Inherently wrong

So there are indeed strings attached to the $464-million MCC grant. All those gratifying, encouraging and non-controversial statements about fighting poverty and promoting sustainable economic growth in the Philippines during the photo-ops in New York did not give us a complete picture. P-Noy gave the entire picture only at a town hall style meeting with expatriate Filipinos where he confirmed that the grant has something to do with the controversial population control program which other countries particularly the US have been trying to impose on us.

Apparently P-Noy and his team of negotiators are aware of the other conditions of the grant. Hence P-Noy should have announced during the MCC Compact signing that the grant requires the government to provide contraceptives to poor couples who request them, as a mode of controlling population in order to meet the UN member states’ Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Obviously this condition was not announced during the Compact-signing because it is controversial and there is no way everybody will like it. There is lack of transparency here.

It bears stressing anew that in 2001, upon the initiative of the United States, UN member states had pledged to meet eight goals by 2015 (MDGs). Included among these goals is reducing by half the number of persons who live on less than $1 per day. This goal actually prompted the President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Peter Turkson to warn the heads of state and government during their summit meeting on the MDGs, against using the MDGs as a pretext for population control. The Cardinal reminded the heads of state to use the MDGs “to fight poverty, not to eliminate the poor”. While the Ghanaian-born Cardinal was talking about Africa, such warning could also be applicable to the Philippines. “Any attempt to use the MDGs to spread and impose egoistic lifestyles or worse still, population policies as a cheap means to reduce the number of poor people would be malevolent and short sighted,” the Cardinal said. It is indeed “malevolent and short sighted” not because a Cardinal of the Catholic Church says so but because it is inherently so.

P-Noy’s announcement in the US that the government will provide contraceptives to poor couples who request them is obviously aimed at achieving this MDG target of reducing the number of poor Filipinos. It eliminates poverty by eliminating the poor instead of promoting their economic welfare through sound and doable economic policies, and good, corrupt-free government that will enhance and sustain the country’s economic growth. It is based on the warped notion that the best way to improve the economy and achieve economic growth is to eliminate the poor people.

According to P-Noy, the government is obligated to inform everybody of their responsibilities and their choices and to provide assistance to those without means to employ a particular method. He said that the “couple will be in the best position to determine what is best for the family, how to space births and what methods they can rely on”.

P-Noy’s statement is the very gist of the RH bill. It gives couples the right to choose between the natural method and artificial methods of spacing births after being properly informed of their pros and cons. Actually the choice here is between the hard but inexpensive way through the natural method of simply abstaining from sexual congress within certain periods, and the easy but more expensive way of using all sorts of artificial contraceptives that supposedly prevent unwanted pregnancies and ensure a “safe and satisfying sex”. Naturally couples will choose the   easier way which is the use of contraceptives. And for poor couples who cannot afford them the government will even supply these contraceptives.

Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Ona already said that P900 million has been set aside to purchase these contraceptives for use of poor people. But not a single centavo has been allocated for natural method, not even for expenses in properly and fully informing the people of how it is done. Hence the government is in fact favoring the artificial method by using P900 million of the taxpayers’ money to purchase these contraceptives. Clearly the program only boosts the business and further enriches multinational drug companies which are already rich. It may also breed corruption, all in the guise of providing assistance to the poor who still remains poor except that they will now supposedly enjoy “safe and satisfying sex” even as their ranks continue to be depleted because of birth control.

The government also commits to provide a complete menu of contraceptives to poor couples. But it has already been medically proven that some of these contraceptives are not 100 percent effective while others actually cause abortion and serious illnesses including cancer. Indeed some of these contraceptives are just being dumped here as they are already banned in the US. Yet under the government program, they will still be made available as long as couples especially the poor, choose them after being properly informed, because they are supposedly in the best position to determine what is good for them. This is practically condoning and promoting abortion which is inherently evil as it kills an innocent, defenseless and helpless child in the mother’s womb.

In this controversy, population control advocates pushing for the RH bill repeatedly point to “Church pressure” against population control. With or without Church pressure however, a clear conscience will always dictate that population control, through the indiscriminate use of abortion causing and dangerous contraceptives, is inherently wrong. So let’s leave the Church out of this controversy. Let’s just ask ourselves where we will be now if our parents decided to use these contraceptives. –Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star)

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E-mail at: jcson@pldtdsl.net