrates suggests focusing on the wording of the article mandating equal protection to be given to the life of the mother and the life of the unborn.  The article, as cited in the first of this series, starts with “The State recognizes the sanctity of family life….”  He is struck by the term “sanctity” which ordinarily means holiness or union with God, thus articulating a straightforward acknowledgment of the family as something directly related to God the Creator.  He then brings up the issue of separation of Church and State.  Is it possible still to use “sanctity” in a secular, non-religious sense.  His answer is affirmative.  Because men and women of reason, from diverse cultures agree on the existence and providence of the Divine, it is possible to discuss sanctity to some extent from a natural, human point of view, as in natural-law thinking.  Only by invoking the existence of a natural law that applies to all human beings, regardless of religious beliefs, can one understand the many declarations contained in the Philippine Constitution of 1987 concerning the rights to life, liberty, happiness, freedom, etc. etc.

              Natural-law thinking understands human law, in the well-known definition of St. Thomas Aquinas as “an ordinance of reason for the common good promulgated by one who is charged with the community.”  Natural law thinking in jurisprudence teaches the existence of a set of norms (the natural moral law) higher than the norms of the legal system  (human positive law) and to which these latter must conform.  Thus, the legal system is a participation (by society through political authority) in the natural moral law.  The norms of the natural moral law derive from the truths of unchanging human nature and are discernable, albeit with difficulty, by human reason. Let me interject here a comment provoked by the national consternation concerning the large number of illiterate Filipino youth as evidenced by their very poor performance in international academic achievement tests.  As an Indian head of an NGO providing illiterate people with employable skills quipped:  “An illiterate person may not know how to read or write; but he is not stupid.”  Indeed, numerous illiterate people from among the poorest of the poor in our country can be taught many useful technical skills that people with the highest academic degrees may never be able to cultivate.  In the same vein, illiterate people still have the power of reasoning for them to understand the difference between good and evil!

              Governor Socrates goes on to cite the truths that can be discerned even by illiterate people.  Among them are that man is essentially a spiritual soul (the “form” or “formal cause”, which gives man the “act” of being man) in a material body (the “matter” or “material cause” which gives man the capacity to become man); that man comes into existence by a direct act of the Creator with the cooperation of the parents—procreation—in the “marital act” and the rearing and education of offspring (the “efficient cause”); and that human existence is ordained towards the “end” of eternal happiness—union with God or sanctity—by knowing, loving and serving his Creator ( the “final cause”).  From the very beginning of human history, even the most primitive people recognized, no matter how dimly,  the existence of a deity.

              Because of the natural law imprinted in every human being, human life is considered sacred or “holy” because it directly belongs to God from beginning to end.  In the same vein, the sanctity of the family lies in the intimate relation to human life whose cradle is precisely the family, the most basic unit of society and prior to the State. These are some of the truths that are considered self-evident in the Philippine Constitution.  

Part 3

              Except for a few (no more than two or three who need not be identified), the original 50 members of the Constitution Commission of 1986 adhered to the existence of a natural law imprinted in the mind of every human being.  The overwhelming majority were not suffering from what has been called the “dictatorship of moral relativism.”  It was also far from our minds then to adhere to what is now termed the “wok” culture that has infested many Western societies.  Starting with the legitimate condemnation of racial discrimination in Black America, this “woke” culture has now been transformed into a mindset that justifies the moral acceptance of all sorts of evils such as same-sex acts, petty thefts, drug addictions,  contempt for parental authority, etc. in the name of non-discrimination. Although it was never brought to a vote, it was assumed that most of us did not believe that truth is determined by the human mind or that it is decided by majority. It was clear to us that there are truths about the nature of human beings and human society that are based on unchanging and absolute truths, regardless of time and space.

 As Governor Socrates explains in his article on “Natural-Law Thinking in the Constitution” any philosophy of the legal system must, as a matter of course, define ‘law” according to its ‘ultimate causes.’ To the school of Legal Positivism, law is simply ‘the command of the sovereign’; to the Historical School of Jurisprudence,  law is to be ‘found (not made)’ in historical tradition; to the Sociological school, it is simply the ‘balancing of social interests’ or ‘social engineering’’ and to the ‘Realist’ view of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., it is “what judges in fact do.’  In contrast with these views, the natural law thinking which is presupposed by the Philippine Constitution can be defined, as St. Thomas Aquinas did, as “an ordinance of reason for the common good promulgated by one who is charged with the community.”

              The Declaration of Principles and the Statement of Policies found in the Philippine Constitution of 1987 cannot be understood without having recourse to the concept of natural law.  In formulating the various articles under these headings, it was clear to the majority of us who framed the Philippine Constitution that there exist a set of norms (the natural moral law) higher than the norms of the legal system (human positive law) and to which these latter must conform.  Thus, the entire legal system prevailing in any society is just a participation (by society through its political authority) in the natural moral law.  The norms of this natural moral law derive from the truths of human nature and are discernible, albeit with some difficulty, by human reason.  This fact had been demonstrated centuries ago by the Greek philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle who by reason alone, independent of any religious belief, arrived at the truths based on natural law.  That is why, when we were drafting the articles on the Declaration of Principles or State Policies, it did not occur to anyone of us to present empirical evidence that every human being has the right to life, liberty and happiness; that the family is the basic unit and foundation of society; that the  State “shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”        

              In fact, I was personally involved in making sure that the very concept of the common good was not defined in the Philippine Constitution the way it was in previous versions of our basic law, following the jurisprudence of the American Constitution up to the 1987 Philippine Constitution which referred to “general welfare”, instead of the common good. The general welfare jurisprudence prevailing till then conceived of the common good as the “greatest good for the greatest number” in society.  Through a series of interpolations by a defender of this prevailing jurisprudence, I was able to convince the majority of the Commissioners that this pragmatic definition taken from U.S. jurisprudence could lead in certain occasions to crimes against  humanity.  The one who interpolated me was a distinguished Muslim lawyer who will remain unnamed.    He was very zealous in defending “general welfare” jurisprudence because, according to him, if we changed the definition, numerous lawyers would be disoriented precisely because there was already an existing jurisprudence.  I refused to accept this shallow excuse and insisted on a different definition of the common good that does not involve the “greatest good for the greatest number” which allows moral or ethical truth to be determined by majority rule.

              Although I admitted that most debatable issues in human discourse may be legitimately determined by majority rule (e.g. form of government, election of political leaders, tax legislation, etc.), there are moral issues that cannot be left to majority voting.  At that time (1986), the Italians had a referendum in which the majority voted that it was permissible for a mother to kill the baby in her womb. I asked, the  interpolator if that majority vote justified the killing even of one baby.  He replied that it was an irrelevant issue. I, then, gave other hypothetical examples illustrating the danger of majority vote on ethical or moral issues.  I  told the honorable lawyer to imagine that during the time of Hitler’s Germany there was an equivalent of our polling institutions such as the Social Weather Station.  Suppose Hitler had a poll conducted asking the Germans if it was legitimate to exterminate the Jews from their midst.  Since the majority of the Germans were non-Jews, I asked the question that if the majority actually voted to support Hitler in his persecution of the Jews, would that majority opinion have  justified  the killing of even one Jew?  Since even this hypothetical case did not seem to move him to change his mind about the untenability of the majority vote in some specific moral cases, I decided to go for the jugular.  With all the finesse I could gather, I reminded him that he and his fellow Muslims were a small minority in the Philippine population.  I reminded him that we, the Christian majority do not always practise what we preach.  I then postulated the possibility that we go to a referendum and arrive at the horrible majority opinion that it was about time we remove our Muslim brothers from the face of the earth.  That finally convinced him to support my motion to define the common good as a “social order in which every individual is able to attain his or her fullest integral human development: economically, politically, culturally, socially, morally and spiritually.” An alternative definition, taken from the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church, is “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”

              To complete this discourse on the “Sanctity of Life” as protected by the Philippine Constitution, let me quote extensively from a Letter to the Editor of the Inquirer by another legal luminary and President of the Alliance for the Family Foundation Philippines, Inc. Maria Concepcion Noche:  “Abortion is illegal under any and all circumstances under the Philippine Constitution and statutes.  Abortion is not allowed even when the life of the mother is in danger, and for that matter, even when the life of the unborn is threatened.  Under the law, the life of the unborn and the life of the mother shall be equally protected because they are equally valuable…In a conflict situation between the life of the mother, the doctor is professionally and morally obliged to try to save both lives because both are his patients.  However, he can act in favor of one (not necessarily the mother) when it is medically impossible to save both, provided that no direct harm is intended to the other.  The intentional harm on the life of either is never justified to bring about the “good” effect.  If these principles are observed, the loss of the life of either the mother or the unborn that may result is not intentional and, therefore, unavoidable, and the doctor would not be guilty of abortion or murder.  This is what you call the double-effect principle which our Supreme Court has recognized.”  For comments, my email address is bernardo.villegas@uap.asia