Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines HQ

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has called for a ban on condom advertisements in public places, in print, and broadcast media, saying these commercials “weaken the moral fiber” of the youth.

The “multi-million dollar condom business… heavily targets the adolescent market, at the expense of morality and family life,” the CBCP said in a statement posted on its website on Wednesday.

The announcement came after the Department of Health distributed condoms last month.

“Condom advertisements should be banned on television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, and public places, as they desensitize the youth’s delicate conscience and weaken their moral fiber as future parents,” CBCP president Bishop Nereo Odchimar said in the same statement.

Odchimar also called on the Department of Health (DOH) to require condom manufacturers to place a government warning saying that “condoms may fail to protect from AIDS [Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome] and other sexually transmitted diseases” on the packaging of these artificial contraceptives.

“Consumer groups should insist on the right to know the real characteristics of products they use, and that corresponding labels be conspicuously displayed in packaging,” he said.

The CBCP president also maintained that the use of condoms, which is currently being promoted by the DOH, does not stop but contributes to the further spread of AIDS.

“Given its high failure rate, the condom cannot really put a stop to AIDS. Moreover, by creating a false sense of security, it condones and encourages promiscuity outside of marriage, and hence contributes to the further spread of AIDS,” he said.

The health department’s move to distribute condoms last Valentine’s Day for AIDS awareness was considered “immoral,” by the bishops.

The department said that it had recorded two cases per day of the deadly disease last year.

But Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral defended her department’s condom distribution efforts, and criticized the Catholic Church by saying that it should share the blame for the government’s failure to stem the rising number of AIDS cases in the country.

In the same statement, Odchimar also asked the government to re-channel all funding involved in promoting condoms to efforts in fighting other diseases such as cancer, influenza and tuberculosis, and to the provision of basic needs such as food and medicine.

“It is unjust that the taxes of the people including Catholics are used for purposes against their moral beliefs,” the bishop said.

Condom distributor to continue its advocacy

In the meantime, one of the companies which distribute condoms in the Philippines said that it will “remain supportive of its advocacy to educate people so that they will make informed choices.”

“We will continue to provide products and information that are accessible and affordable to the poorer segments of the population,” Jojo Ampeloquio, DKT Philippines Inc.’s head of product development told GMANews.TV in a phone interview.

Besides distributing Trust condoms, DKT Philippines Inc. also sells oral and injectable contraceptives, its website says.

It is also engaged in daily community activities “all across the country” which promote family planning, Ampeloquio said.

The Philippines’ National Family Planning Program is even discussed in our community activities, he added, refusing to name locations of these communities.

He added that condom use in the Philippines has risen at lower than double digit levels, which he considers “disappointing.”

Increase in condom use is “at a rate very much lower than the HIV [human immunodeficiency virus] prevalence.”

Ampeloquio also disputed Catholic bishops’ allegations that the company’s products are of inferior quality.

“I cannot speak for products of our competitors but our products are very affordable and are of high quality,” he said.

Condom ad ban may violate free speech

In Dumaguete, Liberal Party presidential bet Sen. Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III said that the condom ad ban may violate the constitutional right to free speech.

Although he intends to study the matter further, banning such ads may touch on the freedom of speech, which is enshrined under Article III, Section 4 of the Philippine Constitution.

Calling for a condom ad ban involves “issues of freedom of speech among other things,” he said. “The Catholic Church may have its concerns about morality but the state also needs to ensure the health of its citizens.”

The only factors that can trigger such a ban involve offending morals and questions of obscenity, he said.

Aquino added that he will not likely bow to the Catholic Church’s call to stop giving out contraceptives.

Individuals who make informed decisions to use contraceptives see nothing wrong with it, he said. – with Robert JA Basilio Jr./HGS, GMANews.TV

First, we need to keep in mind that over the past 40 years, there has been a subtle change in the way we as a culture regard human life.  Within this period, we can discern two competing attitudes towards human life; the one is the Sanctity of Life mentality, which at one time dominated the medical profession, the other is the Quality of Life mentality, which seems to be more widespread today.

The Sanctity of Life mentality regards individual human life as holy, sacred, and of immeasurable value, regardless of the physical and/or mental quality of the person.  You can place a price on things, but not on human persons who are created by God and who are called by God, each one, to union with Him in the unimaginable joy of eternal life in heaven.

The Quality of Life mentality does not see individual human life as holy, sacred, of immeasurable value, but actually places a value on individual human life on the basis of its physical and/or mental quality, as we would place a price on a product.  We value computers and automobiles on the basis of their quality, whether they function well, whether they are useful and efficient.  The Quality of Life mentality places a higher value on a human life that is of greater physical and mental quality, and a lesser value on individual human life that is of lesser physical and mental quality.  And so a handicapped child would be of less value than a healthy child.  In this framework, human persons are valued for their productivity, their ability to be of some use to society as a whole, not for their own sake.

The Christian world has always rejected this.  Every individual person has been created by God, each one of us, for Himself, not for our parents, not for the State, but for eternal union with Himself, because He loves us individually, and He loves us as if there is only one of us.  God entrusts children to parents, but first and foremost, they belong to God.

Of course God calls each person to serve the common good of the civil community to the extent of his ability, but each person has been given life for his own sake.  And Christ is mysteriously united to every individual person, because that same God who created us joined a human nature and with it redeemed us all.  Christ sacrifices himself so that we might have life.  But those who belong to the culture of death have the reverse attitude; they believe it is acceptable to sacrifice individual human life in order to make their own temporary lives here more convenient.

This attitude of the culture of death spread rapidly after the legalization of abortion, and many social critics predicted that infanticide would soon follow–which is the deliberate starvation and neglect of handicapped children whose lives are deemed not worth living.  We saw this come to pass in the famous Baby Doe case back in April of 1982 in Bloomington, Indiana.  Infanticide has been happening ever since, here in Canada as well as elsewhere in Europe.

Critics also pointed out that the next target, after infants, will be the terminally ill and the elderly.  To help this along, we have seen a gradual redefining of the terms, in particular “murder”.  The western world has always understood murder to be the intentional killing of another human being.  That the murdered victim wanted to die was and is entirely irrelevant.  If I shoot a student who asked me to end his life, with his own gun, that he willed to die does not change the fact that I carried out an act with the intent to bring an end to his life.  That is murderous.  But what is happening today is that murder is being defined as killing someone against his/her will.

We of course do not accept this.  My will does not alter the value of my life.  Human life itself is sacred, intrinsically good, whether the person is sick, dying, terminally ill, whether he wants to live or not, whether he is mentally ill, depressed, or mentally handicapped, or quadriplegic.

Types of Euthanasia

There are two types of euthanasia, active and passive.  Active euthanasia is death by commission.  A person is given a lethal injection, for example, or the doctor mixes up a lethal cocktail for the patient to drink.  Passive euthanasia is death by omission.  A person dies because a certain medical treatment is omitted or withdrawn.

Active euthanasia is very simple from a moral point of view.  It is never justified, because it always amounts to murder.  It is the intentional destruction of human life, which is intrinsically good and of immeasurable value, regardless of the condition of the patient.  Passive euthanasia, however, can sometimes be justified, depending on the circumstances.  Here is where we have to tread carefully.  At this point we need to distinguish between two types of treatment: extraordinary and ordinary treatment.

Extraordinary treatment is any medical treatment that is a serious burden on the patient either physically, psychologically, emotionally, or even financially, etc.  Ordinary treatment is any medical treatment that is not a serious burden on the patient physically, or psychologically, or emotionally, or financially.

Traditional medical ethics and Catholic teaching have always taught that one is obligated to use ordinary treatment to preserve human life.  But one is not obligated to use extraordinary treatment to preserve human life.  If a treatment is a serious burden on the patient in one of the aforementioned ways and he refuses it because it is seriously burdensome, he is not thereby intending his own death.  He is accepting his death as a side effect of refusing a seriously burdensome treatment.  Suppose a doctor were to tell a person that he has six months to live, but that with a treatment that carries seriously painful or psychologically repugnant side effects, his life can be extended for an extra two years or so.  A person does not necessarily have an obligation to consent to it.  Again, what the person intends is not necessarily the ending of his own life, but the ending or impeding of a medical treatment that is seriously burdensome in some way.  Death is a side effect of removing such treatment, and death is accepted, not intended.

But some people omit ordinary treatment so that the patient will die.  We saw this in Missouri, with the Nancy Cruzan case.  The parents pushed to have the feeding tube removed, not because it was a serious burden, but because they couldn’t stand to see their daughter in a persistent vegetative state.   The tube was removed so that she would die.  Her death was intended, and this is murder.

We need to also be careful of what some call extraordinary treatment.  High tech medical equipment is not necessarily extraordinary treatment.  The definition of extraordinary is such that what is ordinary here in Canada might very well be extraordinary in the United States.  As circumstances change, so too might the status of a medical treatment.  What is ordinary treatment for a young 40-year-old, such as a form of chemotherapy, might constitute extraordinary treatment for a 77-year-old man whose body may not be able to recover as well as that of a younger man.

Performing CPR on a young teenager whose heart has stopped is usually ordinary treatment.  A young man can recover from the injuries to his rib cage resulting from CPR, but an 86-year-old grandmother in a Palliative Care Unit who has already been resuscitated once before might find the physical side effects of CPR far too burdensome.  Her decision in favour of a Do Not Resuscitate Order is not necessarily suicidal.  Rather, she is accepting her own death.  She intends to be delivered from a treatment that she finds seriously burdensome physically.  That, of course, is very different from removing all treatment because one does not wish to live with a disease, or one does not want a child who is disabled.

Those who promote euthanasia will often use the words “serious burden”.  If we look closely at what exactly is the serious burden, however, we see that it is not the medical treatment at all, but the condition of the patient.  It is never justified to intentionally bring an end to human life in order to relieve one of a burdensome existence.  To do so is to do evil to achieve good.  Our obligation is to love our patients, not for our sake, but for theirs, to care for them even when they cannot thank us or when they are not apparently aware of us.  Our duty is to make them as comfortable as possible, to reduce pain as much as possible, even if such pain management has, as an undesirable side effect, the shortening of a person’s life.  In this case, we accept that side effect.  But we must not eliminate the pain by intentionally eliminating the patient.

Individual human life is intrinsically good, holy, created by God and of immeasurable value, and it is to be revered absolutely.  Much of the darkness that covers this world is rooted in our refusal to love individual human life absolutely and for its own sake.  But life will be brighter for all of us when we begin to take concrete steps to reverse this trend.

Doug McManaman is a Deacon and a Religion and Philosophy teacher at Father Michael McGivney Catholic Academy in Markham, Ontario, Canada. He is currently the President of the Canadian Fellowship of Catholic Scholars

Copyright © 2009 Doug McManaman

Carmen Sapienza, a geneticist at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, is studying two groups of children—one comprising those conceived naturally, the other made up of children conceived via assisted reproductive technology—to identify epigenetic (changes in gene expression caused by molecular mechanisms other than mutations in the DNA sequence itself) differences among them. He is particularly interested in a chromosomal modification called “DNA methylation,” research he presented February 22 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “We found that 5 to 10 percent of these chromosome modifications were different in children born through assisted reproduction, and this altered the expression of nearby genes,” Sapienza says. Several of the genes whose expression differed between the two groups have been implicated in chronic metabolic disorders, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Because we have identical DNA in each of our cells, our bodies have mechanisms, such as DNA methylation, to control which genes are expressed in certain cell types—a process called genomic imprinting. When a methyl group (a carbon atom with three hydrogen atoms attached) binds to a cytosine molecule (one of the four nucleotides that make up DNA), it tells the cell’s transcription machinery not to transcribe that gene. “It’s important, because all the same genes can’t be expressed in every cell,” Sapienza explains. “DNA methylation in the kidney is different from DNA methylation in the liver,” he says. That’s what makes each organ unique.

But the mechanism isn’t perfect: “If you look at tumors, they tend to have hypomethylation overall, but hypermethylation in some genes,” Sapienza says. “If you look in the normal population and ask what fraction of people have [a defect in methylation in the gene encoding insulin-like growth factor 2] it’s about 5 percent. But if you go to the [gastrointestinal] clinic and pick out all the people with colon cancer, well now it’s like a third.”

The first clues that assisted reproduction was causing changes in methylation and gene expression came from animal cloning studies back in 2001, Sapienza says. “They realized that in vitro fertilization resulted in large offspring syndrome [distinguished by a large, dysfunctional placenta] and heart defects,” he says. “When you use animal models and do the things that are commonly done in assisted reproduction, the answer is yes—it affects DNA methylation.”

Defects in methylation also cause the rare chromosomal disorders Angelman syndrome and Beckwith–Wiedemann syndrome—both of these complex congenital afflictions are characterized by abnormal birth weight. Their risk increases as much as fivefold with assisted reproduction—jumping from one in 15,000–20,000 to one in 4,000, Sapienza says.

Whether it’s the reproductive technology or some by-product of infertility causing the methylation defects is still unknown, but Sapienza plans to tease out the answer in future studies. “A fraction of people who have children using assisted reproductive technology were fertile prior to tubal ligation. You could compare their children to those born to infertile parents to determine whether fertility was in question. That’s the way were going try to do it,” he says. He didn’t speculate as to which is the more likely culprit, but said that many things, such as gene mutations, could cause defects in methylation that might result in infertility. “Assisted reproduction technology subverts those [defects],” he says.

Sapienza says the next step is to repeat the study looking at more genes. The present study examined nearly 800, but he would like to look at all 54,000. He also hopes to monitor these children long-term to determine whether they have higher rates of obesity or diabetes down the road. He says the goal is not to make parents worry, but rather to make people aware of their genetic predispositions and encourage them to stay on top of their health.

A study last year found 20 percent of women using the abortion drug face medical complications.

Planned Parenthood CEO Cynthia Pappas informed media outlets the abortion business will sell the abortion drug to women whose pregnancies are not yet at the ninth week.

Pappas said the coming retirement of more abortion practitioners makes it so Planned Parenthood needs to look more closely at increasing access to the dangerous abortion drug. She also indicated the decision makes abortion more available to rural women.

The Register Guard newspaper also indicates Pappas said nurse practitioners working at Planned Parenthood centers will be able to dispense the abortion drug even though the FDA recommends that it be given out under the supervision of a licensed physician.

With 28,000 customers and eight centers from Eugene to Ashland, Pappas will likely sell a large number of the abortion drugs, which come in a two part process that first starves the unborn child to death and then expels the body of the dead baby.

Oregon Right to Life Executive Director Gayle Atteberry told the newspaper she was disappointed to learn the abortion drug is coming to that part of the state and that it kills an unborn child in the same way as a surgical abortion.

“We’re totally opposed to that. It kills a baby just as much as a surgical abortion does,” she said.

Because Oregon does not have a parental involvement law, Atteberry worries pregnant teenagers may be more likely to have an abortion because the abortion drug makes it easier for them to hide their pregnancy and abortion from their parents.

In fact, in 2009, a high school basketball coach near Portland was charged with five counts of sexual abuse involving a 17-year-old girl he oversaw as a coach. Police arrested Howard Avery, 51, and charged him with three counts of sexual abuse and other charges.

The court documents make it clear that the sexual acts were done without consent and involve statutory rape since the girl is underage.

The acts weren’t the first time since Avery admitted to the Oregonian newspaper in years past that he had sexual relationships with other students.

He said he had a sexual relationship with one student in the 1990s and paid for her to have an abortion when she became pregnant as a result.

But Pappas claimed the abortion business urges teens to contact their parents — even though undercover videos show they have helped conceal cases of sexual abuse and statutory rape.

In Oregon in 2007, 12,000 women had abortions.