Government to give out contraceptives

MANILA, Philippines – The government will provide contraceptives to poor couples that request it despite strong opposition from the Church, President Aquino said yesterday.

Speaking in a satellite television interview from the United States where he is on a seven-day visit, the President stressed that the number of children was a matter of personal choice for couples.

“The government is obligated to inform everybody of their responsibilities and their choices. At the end of the day, government might provide assistance to those who are without means if they want to employ a particular method,” he said.

“I believe the couple will be in the best position to determine what is best for the family, how to space (the births), what methods they can rely on and so forth,” he said at a town hall style meeting with expatriate Filipinos.

“They face the responsibility for the children that they bring in and government is willing to assist them.”

Aquino, a 50-year-old bachelor and a practicing Catholic, was responding to questions about how he planned to curb population growth in the face of opposition from the church.

The church wields considerable influence in the Philippines, where more than 80 percent of the population are Catholics, and has used its clout in the past to attack officials who champion artificial methods of birth control.

The church and its allies have also successfully blocked the passage of a proposed law, first introduced in 2008 that would require the state to provide its citizens with “natural and modern family planning” means.

However, a survey conducted by a research group in January found that as many as 68 percent of voters believed that government should provide couples with all legal means of family planning.

In February, then-health secretary Esperanza Cabral incurred the wrath of the Catholic Church when the department handed out free condoms in Manila on Valentine’s Day. Three bishops demanded that she be fired but she remained in her post until a change of administration.

The country estimates its 2010 population at 94.01 million, up from 76.5 million in the 2000 census and making it the 12th most populous nation in the world.

Meanwhile, an official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) expressed disappointment over the Aquino administration’s plan to distribute contraceptives to poor couples.

Fr. Melvin Castro, executive director of the CBCP’s Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, said he hopes the President would not use the family planning issue to divert people’s attention from controversies hounding his administration.

“More than disappointments we are saddened and hurt by this report…we were hoping that he will be like his mother,” Castro said in a phone interview. –Helen Flores (The Philippine Star)