ON TUESDAY, July 11, passed uneventfully. It was only later in the afternoon when we learned that it was the World Population Day. This was declared in 1989 by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme to "focus attention on the urgency and importance of population issues."
This year's theme is "Family Planning: Empowering People, Developing Nations" as UNDP stressed that access to safe, voluntary family planning is a human right and is a key factor in reducing poverty.
We just have to look at the numbers and know, we were not listening.
In 1989, the Philippine population was at 60.39-million, today, July 2017, Philippine population is around 103.8-million, 171.8 percent more than when the World Population Day was declared.
"Around the world, some 214 million women in developing countries who want to avoid pregnancy are not using safe and effective family planning methods, for reasons ranging from lack of access to information or services to lack of support from their partners or communities. Many of those with an unmet demand for contraceptives live in the poorest countries on earth," the UNDP wrote. We add, many of those live in the Philippines where the Catholic Church has been like an immovable block against any population management moves outside the natural method.
It's not surprising then that we have a poverty problem that now seems insurmountable.
But now we have a leader who never had qualms about bucking the Catholic Church when it comes to poverty alleviation and ensuring that women have access to reproductive health services. It was during his term as the city mayor when the Reproductive Health and Wellness Center was operationalized and has since become the HIV-Aids center for all. We all know what HIV-Aids talk boils down to when the Catholic Church butts in: it's all about condoms and the Church's stalwart refusal to let people accept it.
It was also under Duterte's leadership when the city government came up with incentives when women with at least four children volunteer to undergo tubal ligation and for men who have at least four children to undergo vasectomy. As expected, only the tubal ligation program took off as very few men voluntarily had vasectomy, despite the higher incentive given.
These were done as the erstwhile mayor drummed on the fact that having too many children while not being able to provide well for each traps a family into the cycle of poverty.
Investments in making family planning available also yield economic and other gains that can propel development forward.
This year’s World Population Day, July 11, coincides with the Family Planning Summit, the second meeting of the FP2020–Family Planning 2020–initiative, which aims to expand access to voluntary family planning to 120 million additional women by 2020.
Now, he leads the nation, and the Department of Health (DOH) has carried on its programs for reproductive health, as it always had. The only difference now is that it does not stall when the Church says no. After all, there may be more Catholics among Filipinos, but there are other denominations as well, and the government must serve all and not just one religion.