Population,
poverty, politics and RH bill
By:
30 University of the Philippines economists
Philippine
Daily Inquirer, 7.28.12
10
August 2012
Ernesto M.
Pernia, Stella Alabastro-Quimbo, Maria Joy V. Abrenica, Ruperto P. Alonzo,
Agustin L. Arcenas, Arsenio M. Balisacan, Dante B. Canlas, Joseph J. Capuno,
Ramon L. Clarete, Rolando A. Danao, Emmanuel S. de Dios, Aleli de la Paz-Kraft,
Benjamin E. Diokno, Geoffrey M. Ducanes, Marina B. Durano, Emmanuel F.
Esguerra, Raul V. Fabella, Teresa J. Ho, Dennis Claire S. Mapa, Felipe M.
Medalla, Maria Nimfa F. Mendoza, Solita C. Monsod, Toby Melissa C. Monsod,
Fidelina Natividad-Carlos, Aniceto C. Orbeta, Cayetano W. Paderanga, Majah-Leah
V. Ravago, Gerardo P. Sicat, Orville C. Solon and Edita A. Tan.
Dear Sirs/Madams:
Greetings!
This refers to
your article in the Inquirer, Opinion Talk of the Town, titled “Population,poverty, politics, and RH bill on July 28, 2012. I understand that you are truly
convinced that poverty will hinder economic growth and that you think that the
Catholic Church is instrumental in not moving the nation forward. Please allow
me to share with you some facts that show the Church wants what’s good for
everybody.
Understand
that the Church has an obligation to protect her children regarding faith and
morals. Former Senator Francisco Tatad tells us the division which the RH
produces.
“To the country’s Roman Catholics, the bill is an
undisguised anti-Catholic measure. It
savages an important doctrine of their faith, and then requires them to
provide the tax money to fund the program that would attack their faith. The bill is arrogantly telling Catholics not to learn their faith
from their Church but to learn it from Congress instead.
“It is religious persecution pure and simple, a
perversion of Church-State relationship, and the victim is not a small
religious minority but rather the overwhelming majority of 95 million
Filipinos.
“P-Noy has been told not to fear the Catholics. The bishops issue no fatwas,
and there are no suicide bombers among the laity, they are not even armed like some Muslim Filipinos. Neither are they as politically organized as
some powerful politico-religious sect,
which votes as a bloc during elections. ‘There is no such thing as a Catholic
vote,’ P-Noy has been told.
“Indeed, in a predominantly Catholic country where
almost everyone running for office is a baptized (even if lapsed) Catholic,
people do not vote as ‘Catholics’. But
should the Aquino government ever enact a law that attacks a doctrine of the
Catholic faith, as surely as the sun
rises in the East, there will be a Catholic response. It could be a Catholic
vote, a Catholic protest, or maybe even a Catholic revolt. No one can say, but there will be a Catholic
response.
“This is well explained in Humanae
Vitae, a 1968 encyclical by Pope Paul VI, which condemns contraception and
sterilization as ‘intrinsically evil’.
The encyclical marked its 44th anniversary on July 25, the
same day the House leadership decided to fast track the RH bill.
“Anti-RH advocates like to point out that Paul VI’s prophetic warnings about the ill
effects of contraception have all come to pass. True to his warning, contraception has led to widespread conjugal
infidelity and a general lowering of morality;
men have ceased respecting women in their totality and have begun treating them as mere instruments
of selfish enjoyment rather than as cherished partners; the widespread acceptance
of contraception by couples has encouraged unscrupulous governments to intrude
into the sanctity and privacy of families.” (Francisco S. Tatad in his article
“How far will the President go to test the Church?)
It is true that the RH bill believes that abortion
is illegal and unconstitutional, but take note that most of the artificial
birth control methods like Oral Contraceptive Pills and IUD are abortifacient
according to Dr. Chris Kahlenborn in her article “How Do the Pill and Other Contraceptives
Work?” http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/kah/kah_03howpillworks1.html
The abortifacient nature of OCP and IUD use is
openly admitted by the most ardent pro-abortion supporters. In his arguments
before the Supreme Court in 1989, in a case that received worldwide publicity
-- the case of Webster versus Reproductive Health Services -- Mr. Frank Susman,
arguing for the pro-abortion side spoke to Justice Anthony Scalia and stated:
"If I may suggest the reasons in response to your question, Justice
Scalia. The most common forms of what we generally in common parlance call
contraception today, IUD's, and low-dose birth control pills, which are the
safest type of birth control pills available, act as abortifacients. They are
correctly labeled as both." (The New York Times, 1989:) Alderson
Reporting Company. Transcripts of oral arguments before court on abortion case.
The New York Times. April 27, 1989: B12
On
poverty, Dr. Bernardo Villegas firmly states that the cause of poverty is not
the number of children of the family but the lack of education of their heads.
‘Unwanted pregnancies’ are exceptional cases like rape. Large families do want
large families for reasons of children seen as a help in work and old age.
“The observation that many large families are poor makes some people
conclude that it is too many children that causes a family to be poor. Is
this a correct conclusion? Dr. Roberto de Vera, one of the few economic
demographers in the country, graduate of the University of Pittsburgh in the
U.S., answers with a resounding No. Mustering data from existing Family
Income and Expenditure surveys of the Government, he exposes the error of
concluding that it is the large size that makes a Filipino family poor.
“He starts with the seeming evidence that poverty is directly
proportional to the number of children in a household. From the 2000
Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES), he points out that there is an
increasing proportion of poor families as family size increases: from
4.9% in families with no children to 59.1% in families with seven
children. He then shows why it is an erroneous inference to conclude that
this observation should be a basis for limiting the family size of poor people.
He argues: ‘First, finding that increasing family size is associated with
increasing incidence of poor families does not prove that a large family size
is what makes a family poor. The more likely reason why some families are
poor is the limited schooling of the household head. In fact, 78% to 90%
of the poor households in each family size had heads with no high school
diploma. In other words, poor families are poor not because they are
large but because most of their heads attended few years of schooling.’
To belabor the point, a family with no or few children would still be poor if
its head has had meager education. A large family (and I can cite many
examples in Forbes Park and Dasmarinas Village) can be rich if its head has had
many years of schooling.
“This more intelligent reading of the data of the FIES can be an
empirical support for the enlightened view of nine congress people, i.e.,
Dakila Carlo E. Cua, Rachel Marguerite B. del Mar, Fatima Aliah Q.Dimaporo,
Lucy T. Gomez, Karlo Alexei B. Nograles, Gabriel R. Quisumbing, Irwin C.
Tiong, Mariano Michael M. Velarde Jr. and Lord Allan Jay Q. Velasco, who would
want the P3 billion proposed appropriation for the RH Bill to be instead spent
directly on education. They did their homework and found out that this P3
billion can build 4,644 new classrooms, enough to wipe out classroom shortages
in the provinces of Batangas, Cebu, Nueva Ecija, South Cotabato, and Valenzuela
City. Or the same amount can subsidize the college education of 300,000
scholars--a chance of underprivileged student achievers to earn their
diplomas. Another opportunity cost of the P3 billion is the hiring of
13,000 additional teachers for our public schools. It is heartening
that our younger politicians are more forward looking and are really talking
the language of sustainable development and inclusive growth. Improving
the quality of basic education in the Philippines is the most productive use of
limited funds to guarantee the welfare of future generation (sustainability)
and a more equitable distribution of income and wealth (equity).
“The other finding of Dr. de Vera in his research on demography is that
poor parents do consider the consequences of their procreative
capacities. There is usually the condescending attitude of some proponents
of the RH Bill that poor people are irrationally ‘multiplying like rabbits.’
Dr. de Vera cites evidence from a Harvard professor, Lant Priitchett that 90%
of the variation in actual fertility rates can be accounted for by variations
in desired fertility rates. In other words, parents who have large
families want large families. Parents want the children they actually
beget. The so-called ‘unwanted pregnancies’ are the exception in the same
way that what eventually led to the killing of millions of babies in the U.S.
was an extremely exceptional case of a woman getting pregnant when she was
raped (Roe Vs. Wade).
“Dr. de Vera cites plausible reasons why families may decide to have a
large family in the Philippine setting. First, farmers without infrastructural
support and such equipment as tractors and post-harvest facilities may
find it reasonable to have four or more children who can help out as farm
hands. Second, parents with no access to social security, pension and
medical care packages may have the motivation to have more children with the
hope that one or more of them would take care of their parents in old
age. For millions of families who depend on the remittances of their
children and other relatives who work overseas, this no mere hope but a very
real phenomenon.
“To further support his hypothesis about the critical role of education
and rural infrastructure in combatting poverty, Dr. de Vera refers to the 2002
Balisacan and Pernia study on poverty incidence in Philippine regions.
Their main conclusion was that the provision of education, together with roads,
helps reduce poverty. In other words, persons get the full returns on
their education only if they have access to jobs that pay good wages and to
markets that pay good prices for the goods they produce. The study also
showed that agrarian reform and irrigation alleviate poverty. This
finding is very consistent with the empirical observation of Dr. Balisacan that
poverty is mainly a rural phenomenon, with nearly two-thirds of the rural poor
working in agriculture. I think it is about time that the more mature
people in the House of Representatives listen more to their younger colleagues
who think passing the RH Bill would involve a great waste of very scarce
funds. Kudos to these young congress people who are steeped in the economic
concept of opportunity cost.” Dr. Bernardo Villegas in his article “Why Large Families Are
Poor”. http://bernardovillegas.org/index.php?go=/Articles/133/
Natural Family Planning does work. Here
is a data which shows the effectiveness of Natural Family Planning. It is
objective enough to be considered as a valid fact.
“The most commonly quoted measure of effectiveness is the
Pearl Index, which is defined as the number of unintended pregnancies per
hundred women per year - that is, the number of pregnancies in 1200 observed
months of use.
|
2.
Pearl Indices for Various Family Planning Methods
|
||
|
Method
|
Pearl
Index - 'Perfect Use'
|
Pearl
Index - 'Actual Use'
|
|
Pill
|
0.1-0.5*
|
3
|
|
Natural Family Planning
(NFP)
|
0.3
|
2.8
|
|
Intra Uterine Device
(IUD)
|
1.5
|
2
|
|
Male Condom
|
3
|
12
|
|
Female Condom
|
5
|
21
|
|
Diaphragm + Spermicide
|
6
|
18
|
|
Withdrawal
|
4
|
19
|
|
Spermicide Alone
|
6
|
21
|
It’s
best if those of you who are truly concerned with the Maternal Mortality Rate,
which we all are, will work together with Prolife people and the Church. This
news excerpt “Chile Receives International Pro-Life Award by Sarah Crawford
published on March 11,2011in http://www.texasrighttolife.com/a/630/Chile-Receives-International-ProLife-Award shows
that Prolife has low Maternity Mortality Rate as priority.
“The
people of Chile have been honored with the first-ever International Protect
Life Award. Chile was commended for being Latin America’s most Pro-Life
nation, as well as having the lowest maternal mortality rate in Latin
America. The award was based on Chile’s extraordinary achievements that
help to protect the health and lives of all Chileans, born and
unborn.
“The
Alliance Defense Fund and 30 other non-government agencies make up the
International Protect Life Committee of the United Nations. The letter to
President Piñera, which was also sent to Chile’s Ambassador to the UN, states
that, ‘Chile has attained the lowest maternal mortality rate in all of Latin
America! More Chilean women have safely delivered their babies than ever
before! This is a great advancement in the area of women’s health, and an
example for other countries working to achieve the reduction of maternal
mortality, a key element of the UN Millennium Development Goals.’
“President
Piñera is well-known for his support of the unborn, and in an article in L'Osservatore
Romano on
March 3rd, the same day Piñera met with Pope Benedict XIV, he again stood up
for life saying that ‘[Chile’s] democracy protects human rights, especially the
right to Life from conception to natural death.” Many Pro-Life leaders
are hoping to be able to set up a meeting with President Piñera on March 25th,
Chile’s International Day of the Unborn Child, to personally recognize him and
the country of Chile for their determination to protect all Life.’
I
hope that we will not be misled by false reports such as the Kissinger Report
of the US as well as by big pharmaceutical companies whose aim is to generate substantial
profits from their sale of contraceptives.
Thank
you very much for listening.
Very
truly yours,
Maria
Charina Rodriguez
