MANILA, Philippines – Internationally acclaimed singer-actress Lea Salonga was enraged at the ordinance put out by barangay officials in Ayala Alabang prohibiting the sale of contraceptives without prescription and at restraining sex education in schools within their jurisdiction.
 
After bringing up the issue on Twitter on Feb. 24 and engaging her followers in a discussion, Salonga, a staunch supporter of the highly-debated and controversial Reproductive Health (RH) Bill and a resident in the said barangay in Muntinlupa City, expounded on her opinion via a blog entry in her official website.
 
“Upon reading the ordinance, I was instantly outraged. What right, constitutional or otherwise, does another human being, plus an entire barangay, have to what I practice in the privacy of my bedroom? No one has a say in how my husband and I express ourselves sexually, or what contraceptive measures we decide to employ, or not employ,” she wrote.
 
She added that she “[detests] being told what to do,” particularly on matters “as personal and as private as this.”
 
Officials behind the issuance of the Barangay Ordinance 01-2011 (“Ordinance Providing for the Safety and Protection of the Unborn Child”), which was issued last Jan. 3,  said that contraceptives “may kill children and injure the health of women who use them,” and promote premarital sex, which in turn may engender “more fatherless children, more single mothers, more poverty, and more abortions.”
 
They even declared that the use of contraceptives is “unconstitutional” because “they promote and sanction immoral sexual congresses among the unmarried and especially among the young, thereby contradicting the Constitutional injunction that the State ‘shall promote and protect … the physical, moral, spiritual, intellectual and social well-being of the youth.”
 
The Tony award winner, however, said that the ordinance undermines the benefits that sex education, and the RH Bill in general, can do for society. She highlighted instances when sex education can offer reliable help to rape victims, women who are having trouble with pregnancy, people who contacted sexually transmitted diseases, as well as those who may have other sexual inquiries and reproductive health problems.
 
Serious considerations must be also taken amid the call for the free distribution of condoms and birth control pills among the poor, Salonga stated.
 
“How do we know or not know that the distributed products won’t be resold in order to buy food? Without the proper reproductive health education to go along with the products, will people that have never used contraception before know how to use them properly?” she said.
 
The 40-year-old thespian urged for more discussions on the RH bill amid criticisms against it.
 
“People going against it because of a few controversial paragraphs isn’t enough of a reason to push it down completely. It’s like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Let the discussions continue...” she said as a parting shot.
 
Meanwhile, outside the recent online remarks of Salonga, recent reports stated that Muntinlupa Mayor Aldrin San Pedro has met with Barangay Ayala Alabang officials and has ordered the revision of the ordinance as some of its provisions are said to be contradictory to existing laws.