That RH opponents rallied to defend an obvious and inexcusable transgression betrays their true intention of making Sotto's plagiarism case a proxy war on the RH bill.
Calling out Sotto on plagiarism is not a distraction from the RH Bill discussion because there’s no RH Bill discussion to distract from. The debates are over.
Whether or not the RH bill is made into law, Filipinos have the right to use contraception. More precisely, they have the Hohfeldian privilege-right, which means they have no duty not to use contraception because there is no law prohibiting them from doing so.
The following is a timeline (a web log, if you will) of the events on Sotto’s apparent plagiarism.
Updated as of September 7, 7:20 AM (added the accusation from Feminists for Choice blogger of plagiarism against Sotto)
Senator Tito Sotto suffered a personal loss with the death of his son. We understand his grief. What we cannot understand is why he chose to rely on an unknown blogger to explain his son's death.
Right before asserting that he lost a child due to contraceptives, Sotto said he has scientific proof about the “damaging effects to children born from mothers who were using contraceptives prior to their pregnancy.” He then went on a lengthy explanation about gut imbalance, opportunistic flora, exposure of the fetus to toxins and zinc depletion.
His scientific proof was copied entirely and almost word-for-word from an article by a blogger calling herself “Sarah, the Healthy Home Economist.”