Yes to population control
Posted on July 23rd, 2008SMALL but terrible! This cliché may well describe our country. Though a mere dot in the world map, the Philippines today – home of more than 89 million Filipinos (August 2007 national census) – is the 12th most populous nation on earth. We have advanced two steps since ten years ago, 1998, when we were 14th with 75.3 million.
Coupled with the rise in prices of oil, rice, meat, vegetables and other basic necessities, the population problem is apparently aggravating the poverty problem.
The exodus of Filipino laborers abroad for greener pasture seems their only way to rise above runaway inflation, officially recorded at 11% (no thanks to EVAT), that belies President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s “nararamdaman na ang kaunlaran” claim.
“What are you doing about it?” I recently asked the regional director of Population Commission, Vicente “Bugoy” Molejona.
“Whether we like it or not,” he replied, sighing, “this year we will hit the 90-million mark If our growth rate stays at 2.3% annually our population could rise to 118 million by 2025. We need the help of the media to raise the alarm. So please help.”
The urgency of population control has become controversial once more with the re-emergence of the so-called Reproductive Health bill in Congress, which would encourage family planning – whether by natural or artificial means. As in the past, the Catholic Church has stood in the way, calling the bill “pro-abortion, anti-life.”
No less than Jaro Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), has attacked the bill, saying, “In the present rice crisis or price crisis of food supply, we must look at population not as the root cause of the problem. The social doctrine of the Church challenges society and government to regard population not as mere consumer but also to help and facilitate their becoming producers and formal businessmen. By completely eradicating corruption and restoring justice our government can empower population to keep the continuous flow of production and supply.”
On the other hand, in an interview with the Asia Times Online, Monsignor Hernando Carbonel, CBCP spokesman, debunked the population explosion as myth.
“It’s not the population that is the problem,” he said. “It’s the great disparity of wealth. If the wealthy would share what they have, then population would not be a problem.”
Tell that to the marines; not even the Church shares its collection with the poor.
That wistful thinking is easier said than done and is a myopic way of defending an undesirable situation where a poor couple makes more children than they can afford to feed and send to school. Malnourished and uneducated, as present-day Philippine reality shows, these unplanned children — assuming they survive hunger and hostile environment — grow up to be thieves, robbers, prostitutes and even killers for hire in order to survive. More often than not, the cycle replicates itself in the next generation.
Doesn’t even common sense tell us that a worker making barely enough bread for himself is unfit to marry and multiply? The new family consequently becomes a burden, not an asset, to society.
In the book Hey Joe, a collection of Asian travel stories, American author Ted Lerner relates the plight of Nina, an unwed 30-year-old mother of 10 children who migrates from Negros Occidental to Angeles City , ending up as paramour of an American serviceman.
Conversely and ironically, it is the rich in the Philippines who limit the number of their children to two or three to ensure their good future.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has been vague on the problem, just probably because she is a Catholic.
Ironically, other predominantly Catholic countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Poland control their birth rates despite the clergy’s admonition to the faithful to refrain from using church-banned contraceptives.
How was life in the Philippines in the good old days when population density was small?
As I write, I pull out of the shelf a prized possession, an English translation of an 1853 book, Adventures of a Frenchman in the Philippines by Paul P. de la Gironiere. A chapter in the book cites Pasig River as a health-rejuvenating body of water where the rich Spanish, English, Chinese and various mestizos paraded on boats and gondolas. The author wrote: “The newest and most elegant houses are built upon the banks of the river Pasig. Each house has a landing place from the river and little bamboo palaces serving as bathing houses to which the residents resort several times daily, to relieve the fatigue caused by intense heat.”
We can only see the same clean bodies of water today in sparsely populated rural riverbanks.
In the same book, the author detailed the per-province population of the Philippines according to the 1833 census. Of the total Philippine population of only 3,345,790, what is now Metro Manila had the highest with 285,039. The provinces of Iloilo, Capiz (including what is now Aklan) and Antique had 232,055; 115,440; and 78,250, respectively.
I was 10 years old and in grade four in 1960 when I first learned that the Philippines had a population of 30 million. This means that, between 1960 and today, the aforesaid population that took centuries to accumulate has tripled in only 48 years!
Thailand, on the other hand, which had about as many people as the Philippines in 1960, has only doubled its population. Predominantly Buddhist, Thailand has an active population management.
God forbid that the 90 million Filipinos today would triple in another half century when we might have to kill – like lions devouring a prey – or be killed in a mad scramble for food and potable water.
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July 23rd, 2008 10:30
I agree that the Philippine Government has to address overpopulation and the rice crisis in the country. It is estimated that 90 million more mouths to be fed at the end of this year. Therefore, I agree with the author to control the population growth. I am only speaking (as a catholic) to voice my views to this critical problem in the Philippines and encourage the legislators to abide with the teaching of the catholic church. The original House bill 812 (Reproductive Health Care Act) authored by Cong. Janet Garin was too radical and it goes against the teaching of the church. It needs to be amended and redefined and endorsed by the CBCP. Here in the States, because comprehensive family planning has been legislated, and sex education is part of the program in the grade school, the incidence of teen pregnancy is down. I will also emphasized that the more educated the population is, the less children they choose to raise. So, implement comprehensive family planning early, and abide by the teaching of the catholic church. You are a christian nation.
July 24th, 2008 22:46
Dr. Gestosani is incorrect to say that comprehensive family planning has been legislated in the United States. It has not. Some schools and some school districts have sex education but this is not uniform across the country. The United States does not have a single national education system or curriculum.
Further, there is no national comprehensive family planning policy. There is some federal money spent — very little relatively — but there is no national policy, goal, office or bureaucracy setting a national policy. Indeed, I know of no state that has legislated comprehensive family planning. Any efforts are piecemeal.
American-born Americans (i.e. not immigrants) have a below-replacement-leve birth rate not because of family planning efforts by the government or otherwise. They have it because they choose it. Family planning efforts are not the most effective - or even a very effective — way to reduce the number of children. The number of children are reduced when the level of education of women is raised and when there is increased economic opportunities. Reduced fertility rates is a secondary affect, not a cause. We should spend our time and money on improving education and opportunities for women rather then on artificial contraception.
Besides, if we are going to put our time and money into disputing pills, I can think of many more important pills and vaccines that should be a higher priority then birth control pills. How about ending TB in this country?
July 25th, 2008 02:09
I stand to be corrected, but my views toward the Reproductive Health Care Act as a tool by the government to solve overpopulation in the Philippines needs to to be redefined as you are a CHRISTISAN NATION. The CBCP is a pro-life advocate, and to legislate HB 812 with total disregard to the teaching of catholic church (who serves the majority of Filipino faithfuls), then it is a blatant violation of their faith and religion. The CBCP has the right to review and recommend correction because once this is legislated, then it becomes the law.