DUCKY PAREDES: OUR CHILDREN AND THE
POPULATION
MANILA, AUGUST 16, 2012
(MALAYA) Written by DUCKY PAREDES ('Drug companies now
have superior, improved pharmacology resulting in a safer, more effective pill
since half a century ago.' )
I HAVE four children. The first was Oona, our only girl; three years later
came Andy and 13 months after, Mikey. Danny arrived seven years later.
Of course, the perceptive reader will surmise that we used contraceptive
pills, but, unlike what is being played up in our Senate (from the experiences
of blue babies occurring for Senators Tito Sotto and Lito Lapid), we never had
blue babies or any other child-bearing problems.
As Senator Pia Cayetano has decided for herself in judging medical histories,
I would also go with scientific fact and explanations rather than blaming pills
or other devices for childbearing misfortunes. This is not to say that the drug
companies are totally blameless.
The time that we had our children was also when the world was shocked with
the discovery that certain chemicals thought to be safe gave the world the
Thalidomide babies born with no feet or arms and sometimes even without both
essential appendages. Thalidomide, by the way, is not a contraceptive, but a
sleeping pill, and was dispensed with a warning that pregnant mothers should not
use it.
Thus, while pills in the time that our babies were conceived may not have had
zero defects, one also clearly remembers that these had warnings and caveats on
their packaging. Thus, even if the doctors prescribing them did not give ample
warnings, reading the literature listing health conditions and practices that
made these pills toxic was enough to stop a careful user from taking them. These
were explicit warnings against using these pills with other specific drugs,
alcohol and other substances.
But that was years ago; and, one presumes that the drug companies (having
experimented on our generation the earlier pills for contraception) now have
superior, improved pharmacology resulting in a safer, more effective pill since
half a century ago.
***
Health Secretary Enrique Ona (a member of my Rotary club -- RC Pasig.
District 3800) says that the enactment of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill is a
precursor to the universal health care program of the Aquino administration.
Health Secretary Enrique Ona in effect passed the ball to Congress on whether or
not Filipinos are provided with basic health services.
Dr. Ona identified the RH bill as one of five needed to complete the
government's healthcare services for all by the end of 2016. The others include:
sin taxes (upgraded taxes for tobacco and alcohol), amendments to the National
Health Insurance Act, laws for corporate governance of hospitals, amendments to
midwife and nursing laws.
Dr. Ona said: "I believe that these legislations should be a priority for the
universal healthcare program."
What House Bill 4244 or the "Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and
Population and Development Act of 2011" mandates is that the government provide
natural and artificial methods of family planning including condoms,
intrauterine devices and pills.
This provision for the state providing condoms, intrauterine devices and
pills is the one that the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP)
objects to on grounds that the use of these devices and pills is not acceptable
to their religion.
This, despite the clear provision in our Constitution (Article II, Section 6)
that states: "The separation of Church and State shall be inviolable."
In the ongoing debate on whether or not to pass the proposed legislation, the
debate is not whether one is pro or anti-choice. In our country, where most of
the unplanned and even unwanted pregnancies occur among the very poor, if
government does not provide these means of legal contraception, then, they are
not available to most of our population who are mostly poor.
They do not even know that these safe pills and devices even exist and these
would be affordable to them only if these were available for free from
government clinics and hospitals. Having these available also gives our doctors
the means to assure that mothers can space their children for healthier
pregnancies, child-bearing and actual births.
Our present statistics on the number of women who die from childbirth are
unacceptable. This would improve if these mothers were given the means and the
knowledge necessary to space their children.
We also have the problem of unplanned and even unwanted children even among
very young women who are not given the knowledge about their bodies that they
need to understand how children are created and are born.
I am for the RH Bill and feel that I have to be. After all, we did use the
pill to space our four children. If this was good enough for us, why should I
now shift to the side of the moralists who would deprive our poor women who,
from being poor (and being kept ignorant), do not have the means or the
knowledge needed to take control over their own bodies?
***
"Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not
understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have
discovered and with resources we posses. What is lacking is not sufficient
knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the
problem and education of the billions who are its victim." -- Martin Luther King
Jr., civil rights leader and Nobel laureate
***
"Once it was necessary that the people should multiply and be fruitful if the
race was to survive. But now to preserve the race it is necessary that people
hold back the power of propagation." – Helen Keller, world-renowned deaf and
blind author and lecturer
***
"Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale,
from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way
aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally,
nationally, or globally?" -- Dr. Albert A. Bartlett, Emeritus Professor of
Physics, University of Colorado; World Population Balance Board of Advisors
***
"Which is the greater danger - nuclear warfare or the population explosion?
The latter absolutely! To bring about nuclear war, someone has to DO something;
someone has to press a button. To bring about destruction by overcrowding, mass
starvation, anarchy, the destruction of our most cherished values-there is no
need to do anything. We need only do nothing except what comes naturally - and
breed. And how easy it is to do nothing." -- Dr. Isaac Asimov, biochemist and
science writer (in this 1966 interview he predicted that world population would
reach 6 billion around 2000. Most leaders dismissed his prediction as
outrageous. Population passed 6 billion in 1999.)
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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