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OPINIONS / COLUMNS
(July
28 – August 3, 2008) In-Depth Juan L.
Mercado Leaving
square one “Stupid” snorted
Senator Panfilo Lacson of some Catholic bishops’ opposition to the
reproductive health bill. “Uninformed
objections”, scoffed Rep. Edcel Lagman. Archbishop Jesus Dosado, earlier, cast into
“exterior darkness” those who promote abortion. They’d be denied communion in Ozamis. Repeating her call for “dialog”, President
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo met with Cardinal Ricardo Vidal and three prelates. Population deals with creatures “able to trace the
stars… and feel a passion for eternity”, Edwin Markham wrote. That explains
today’s “gnashing of teeth”. Did this dialog ever leave square one? “For more
than 30 years now, the ‘population debate’ divided segments of Philippine
society,” sociologist John Carroll, SJ, notes. It’s been marred “by mutual suspicions,
one-sided arguments and caricatures of opposing positions.” “The outcome has been two groups, each dominated by
its more ‘hard-line’ spokespersons,” he writes in “A Balancing Act,” (They) “talk
past each other without taking time to listen.... We must move past the
deadlocked debate into an area of respectful discussion…” “Dialog is not meant to give us a common policy,”
the prize-winning book “Living Together” notes. “But it teaches us how to
live without one, if need be. It can make us accept our differences.” Can we begin with undisputed facts? Start with today’s 88,574,614 Filipinos. All agree
there are four of us now where, in 1948, there was only one. Every day, 5,800 kids – equal to three barangays –
are born. One doesn’t need a crystal bowl to tally how much more food, water,
shelter, medicine, etc they’ll need
over the next 365 days. You can not say “tomorrow” to these children “Their
name is today.” Rapid population growth is not the sole cause of
poverty. There’s concurrence on that too “Bad governance, high wealth and
income inequality and weak economic growth are major factors,” Ernesto Pernia
of UP Blinkered numbers-equals-hunger PR doesn’t help. Ex-president
Joseph Estrada reduces the controversy to “libido”. The poor have “no other
past time”, he chortles. So, Catholics should agree to contraception. Indeed,
Erap remains the best argument for condoms. There’s consensus, though, that landless workers, scavengers or daily
wage earners—with six, seven, eight kids—find it tougher to break out of
penury. Studies like “Population Matters” (Oxford University
Press) to those by UP’s Aresneio Balisacan and Dennis Mapa or Ateneo’s
Cielito Habito stress this point. Out of 189 countries, the “The Progress of Peoples” and other Papal documents
denounce poverty that degrades.
Indigence mars the daily lives of six out of ten Filipinos. “Listen to
your lives,” Frederick Buechener writes. “If God speaks anywhere, it is into
our personal lives that He speaks.” Abortion is a no-no.
In fact, it’s a criminal offense. Pending reproductive health care
bills “do not legalize abortion,” the Inquirer notes. Dosado
“mischaracterized the entire range of artificial family planning methods as
all abortifacient”. But Lagman and Co.
belatedly excised an
abortion-on-demand provision they
carelessly scribbled into their first draft.
By then, alarm bells were triggered. Two out of every 10 married women—mostly in the D
and E economic brackets—want no more children, the surveys show. But they can
not access family planning services. All agree this spurs underground abortion. The toll,
in this massacre, is about 1,930 or more a day, UP Population Institute
estimates “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children…because
they were no more,” Matthew wrote of
Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents. Parents should decide on the number of children,
reproductive rights supporters demand today. That’s the position defined
earlier by Vatican II: Keeping in mind
the good of both family and community, couples determine the size of their
families, says Council document: “The Church in the Modern World”. “Procreation and parenthood do not entail a right to
have as many children as one desires,” wrote theologian Fr. Aloysius
Cartagenas. He called for a “fair hearing for 2-child proposal.” The right to
be a parent should be balanced with rights of the whole society. Contrary to popular Catholic belief, the
former need not take moral precedence over the later all the time.” The Church supports family planning but bucks
contraception. Ipil Prelature and
Cagayan de Oro archdiocese vigorously implement these principles in their
“All Natural Family Planning” program.
Can other dioceses say they match their “anathemas” with action
programs? There’s far more common ground, in this debate, than
the sound-bytes indicate. The areas of agreement demand we grope for
consensus thru the bridge that true dialog builds. “The distance between man and man is infinite”,
Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore once wrote. And if God “as eternal bridge did not span
the abyss, how could we reach one another”? E-mail: juan_mercado@prime.net.ph Ilocos Times copyright 2008 |
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