Bishops vs couple’s informed conscience

Since the restoration of Congress in 1987, senators and congressmen have been talking of restraining population growth to lessen poverty. Bolder ones banded together to examine maternal and infant health, sex education, marriage guidance, and more. Presidents too have attempted to push GDPs beyond 7 percent to offset a yearly birth rate of 2.36 percent. Bleak statistics begged for action. One of every three families was dirt poor. The millions at the bottom of the income ladder had the least chances for good education, health and jobs. Having no help for family planning, they too had the most number of children. Frequent pregnancies were weakening both babies and mothers who wished to work. Big family size only pulled couples deeper in penury; offspring were ending up inheriting that poverty. Yet, no national policy was ever crafted. Only small efforts were made in small areas where local officials happened to care. Last year Congress allotted a meager P180 million for contraceptives and info materials for the poorest 6 million of the 18 million couples. Not a cent has yet been spent.

Experts blame the lack of population policy on government leaders. They fume that lawmakers and Presidents and Cabinet men are afraid of the Catholic Church. Bishops allow only natural birth control methods. These require either abstaining from sex, or doing it only during the wife’s infertile period of the menstrual cycle. Both are tough to observe. Even then, there are fundamentalist churchmen who do not wish such methods taught at all. They’d rather that Filipinos go forth and multiply, for doing otherwise is sin. Bishops use political muscle to prevent legislation on family planning. Their lay groups mobilize against distribution of condoms, or operation of ligation and vasectomy. Politicians shun confrontation for fear of losing votes. And since 85 percent of Filipinos are Catholic, practically the whole nation suffers from no population policy.

Not all clerics close their minds to family planning. Often quoted by Catholics who teach responsible parenthood is a piece of Fr. Ruben Tanseco, S.J. in The Philippine STAR of Aug. 8, 2004. Wrote he: “This (natural family planning) method, as the only one supported by the official Church for the last how many decades, has not worked effectively in our country, as far as control of population is concerned. Just to single out one reason, among others: For so many poor, uneducated couples, learning NFP as the only means of family planning is too difficult, cumbersome, and needs much discipline and spirituality. Many are not able to make it. The poor are already deprived of so many things, and to deprive them of love-making when they spontaneously feel like doing so is to make their lives even more miserable.” Arming couples with knowledge and effective anti-pregnancy devices — so long as safe and legal, that is, not abortive — is better, experts expound. Tanseco says this dissenting opinion is pro-life and pro-quality life, since each baby, because planned, is deemed deserving of rearing as God designed, and not left to chance.

More than that, Tanseco points out, both the natural and the unofficial methods are not infallible dogma. So the final decision, stated by the Second Vatican Council, rests on “one’s informed and responsible conscience.”

Individual and collective conscience is reflected perhaps in Pulse Asia surveys on the issue. In its March 2007 poll, 92 percent of Filipinos found crucial the ability to control fertility and plan families. Thus, 89 percent want government to spend for modern family planning methods, including pills, IUD, condoms, ligation and vasectomy. Since the poll was conducted in the middle of an election campaign, 76 percent advised candidates to include family planning in their platforms. Why, 75 percent even said they’d vote for such candidates. The respondents can’t be stupid as some claim, former Economic Planning Minister Solita Monsod told a forum on population Wednesday. Politicians should listen to the people, and then perhaps find courage to go against the bishops’ preference, which is not doctrine anyway.

But what of the bishops’ vaunted political clout? One of the politicians in that Conference on Population and Human Development sought to show it to be a myth. Rep. Edcel Lagman, like his daughter Kristel Luistro before him, had sponsored bills on reproductive health. Some clergymen branded them as abortionists, although all the Lagmans wanted was free choice on whether to get pregnant, not to end a pregnancy. The bishops campaigned against them last May in Albay province. Edcel won a second term as congressman; Kristel won as mayor of Tabaco City.

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Impresario Pablo Tariman resumes his Great Performance Series with a special recital of acclaimed baritone Noel Azcona tomorrow, 8 p.m., at the Philamlife Theater, Manila. Performing Broadway hits with him are soprano Rachelle Gerodias and pianist Mary Anne Espina. Last heard at the CCP in the title role of Eugene Onegin, Azcona sang the Pearl Fisher duet with world-renowned tenor Otoniel Gonzaga. He also shared the stage with Lea Salonga in the unforgettable Best of the Philippines Concert Gala with the Philippine Philharmonic early last year.

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