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[av_heading heading=’PEOPLE POWWOW | Our worsening population problem’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY HERBERT VEGO
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Tuesday, April 25, 2017
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“OUR population is not in parity with our resources.”
With those words did President Rodrigo Duterte end his speech at the opening ceremony of the Palarong Pambansa in San Jose de Buenavista, Antique the other day. For lack of time, however – since he had to fly back to Manila – he stopped lecturing on family planning.
I agree, our small nation has grown so big in population – now the 12th largest with more than 100 million inhabitants – that we have lagged behind in providing them with adequate food, clothing and shelter.
Still it is an “improvement” in a derogatory sense: Nineteen years ago in 1998, we were 14th with a population of 75 million.
One recalls that early in March this year, Duterte nagged at the Supreme Court for not lifting its temporary restraining order against a law passed in 2012 – the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Law (RA 10354) that guaranteed universal access to birth control (subsidized and/or free for the poor), mandatory sexual education in schools and the provision of reproductive health services in hospitals, including child and mother care.
“Birth control is critical for reducing poverty,” Duterte told the media.
The exodus of Filipino laborers abroad for greener pasture seems their only way to rise above poverty.
A study by the Population Commission reveals that if our growth rate stays at 2.3 percent annually, our population would have reached 118 million by 2025.
Unfortunately, the Catholic Church opposed RA 10354 calling the law “pro-abortion, anti-life.”
The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), has attacked the law, saying, “It’s not the population that is the problem. It’s the great disparity of wealth. If the wealthy would share what they have, then population would not be a problem.”
Ironically, other predominantly Catholic countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Poland control their birth rates despite the clergy’s admonition to the faithful to refrain from using church-banned contraceptives.
That admonition is easier heard than followed. It is a myopic way of defending an undesirable situation where a poor couple makes more children than they can afford to feed and send to school. Malnourished and uneducated, as present-day Philippine reality shows, these unplanned children – assuming they survive hunger and hostile environment – grow up to be thieves, robbers, prostitutes and even killers for hire in order to survive. It’s a vicious cycle being passed on to future generations.
Doesn’t even common sense tell us that a worker making barely enough bread for himself is unfit to marry and multiply? The new couple becomes a burden, not an asset, to society.
Conversely and ironically, it is the rich in the Philippines who limit the number of their children to two or three to ensure their good future.
By the way, how was life in the Philippines in the good old days when population density was small?
I found an answer in one of my prized possessions, an English translation of an 1853 book, Adventures of a Frenchman in the Philippines by Paul P. de la Gironiere. A chapter in the book cites Pasig River as a health-rejuvenating body of water where the rich Spanish, English, Chinese and various mestizos paraded on boats and gondolas. The author wrote: “The newest and most elegant houses are built upon the banks of the river Pasig. Each house has a landing place from the river and little bamboo palaces serving as bathing houses to which the residents resort several times daily, to relieve the fatigue caused by intense heat.”
We can only see the same clean bodies of water today in sparsely populated rural riverbanks. (hvego@yahoo.com/PN)
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