I READ the “Lesson Guides on Adolescent Reproductive Health.” It contains the prototype lesson plans on adolescent reproductive health concepts that have been the subject of recent controversy. After going through the material designed for high school English, Pilipino, Health Education, Araling Panlipunan (Social Studies), Science (Biology) and Technology and Livelihood Education, I couldn’t figure out what the kerfuffle was all about. In fact, I was rather impressed with the output, developed by education experts with funds from a UN agency. I didn’t get even a whiff of an impression that the material, expressly or impliedly, was encouraging premarital sex -- in fact, the structural message was the opposite.

Thinking I must have missed something, I reread it, and caught the word “condom” (which I missed the first time probably because the two times it was mentioned was toward the bottom of the same page). Both times, the word was used in connection with the prevention of Sexually

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Transmitted Infections (STI), which was discussed in the Biology lesson plan. I still didn’t see what the shouting was all about. So I asked my youngest (Katrina, a lawyer) to please go over the document, and tell me what she thought of the material. She read it carefully, pointed out some of the weaknesses, but shared my impression that it was pretty good, helpful stuff for its target audience.

So that’s the bottom line. The Department of Education’s module is pretty good stuff. And given the problems we face -- namely, (1) increasing sexual activity, with premarital sex, among the 15 to 24 years of age, rising from 18 percent in 1994 to 23 percent in 2002, and Metro Manila showing the highest at 35 percent, and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao the lowest at 12 percent; (2) the same age group accounting for 17 percent of all cases of induced abortion in the country; and (3) teenage pregnancies accounting for three out of four maternal deaths -- it is high time that the ignorance of adolescents be addressed in a way that will allow them to make an informed choice. Which is what the module tries to do. And I am pretty sure that anyone who reads the material will agree that it is a pretty effective way of extending that information and encouraging adolescents to make the better choices. Unless, of course, one is predisposed to find fault from the beginning, and is willing to use imagination to do so.

It is not perfect, certainly -- but neither does it deserve the savage criticism leveled against it, specifically by one Angelita Miguel-Aguirre, M.D., in a letter to acting Education Secretary Fe Hidalgo -- which letter sparked the whole kerfuffle. And the material surely does not deserve to be relegated to the dustbin -- as it has been -- by Secretary Hidalgo, who ordered the material to be withdrawn upon orders (this is grapevine) from Malacañang.

Who is this Dr. Aguirre, whose letter caused the demise of a much-needed program? Her letter, written on a stationery of the Makati Medical Center Department of Medicine, shows her as “Training Officer and Chair, Committee on Bioethics, Department of Medicine, Makati Medical Center and Makati Medical Society.” But she also has been identified in the media as being with the Human Life International, a core group of the Episcopal Commission on Family and Life of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

So I also read Dr. Aguirre’s letter. Carefully. And I must say that Luz Tancangco, who has earned the reputation of jumping to conclusions across chasms of illogic, may have more than met her match in the field of bioethics.

Let me illustrate. Aguirre begins her letter by claiming that the module is actively promoting “value free sex education” (emphasis hers). “It claims to foster values, restraint and responsibility, yet it implies that sexual activity out of marriage maybe (sic) acceptable for as long as it does not result to (sic) ‘unwanted pregnancy’ and STI by protected sex.” In other words, she is damning the material not for what it shows directly (a lot of the lesson plans involve discussing or illustrating values, or illustrate rather graphically what happens when a certain choice is made as in pictures of STIs, or disadvantages of “going steady”) but for what it implies. And the implication she draws is weak: that premarital sex may be acceptable (as opposed to is acceptable). That’s really stretching.

Aguirre’s exaggerations dot the letter. Condoms, in the Department of Education module, are mentioned in the context of STIs (by the way, abstinence is also included in that list of preventive actions—the safest sex being no sex). No claim is made that condoms assure safe sex. The description is “safer” sex. And no one, with the possible exception of Aguirre, can deny that using condoms is more effective than not using condoms at all to prevent STIs). What is more, nowhere in the module is the use of condoms for birth control even mentioned (in fact, birth control methods is not even a topic). Yet Aguirre’s letter makes a federal case out of it.

Then there is Aguirre’s assertion that the rationale for the module is supposed to be -- and she quotes -- “overpopulation and poverty.” Again, this is nowhere in the module.

And yet, because of these exaggerations and accusations, fanned in the media (where the assertion was made that the program would be implemented nationally this school year), the pilot testing of these modules has been stopped, thus condemning our young to ignorance and its consequences.