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
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