RH and freedom to choose

In last Monday’s SWS media release, the most pervasive finding is that 82 percent of Filipino adults nationwide agree that “The choice of family planning method is a personal decision of the couple, and no one should interfere with it,” as of June 2011.

Since only 8 percent disagree with the statement, the desire for freedom to choose a family planning (FP) method now outnumbers the preference for a guided choice on it by a ratio of 10 to 1, or more than double from two decades ago, when the agree-disagree ratio was 61 to 13 (in 1990).

The crux of the population issue in the Philippines is that this universally-desired freedom to choose is not effective when very many poor people lack the means to pay for their FP method choices themselves, and the government has been hamstrung in picking up the bills for them, for such a long time already.

The demand to practice some means of FP (as opposed to not practicing it at all) is quite strong, since, in survey after survey, the average actual number of children is always greater than the average number desired by parents.

The poorer the family, the bigger the excess of the actual number over the desired, because very many cannot afford the FP method of their choice. For the rich, on the other hand, there is no real difference between the two. Rich couples have the means to choose any FP method, and thus limit their actual number of children to the number they desire.

Helping the poor to achieve their basic needs is a proper role for the government. This is well-accepted with respect to basic education, for instance.

Poor people have some freedom to give their children a basic education, since they have a constitutional right to places in public elementary and high schools, where tuition is free. Yet it is not a full freedom, since the full economic costs to a family of sending children to school go beyond tuition. Such additional costs are recognized by the government’s conditional cash transfer program, which gives cash supplements to deserving beneficiary families in order to enroll and keep their children in school.

Family planning is also a basic need. The will of the people is not limited to what is constitutionally specified. In their minds, access to FP services is also a basic need, to which they have the right. It therefore deserves priority in the government’s attention.

To begin with, the people demand fuller information about it. In the June 2011 SWS survey, 73 percent agreed that “If a couple wants to plan its family, it should be able to get information from government on all legal methods”—or six times as many as the 13 percent that disagreed with it. To limit public information on FP to the natural methods is thus an injustice to the great majority of Filipinos.

In the second place, the people demand that the government be ready to pay the bills to meet their needs. In the same survey, 68 percent agreed that “the government should fund all means of family planning, whether natural or artificial”—or four times as many as the 16 percent that disagreed with it.

Thus, not to subsidize FP methods at all, or to limit it only to natural methods, is another injustice to the great majority. If the governments of poorer countries, like Indonesia, Cambodia and Laos, can include FP in their budgets, so can the Philippines.

The reproductive health (RH) bill attends to the weakness of public information by directing the inclusion of family planning in the curriculum of schools. It gives poor people the right to approach government health institutions, and expect to be provided with FP methods of their choice, for free. It denies local governments the authority to ban their health units from distributing the means for any FP methods, particularly artificial methods.

Room for conscientious objectors. Those in the majority cannot expect those in the minority to choose the same FP methods as theirs. A government that respects freedom of choice sees to it that many choices are available, not just a few, and respects the views of those who prefer not to use any means of FP at all.

In particular, individuals who consider some FP method as a form of abortion cannot be compelled to use it. Such individuals are a significant minority, amounting to three out of every ten adult Filipinos.

In the June 2011 survey, only 30 percent agreed, whereas 51 percent disagreed, that the use of condoms constitutes abortion. Only 29 percent agreed, whereas 51 percent disagreed, that the use of IUDs constitutes abortion. Only 29 percent agreed, whereas 52 percent disagreed, that the use of birth control pills constitutes abortion. The balances from 100 percent, roughly 2 out of every 10 adult Filipinos, were unable to take a stand.

Note the great similarity of the numbers, regardless of FP method. I had expected much fewer respondents to consider condoms abortive, compared to pills. This indicates that most Filipinos do not discriminate among the various artificial FP methods on the basis of abortive capability. What they mainly distinguish is between the artificials as a group and the naturals as a group.

Not many think that FP education will promote sexual promiscuity.

Not many consider non-payment of taxes as a reasonable way to oppose the RH bill. –Mahar Mangahas, Philippine Daily Inquirer

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Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.