NAGA CITY --- Pro-life advocates here are set to stage today a multi-sector prayer-rally to strongly oppose the reproductive health bill which they feared would eventually decriminalize abortion.

        Numbering about 5,000, the participants will gather at the city’s Plaza Quezon at 3:30 p.m. where a signature campaign will also be carried out as part of the Catholic church’s drive to exhaust all available means to oppose the bill now pending in Congress.

        The gathering will be participated in by students, parents, and members of different religious movements covered by the Archdiocese’s 75 parishes.

        Fr. William Santiago, director of Family Ministry in Caceres, said pro-life advocates will take turn in informing the public about the dangers of the proposed bill which contains vague provisions.

        Earlier, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) chided the proponents of the bill for their failure to include provisions penalizing women who undergo abortion.

        CBCP argued that if abortion is a crime, a woman suffering from post-abortion complications is obviously a party to the crime unless she is the victim of an involuntary miscarriage or forced abortion.

        “While the bill provides that a woman who undergoes abortion deserves to be treated as a medical case, she and others who took part in the abortion must be made to bear the legal consequences of their crime,” the CBCP statement said.

        Santiago said the bill seems inclined to decriminalize abortion through subterfuge, and create entry to legal abortion. He said Congress would eventually amend the bill to ensure safe practice of abortion.

        The Church and the different religious movements here and in the province expressed apprehension over the passing of the bill after its main proponent, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman claimed over the weekend that 25 to 30 percent of congressmen are supporting the ratification of the population and reproductive health bill.

        The bill is likewise regarded by its proponents led by Lagman as a tool to resolve the nation’s burgeoning population.

        Lagman was also quoted as saying that the authors of the bill are open to compromise certain provisions except for the ones that promotes universal access to contraception.

        The Church believes the universal access to contraception would mean employing artificial contraception including abortion as birth control method what foreign countries do.

        Santiago said among the speakers in the assembly is a female medical doctor who will enlighten the public about the harmful effects of the artificial contraception and a married couple who will testify that poverty has nothing to do with raising a big family and that taking or using artificial contraceptives is not the only way to fight poverty.

        More about the bill’s misleading claims will be exposed by the members of Kanlungan ng Buhay of the CBCP-Family and Life Commission in front of the public and placard-bearing students coming from different schools here and the adjoining municipalities.

        The burning of the effigy of a man holding a copy of the bill that Rep. Lagman that looks like Rep. Lagman will take place after the end of the talks.

        Bishop Jose Rojas, D.D. of the Prelature of Libmanan will talk on the bill’s immoral implication and the challenge of the Church to be followed by a concelebrated mass led by Most Rev. Msgr. Leonardo Z. Legazpi, O.P., D.D.