Fr. Bernas: Contraceptive devices are not 'anti-life' CANDICE MONTENEGRO, GMA News 09/26/2011 | 01:50 PM Influential Jesuit priest and constitutional lawyer Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ said that family planning as proposed in the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill is not necessarily "anti-life", putting him at odds with conservative Catholics who oppose the bill. In a column published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Monday, Bernas sought to clarify what being "anti-life" precisely means, for the term has been used "in the most pejorative way" in current RH bill debates. "It is used in the sense of being against existing life. Murder, in other words," he said. However, he said that in the currently toxic debate on contraceptives, "anti-life" could be construed to include people who do not want to add more human life to an already crowded population. He cited for example a married couple who decide to abstain from acts th...

Unfazed Cabral orders $8m worth of condoms Manila Standard Today THE government is using $8 million from the $19-million Global Fund grant to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria to buy condoms from the United Nations, Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral said Sunday. “If it’s from the UN, a condom costs only P1.50 to P2, but if we are going to get it from commercial sources, it will cost P7 up to P10,” Cabral told a health forum sponsored by the Philippine College of Physicians. She said the Health Department had P63 million last year to help prevent the spread of AIDS, but it had so far spent nothing to buy condoms. “We are still using funds from the international aid agency called the Global Fund whose biggest donor is Bill Gates [to buy condoms],” Cabral said. Catholic bishops slammed Cabral and asked President Gloria Arroyo to sack her after she distributed condoms in Sampaloc, Manila, on Valentine’s Day eve, saying she was immoral, but Cabral said they could not stop her from campai...