I still cannot reconcile why the cynics/skeptics, the likes of Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III and his ilk, not to mention the Catholic Church, which is behind this all, continue to malign and discredit the importance and benefits of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill for the country and its people?
Sotto even condemn the Department of Health (DOH) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for drumming up the birth of a symbolic 7 billionth baby on Oct. 31, giving an impression, he says, that the world is already overpopulated.
More than the reality of announcing that planet Earth is now harboring 7,000,000,000 inhabitants, the UNFPA was also giving a fair warning to the world that the population growth has, for a long time now, shifted among the poor nations and it is getting to be alarming and terrifying that something has to be done before it causes humanitarian crisis, as it is already happening in Sub-Saharan Africa.
What is getting to be alarming and terrifying is that, where the population is exploding, there is not enough resources available for sustenance, and if there are any available, people can’t easily access to it because they are impoverished.
What could add up to this woe is if you have leaders in government that are irresponsible and corrupt. And, we are not even talking yet about the onslaught of natural calamities brought about by climate change that could make it even harder for the poor.
While the simplistic reasoning that the 7 billion people could fit inside the state of Texas with still food and space to spare is true, the hard fact is that this simile has no bearing whatsoever in our own existence in this country.
We are a country whose population is expected to reach 96M this year and, according to studies, at a growth rate of 2.04 percent that we have been having, it will reach 100M by 2014. They say that the ideal growth rate to accelerate economic growth is 1.04 percent.
By rank, the Philippines has the 12th largest population in the world, yet, we are a country that suffers from high infant mortality, low economic development, high levels of poverty, low utilization of natural resources, and heavy dependence on industrialized nations.
Size of population is just a number, yes, but does that mean that we keep on increasing in number with diminishing quality of life for every generation that is born, or shall we opt to slow down in numbers and improve the quality of life of Filipinos for every generation that comes?
Or, which is easier and beneficial to both parents and children: Raising a family of 2-3 or 5-6?
We are not all politicians, rich and influential, like Sotto, so obviously, raising more is harder and disadvantageous.
And so, this is why Senator Pia Cayetano, one of the principal sponsors of the RH bill and the chair of the Senate committee on health and demography, has always stressed that the bill “holds the key to empowering Filipino couples to access family planning, education, and services, which, in turn, would allow them to plan the number and spacing of their children and ultimately chart their own well-being and future.”
Family planning, while it controls population growth, also reduces the gap between the few elite millions of rich people and the vast majority of poor, struggling Filipinos.
With this kind of scenario and with selfless leaders like President Benigno Aquino at the helm, there is no reason why we can’t have an economic growth that will make our country progressive and social services that will make the Filipinos happy.
But, let us start with the support and passage of the RH bill.
