Acosta and the hidden scripts
By Antonio Montalvan II
Inquirer News Service

HOUSE Bill 3773 has brought us anew to the season of discourses on population issues. On the surface, this may appear useful to the citizens who, it is argued, need to make an "informed choice" when deciding on such issue as family size. Legislators, population management advocates, church-based groups have been trading views on population issues through various media forums, giving us the impression of a raging debate that makes for a healthy choice, said Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit.

It is the exponents of population control that seem to have the upper hand. Even television anchors now conveniently mouth their arguments. Nothing astonishing about this. All of them are based in congested urban Manila, which its residents consider as the microcosm of Filipino life, let alone a representation of an "overpopulated" Philippines. This, of course, is far from the provincial truth.

The immediate peril in this kind of situation is that ordinary Filipinos might just believe their arguments hook, line, and sinker. We know now what they are saying. But conversely, what are they not saying all along?

They are saying that we have to reduce our population in order to bring about real economic development. Nobody among them is saying what graft and corruption, inequitable distribution of wealth, inept government services are doing to the economic condition of our people. The legislators' reasoning -- "overpopulation is the cause of underdevelopment" -- is a mono-causal illogic and it is definitely inadequate: Poverty is caused by several factors and it deserves to be addressed with a more comprehensive approach. Malthus is long dead, literally and figuratively, in case they didn't know.

These debates certainly are not a case of "he said, she said." Legislators -- and those lobbying for a pro-western population agenda, allegedly with their western-provided, fat lobby purses, are certainly doing little research work.
The favorite whipping boy is, of course, the Catholic Church. But have we heard these population "experts" -- for once -- provide a convincing argument against the Church's stand on artificial contraception? All they know is that the Church is against it. Not for a single moment have I heard them argue against the Church's position as laid down on such documents as Humanae Vitae. I doubt it whether they have even read the documents at all. Not for a single moment, too, have I heard them mention the Natural Law or the Moral Law. No, Edcel Lagman will not be up to the task in a public debate.

Listening to Catholic social worker Irene M. de los Angeles on nationwide television confirmed my fears. De los Angeles related her encounter with a woman who has 10 children. After the birth of her first child, the woman went to a government health center to ask for contraceptives. When she was found to have high blood pressure, she was refused. De los Angeles professes amazement: "Out of a long list of contraceptive [methods], she was not informed about the last item on the list: natural family planning." It appears that the health center personnel were not only averse to natural family planning; they were not well-versed on its application. No pun intended there, but talk about choices!

Needless to say, there is so much chatter about artificial contraception -- all in the name of health -- yet nobody among the proponents (of artificial family planning program) ever mentions the ill effects of these contraceptives. Nobody ever cites legitimate medical data, for instance, that today's intra-uterine devices are now laced with abortifacient chemicals. No statistics on uterine cancer that have afflicted women with a long history of IUD use. This definitely is not a situation that truly speaks of choices.

Those advocating the need for population control are talking about health that is unhealthy. They say they are not for abortion but they are silent on abortifacients. Somebody who does not lay all the cards on the table is called a dirty dealer. Well, this one is such a case, on a grand scale yet.

Amid the clumsy arguments for contraceptives comes out of the blue, like a bolt of lightning, Ligaya Acosta, an employee of the Department of Health in Eastern Visayas, saying that Secretary Dayrit's "Ligtas Buntis" program is a facade for promoting artificial contraception. This woman has put her job on the line. She is a heroine that we must listen to. For look, she is saying what nobody else has said all along. She is speaking the truth. She is telling us what the choices are.

There are other things that are not being said. Nobody is saying about the recorded 200,000 cases of abortion each year in the United States, where artificial contraceptives are practically within everyone's reach at any time. If HB 3773 is meant to arrest the tide of unsafe abortions in the Philippines, then I do not know what non sequitur logic ever means. They talk incessantly about the rights of women. Nobody, but nobody, has ever spoken about the rights of the unborn. Truly free choices are not made on the basis of limited information, deliberately meant to obfuscate the public's judgment.

And the "hidden" scripts reveal more. What about the "demographic winter"? Just imagine an aging population a few years from now -- like what the countries that have adopted population control programs are now experiencing -- in a country that remains poor, without a social welfare for the aged. Western culture is not always correct.

Thank you, Ligaya Acosta, for the joyful light.

Comments to monta@cu-cdo.edu.ph