Sunday, July 20, 2008 Mercado: Leaving square one By Juan L. Mercado Sidebar
ARCHBISHOP Jesus Dosado has cast into “exterior darkness” those who back the reproductive health bill. Abortion hawkers will be denied communion in Ozamis.
“Uninformed objections,” scoffed Rep. Edcel Lagman. Correct. Pending reproductive health bills “do not legalize abortion” – a criminal offense. But Lagman & Co. belatedly excised an abortion-on-demand provision they carelessly scribbled into their first draft. That triggered alarm bells.
Population deals with creatures “able to trace the stars… and feel a passion for eternity,” Edwin Markham wrote. Hence, there is furious “gnashing of teeth.”
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo “dialogued” with Cardinal Ricardo Vidal and three prelates on this issue. “Dialog is not meant to give us a common policy,” the book “Living Together” notes. ”But it teaches us how to live without one, if need be. It can make us accept our differences.”
But 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…”
How? Begin with undisputed facts. The census says there were 88.5 million Filipinos as of August last year. Today, that is estimated at 90.2 million. Both figures mean there are four of us now where, in 1948, there was 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. You can not say “tomorrow” to these children. “Their name is today.”
Poor families, with six, seven, eight kids, find it tougher to break out of penury. That’s also patent.
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.
This vacuum spurs underground abortion. About 1930 or more are aborted daily, 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.
Parents should decide on the number of children. Vatican II defined that principle in Council document: “The Church in the Modern World.” The right to be a parent should be balanced with rights of the whole society.
The Church supports family planning but bucks contraception. Ipil Prelature and Cagayan de Oro archdiocese implement an “All Natural Family Planning” program. What about other dioceses? Do comparable programs match their “anathemas”?
One out of every five persons in the country is 15–24 years old. Scientists call that the “youth bulge.” Over 18 million youngsters will soon find their hormones in overdrive – and marry. Their offspring will form the next baby boom, now building up around the corner.
This differs from the earlier boom. The base is larger. And the country hasn’t even moderated the previous baby boom by starting the “demographic transition” to lower birth rates.
A country that can’t feed, clothe and school its kids needs to work on population’s areas of agreement. The bridge that true dialog builds will not stay open forever.
“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?”
