False premises

Another dubious purpose of the RH bill is to check the alleged alarming increase in our population. The bill uses “population management’ instead of the coercive sounding “population control” to make it more agreeable and acceptable. But whatever it is called, it is based on false and misleading premises.

The biggest fallacy is equating overpopulation with poverty and under-population with economic prosperity. The sponsors and proponents of the bill has been telling the people and their colleagues in Congress that by having a population control program to slow down and eventually reduce our population, our problem of poverty will be solved because a smaller population is better for our economy than a bigger population.

Aside from overlooking more plausible and real causes of poverty in this land, this is a false and misleading premise. It is false and misleading because this is not what is actually happening in other parts of the world. Only last May 14, 2009 I came across this very interesting item in the internet posted by a certain Michael Cook (mercatornet.com) on the population situation in Africa. He reported that:

Not all Africans have signed up to the belief that a lower population is a better population. I recently received an e-mail from Chief Albert Ngwana, the chairman of an opposition party in Cameroon, the Cardinal Democratic Party. This is what he had to say:

“Africa can only develop and industrialize quickly if there is a fast growing population. This is what happened to Western Europe during the Industrial Revolution where there was a population explosion in the 18th and 19th centuries. During this period the population of Europe increased from 190 million to 423 million. This is what is happening to China and India now. China for the past decade has remained the fastest growing economy in the world.

Europe is far more populated per square kilometer than Africa. Europe as of 2003 had 115 persons per square kilometer, while Africa had 25. Europe is far richer per capita than Africa. Europe income per capita is $23,660 while Africa is $637”.

He is puzzled therefore, about why wealthy Western nations are pushing population control in Africa. More than puzzled, he is furious: ‘The UNFPA and the International Planned Parenthood Federation with branches all over the developing world are bent on executing the Obama/Clinton murderous agenda, but please be warned, we shall not allow you to kill our babies”.

This is really not a puzzle anymore. It is obvious that western nations are pushing population control programs in developing countries because if their population grows bigger as in China and India, their economy will also grow stronger as what happened in Western Europe during the industrial revolution. If this happens the Western nations’ power and control on the world economy will be seriously threatened. Naturally, they want to avoid such situation. Thus as early as 1970 the western nations led by the US has already devised this plan for the developing nations as contained in Kissinger report and the NSSN 200.

Actually a growing and bigger population is good for the economy while a decreasing and smaller population brings economic difficulties. This is not a mere theory. This is a fact that is now happening in Russia which has been trying to halt its population decline because it has only brought economic woes, as posted in the internet by a certain Sergei Balashov:

“Despite all the efforts Russia took to halt depopulation, the latest UN demographic report confirms that they have fallen short of the mark. As the decline of Russia’s population accelerates, the country is set to face overwhelming social and economic problems. But there are few if any obvious answers, prompting some policy makers to reach for ever more desperate solutions.

The UN report on human resources development in Russia offered gloomy forecasts for Russia’s population which the report claimed would decline by some 26 million to 116 million by 2050. The UN report has also warned that the rapid depopulation will bring dire economic consequences”.

Here in the Philippines, the population is apparently growing and the RH bill intends to control or “manage” such growth and eventually bring it down. Definitely, that will lead us to where Russia finds itself now. Obviously the proponents of the bill only sees the population growth but loses sight of the fact that the fertility rate (TFR or the average number of children a woman will bear from 14 to 49 years of her lifetime of reproduction) is actually on the decline and that the population is growing only because of a temporary phenomenon known as “population momentum” where there are still many women of reproductive age so that the number of children born are still many. Later on, when these women go beyond reproductive age, there will be fewer women to replace them as a consequence of low TFR and the new births will be unable to replace the number of deaths.

In his well research paper entitled “World Population Collapse Lessons for the Philippines”, Fr. Gregory D. Gaston STD wrote that, the Philippines’ TFR replacement level is 2.29 and just 15 years from now, said TFR will sink below such level so it is now dangerously low as shown by the United Nations Population Division (UNPD) figures. Fr. Gaston said that experience in many developed countries shows that it will be too late and useless to wait for the TFR to go below the replacement level and then try to raise it up again. The solution is to prevent its further decline today. Otherwise we will be like those countries with fewer children and a growing population of the elderly leading to serious economic difficulties that are just beginning and which will worsen in the coming decades.

Our legislators should consider all these demographic facts as they consider the RH bill. As Fr. Gaston said “demographic trends are like icebergs. What is visible at present is, like the iceberg’s tip, but a small part of the whole reality, which in the case of demography, has massive implications for the future.” –Jose C. Sison, Philippine Star