LA SOLIDARIDAD: RH Bill: The Issue is Maternal Health Hazards and Legalized Plunder

Senator Sotto’s recent wave of plagiarism is an entirely separate issue from the merits of rejecting the Rh Bill.

I certainly disapprove of Sen Sotto’s oversight when he failed to cite his data sources. Or when his speeches merely translated instead of rephrasing a JFK speech. Sotto’s pro-RH detractors are now calling for Sotto’s head and asking for his removal from the Senate. If the pro-RH reply to legitimate opposition is to silence the opposition by removing their representative, people need to take cognizance of this brazen assault on liberty and private property – the taxpayer’s wallet.

IT’S ABOUT THE MONEY! TAXPAYERS’ MONEY

So what if the statement was plagiarized?

Now here’s some historical tidbits from Google University, as opposed to Wanbol Univesity.

JFK’ so called “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” was PLAGIARIZED from a book quoted by Gen Omar Bradley – “New Frontier”.

The “New Frontier” was written by Kahlil Gibran.

JFK was quoting from The New Frontier which Gibran had written thirty six years earlier:

“Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country?”

This however is also disputed because evidence unearthed by other Kennedy scholars long ago show that, in a story carried by the New York Times

the provenance of the speech’s most famous words, the “ask not” portion, has a less inspiring history.
The words hark back at least to Kennedy’s years at Choate, the Connecticut prep school, where the headmaster regularly reminded his charges that what mattered most was “not what Choate does for you, but what you can do for Choate.”

JFK’s ownership of the quote is also disputed as having been uttered by Gen Omar Bradley who took the quote from the Roman Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero in turn likely heard it first from the Juvenal, a Roman poet and satirist.

Argue who came up with the statement or argue the factuality of the statement?

Does it matter really whether it was JFK, Gen Omar Bradley, Cicero or Juvenal who said the statement first – or whether the statement is true or not? Citing JFK however provides it more “star power”, thus the JFK brand stuck to the quote.
While people argue who quoted it first and consider it as gospel truth, Milton Friedman had another take on the JFK quote.In the introduction to Friedman’s 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom, Milton wrote
IN A MUCH QUOTED PASSAGE in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” It is a striking sign of the temper of our times that the controversy about this passage centered on its origin and not on its content. Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, “what you can do for your country” implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served. He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather “What can I and my compatriots do through government” to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.

Is Sotto’s “Plagiarized Statement” Factually Incorrect or Factually TRUE?

Which brings us back to the issue of Sotto’s “plagiarism” – vis-a-vis his opposition to the RH bill on the grounds that contraceptives specifically “the pill” causes long term damage to women’s health and the state therefore should not fund programs that cause health damage to its citizens.

Whether the statement was issued by Sarah Pope, by Sotto, JFK, Cicero, Pokwang, or Bentot – the statement will stand on its own merit or demerit.

What then are the facts? The findings of a peer-reviewed scientific journal – the Journal of Sexual Medicine which were published in Medical News

Oral contraceptives have been the preferred method of birth control because of their ease of use and high rate of effectiveness. However, in some women oral contraceptives have ironically been associated with women’s sexual health problems and testosterone hormonal problems. Now there are data that oral contraceptive pills may have lasting adverse effects on the hormone testosterone.
The research, in an article entitled: “Impact of Oral Contraceptives on Sex Hormone Binding Globulin and Androgen Levels: A Retrospective Study in Women with Sexual Dysfunction” published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, involved 124 premenopausal women with sexual health complaints for more than 6 months. Three groups of women were defined: i) 62 “Oral Contraceptive Continued-Users” had been on oral contraceptives for more than 6 months and continued taking them, ii) 39 “Oral Contraceptive Discontinued-Users” had been on oral contraceptives for more than 6 months and discontinued them, and iii) 23 “Never-Users of Oral Contraceptives” had never taken oral contraceptives. SHBG values were compared at baseline (groups i, ii and iii), while on the oral contraceptive (groups i and ii), and well beyond the 7 day half-life of sex hormone binding globulin at 49-120 (mean 80) days and more than 120 (mean 196) days after discontinuation of oral contraceptives (group ii).
The researchers concluded that SHBG values in the “Oral Contraceptive Continued-Users” were 4 times higher than those in the “Never-Users of Oral Contraceptives”. Despite a decrease in SHBG values after discontinuation of oral contraceptive pill use, SHBG levels in “Oral Contraceptive Discontinued-Users” remained elevated when compared to “Never-Users of Oral Contraceptives”. This led to the question of whether prolonged exposure to the synthetic estrogens of oral contraceptives induces gene imprinting and increased gene expression of SHBG in the liver in some women who have used the oral contraceptives.
Dr. Claudia Panzer, an endocrinologist in Denver, CO and lead author of the study, noted that “it is important for physicians prescribing oral contraceptives to point out to their patients potential sexual side effects, such as decreased desire, arousal, decreased lubrication and increased sexual pain. Also if women present with these complaints, it is crucial to recognize the link between sexual dysfunction and the oral contraceptive and not to attribute these complaints solely to psychological causes.”

The work is the product of 7 years of scientific research (not a False Asia survey of Bentot’s relatives) among women with sexual dysfunction who used the pill and whose problems continued even after using the pill.

With 31 million women from the age of 15 and 64 – public funding of the pill can make women’s maternal health problems worse – unless the bill is stopped for good.

For short – it is not enough to reject or accept Sotto’s statement because it was plagiarized. Rather it should be accepted or rejected on the basis of whether the statement is true or not. And as the facts would have it – the statement is TRUE – use of the pill causes long-term damage to women.

That was the science.

Why Justify Public Funding of a Public Hazard?

So why insist on public funding for a program that causes a clear and present health hazard to citizens? Plain and simple – it’s all about the money.

Tongressman Lagman and his fellow Tongressmen and Senatongs are salivating at the prospect of having a larger prok barrel kitty to demonstrate their “love for the poor”.

The thing is you can’t show “love for the poor” if there aren’t any poor folks around – thus Tongressman Lagman can’t have measures such as economic liberalization which actually generates jobs and economic opportunities which lift the poor out of poverty.

The seductive lure of Lagman’s RH bill rhetoric

As pointed out by the French economist Frederick Bastiat more than two hundered years ago

Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation.
This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat again: These two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.

As Sotto’s is being pilloried for plagiarism – it is really because of plagiarism or because he stood up against legalized plunder? As Bastiat noted,

Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim — when he defends himself — as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder,

The RH Bill is one plundering legislative sonnuvabitch. How is it so? Bastiat again laid it down in clear terms:

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.
The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.
Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.

Funding the RH bill will lead to a repeat of the equally fraudulent plundering program called the CCT subsidy.

I have nothing against people taking contraceptives – as long as they use their own money to do so – and consciously make the decision to take the risk and consequences of their actions. I will not be a party to plunder or cause harm to my fellow citizens.

I ask not what my country can do for me – I ask what I can do for myself to secure my personal freedom, liberty, and pursuit of personal happiness – no more no less.

Reject the RH Bill. Eliminate Subsidies. Eliminate the Pork Barrel. Downsize Government. Open the Economy. Reduce taxes. Eliminate protectionist regulations.