Friday, February 01, 2008 Editorials: Controlling population growth
THERE was this report the other day that mothers coming from the poorest enclaves of Manila’s population are asking the Court of Appeals “to declare unconstitutional an issuance banning artificial contraception and state-provided reproductive health services in the city.”
The petitioners are mostly mothers “who have at least two unplanned children.”
It seems that in the previous city administration, an executive order “directed city hospitals and health centers to stop the distribution of contraceptives like condoms, pills, intrauterine devices, and surgical sterilization, among others, in support of the city’s pro-life stance.”
The ban runs counter to the UN’s effort to control global birth rate but supports the Church’s stand against some forms of birth control.
Mouths to feed
The problem of a runaway population has long been the “bone of contention” between the Church and Government.
But that “open warfare” on the issue has been successfully leashed is a credit to the Filipino people.
Note, however, that when World War 2 broke out in 1941, the country’s population was hardly 20 million.
Since then the number of Filipinos has increased “by leaps and bounds.”
This has tremendously multiplied the number of mouths to feed and increased the pressure on government for food.
Clearly, there is the proverbial “horns of a dilemma” here that need to be resolved.
Zero growth
There are actually countries in Scandinavia that have achieved the ideal of population control, the so-called “zero population growth.”
The situation, however, has given rise to another dilemma.
These countries’ problem now is not having a younger generation to take over from the preceding one.
Unwritten pact
Anyway, there appears to exist in the country an informal understanding to leave matters to the natural flow of life.
A silent compromise is in place, an unwritten agreement between the Church and the State to work within the framework of our spiritual/moral responsibility to God and the Republic on the one hand, and within the parameters of law as set by the legal political structure of democratic governance on the other.
The Church and the State are assuming their responsibilities without adversely competing.
