he bishops love the poor so
much that they want more and more of them. For sure this is a caricature of the
bishops' stand on contraception, but at the rate they are resisting efforts to
give couples access to family planning methods other than natural, they run the
risk of their message becoming more and more tragi-comical.
Along with Gloria Arroyo and purportedly her Cabinet members,
the bishops want us to believe that population growth is no longer the problem
that it used to be. They cite the latest population growth figure of 1.95
percent, which they said is just a whisker off the 2010 target of 1.9 percent.
(We used the phrase "Arroyo and purportedly her Cabinet
members" because we do not believe all the members of her official family
subscribe to the policy of interdicting "artificial" family planning methods.
That those who, even as they believe deep in their hearts that limiting the
option to abstinence is unwise, still stick it out with Gloria only shows what
people knew all along: They are hypocrites.)
Front-line government health workers who daily see the toll
on children and mothers taken by too many and too frequent pregnancies need no
convincing about the need to give couples wider choice.
That 1.95 percent population growth, needless to say, is an
average. It doesn't show the variations in the number of births to families at
the different points in the social spectrum. Among the mothers in the top 20
percent of the population in terms of income, the average number of children is
two. In the lower 20 percent, it's five.
Mothers who are in the best economic position to provide
nurture have less children. Those who have the least means to raise children
have more of them. And it's not because of different levels of hormones
distributed in an inverse proportion to economic status.
Study after study has shown that those in the lower economic
ladder want to limit and space the number of children. They, however, do not
know how. Or if they do, they cannot afford the cost.
This is where the government should come in. And primarily
because the health of the mothers and the flourishing of the children are needs
a responsible government should answer.
The savings in health and education services that government
stands to make given a smaller population need not even come into play. Let's
leave this line of advocacy to social engineers
Family planning is all about the quality of life of the mother and of every
child brought into this world.
