MIRIAM SUPPORTS CABRAL ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, an educated lay theologian, said that she supports the position taken by Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral favoring reproductive health.

“I take the position that there is an individual right to use artificial contraception, such as condoms,” she said.

Santiago said that the Catholic insistence on natural contraception is outdated and archaic, and explained that Catholic teaching is evolutionary, for example in the cases of religious liberty and of usury.

“The Catholic religious should get real,” Santiago said, recalling that the natural-law mentality of the Church in the Middle Ages prohibited many advances in medical science.

In 1966, the Papal Commission majority report argued that the conjugal act must be viewed not as an isolated reality, but in the larger context of human love, family life, and education, among other things.

“This is the principle of totality. Sexuality is not meant only for procreation,” Santiago said.

She said that the final report of the Papal Birth Control Commission and the Vatican 2 insisted that the decision to have children must take into account the welfare of the spouses and their children, the material and spiritual conditions of the times, their state in life, the interests of the family group, of society, and of the Church.

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