First, let me extend a very warm welcome to the many new Filipino readers that have discovered this blog in the past 24 hours. My husband is from Australia, so I do get down to that part of the world on occasion and I hope to visit your beautiful country at some point in the future.
It is great to have you here, although the circumstances of our meeting are, to say the least, unusual.
It seems one of your esteemed Senators, Tito Sotto, plagiarized a blog post I wrote on February 23, 2011 entitled How The Pill Can Harm Your Future Child’s Health, lifting entire sections of the article basically word for word that was delivered in a speech to the Senate Floor regarding the possible passage of the highly controversial Reproductive Health Bill.
What’s worse, Senator Sotto is denying the charge of plagiarism, saying in an interview with ABS-CBN:
“Why would I quote the blogger? I was quoting Natasha McBride.”
Nice touch Senator. Â You almost had me convinced you were a nice guy with the tears and all.
Many of your citizens have emailed me assuring me that was a put on, and I’m starting to think they are right.
A thief is a thief, Mr. Senator. Â Denying it doesn’t get you off the hook; it just makes you a lying thief.
On the bright side, I am thrilled that your lapse of moral judgment has brought much-needed attention to the fact that the birth control pill can have devastating consequences to a woman’s long term health and possibly those of her children and even grandchildren.  Gut dysbiosis is a serious condition that has multi-generational consequences that women need to be educated about and completely aware of before making the very personal decision to use them.
It was indeed brave of you to take this controversial position. Â Kudos to you for that.
By the way, I am truly sorry for the loss of your son.
As the mother of two sons myself, I can only imagine the pain and devastation you have felt from such an experience.
While this has been a highly charged and hopefully enlightening experience for all involved, it’s time now to set the drama aside and get back to fighting the good fight by continuing to educate people about how their food and pharma choices affect not only themselves but also those they dearly love.
And although my attorney will likely try to persuade me otherwise, for now I’m moving on as I’ve got work to do.
Women of the Philippines: I am terribly sorry my blog was used and twisted against you. You deserve the choice to use The Pill if you want or need to based on your particular circumstances. While I want you to know that this choice has health consequences as does the decision to use any pharmaceutical drug, I in no way would ever condone taking this choice away from you! Â Mabuhay!
The fact is that the senator did not only used Sarah’s work and insulted her but also twisted the intention of her blog to substantiate his anti-RH campaign. To add insult to injury, the senator’s chief of staff in a nonsensical effort had the gut to reply to the Sarah’s blog, admit to copying her work and urge to her to take their side on the issue of the RH bill. The senator is missing the whole point of the RH bill. RH bill is not all about the pill and the condom. For me, it advocates pro-choice. Making well-informed decisions and options available for everyone especially for the poor. I took the pill for a couple of months until I consulted an ob-gyn and she told me that I should not take the pill because of a skin condition. And I thought I had enough access to this sort of information; what more for the less privilege Filipinas.
I am neither a Catholic nor a religious person but I do respect other people’s beliefs. I just wish that a certain religious sector would realize that they could no longer speak for everyone. Saying that Filipinos do not engage in premarital sex and should practice abstinence is total hypocrisy.
Sarah Pope,
stop commenting on our National Issues such as the RH bill. You are not a Filipino Citizen, therefore you do not have the right to participate in any of the issues affecting our Nation. If you feel you have the right to voice your opinion, then its plain American arrogance.
On plagarism, tough luck on you. You posted it on the internet, a public domain. Your american Laws does not apply to us.
Cry foul if the plagarism has at least caused you some financial disadvantage, but from the looks of it, you are benefitting from all this with the hits you are getting from the whole incident.
an presumptous blogger trying to demean our senator here……you put miss mcbride’s words ino your own and then somebody made a quote of it and you’d say your works been plagiarized…if attention to your blogsite is all you need , you got it…but you are not the original source of that knowledge, it was somebody more fitting.
Granting that McBride is the REAL source of information, I presume that Ms. Sarah Pope was professional enough to paraphrased the original version and referenced the credit where credit was due.
Did Mr. Tito Sen do the same thing? He should have gotten off the hot seat had he done the right referencing and acknowledgment.
Grandstanding of politicians is not surprising nowadays, actually, we Filipinos are fed up with a lot of those.
We need an honest to goodness politicking, I know one politician, he is spending a lot of money from his own pocket to help not only his constituents, but all Filipinos who have seeked help from him.
We need politicians who will SERVE the Filipinos, and NOT who will LORD over us.
I suggest you read raucousrobin’s comment a while back.
“DO you understand what plagiarism is?
Plagiarism is not the act of stealing one’s ideas. It’s the act of copying one’s expression of an idea without properly attributing the source and then claiming it as your own.”
In this case, while the ideas were McBride’s, the EXPRESSION was Sarah’s. Sarah properly attributed the idea to McBride. Sotto did nothing.
You obviously don’t have any experience in academic writing.
To add:
You obviously don’t have any experience in academic writing, so stop talking about the interplay of paraphrasing ideas from a content source and plagiarism like you know what you’re talking about.
http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/10-misconceptions-about-the-public-domain.html
Misconceptions about the public domain
including
#2 Anything I find on the Internet is public domain
SUE HIM!
why is it CIARA SOTTO is not commenting??? PAHIYA KASE
Don’t bring Ciara into this, it’s not her issue. Wag naman ganyan.
Maam,
Thank you for the recognition you have given to our country, even though it is highly ugly. I just have one wish for you, from a Filipino blogger and scholar. Please sue the senator and his chief of staff, please. Looks like nothing will be done under our own law.
I am deeply sorry, but please do consider my request. Help our nation.
Kenny G.
Surely, “esteemed” and “distinguished” are not exactly the kind of words I would describe Senator Sotto. I would likely prefer “extinguished” more than anything else. He and his chief-of-staff, Atty. Villacorta, are still on denial that they committed plagiarsim at its very core. Any decent man would take the high road, accept responsiblity for failing to attribute the words (and ideas) to their source, apologize, and resign. That is any decent man. I seriously doubt if either Senator Sotto or Atty. Villacorta is decent enough to man up. I hope you pursue a lawsuit. This is the only way both of them will learn the lessons of moral. ethical and literary integrity.
The hormonal birth control pill is a group one carcinogen. A GROUP ONE CARCINOGEN. Natural Family Planning is just as effective and it works for every woman. Every woman is unique and has a different cycle. The birth control pill eliminates this uniqueness. It manipulates her body so that she can be sexually available to men (husband or not). It boils down to USE. The late Pope John Paul II said, “the opposite of love is not hate, it is use”. I’m not saying women shouldn’t have access to hormonal birth control. I do however hate that tax payers in this country are paying for a lot of it. I also don’t think that hormonal contraception should be the only option given to women. Poor people need to be educated about their BODIES. They have free will and the ability to use it. They need to know about their cycle, fertility, and how awesome human reproduction is. Education is power, not hormonal birth control. Give these women AND men real options. Sex, reproduction, and family planning is not just about women. We can no longer keep pushing men aside as if they have no say and then demand that they support women and children. Sex, love, and family life is about male and female. Men should understand how a woman’s body works too, this promotes DIGNITY OF THE PERSON and the responsibility of family planning is not left for the woman to figure out.
AND there is a revoultion springing up to bring back the dignity of the human person, love, family life, and good, healthy sex. . We’re bring sexy back : http://www.1flesh.org/category/blog
Nice blog post Sarah. We Asians, by nature, do not easily admit when we make mistakes. ‘Saving face’ is endemic in our very own culture. Thus, instead of saying, “My mistake”, “I apologize for…”, or “I’m sorry”, we try to ‘save face’ by denying it, lying about it, covering it and making excuses about it. To my fellow kababayan, it’s easy to condemn the Senator for denying what he did, but how many of us admit quickly when we make mmistakes? Note: This is not to defend Sotto. I don’t know him enough; I live outside the Pilippines. I should add, I condemn plagarism!
Sorry for the misspelled words in my earlier comment. While I admit, it’s my mistake, I blame my worn out keybaord for it ha ha:)
just keep bringing more shame to the philippines..smh