RH: Prescription for Church-State Conflict

Is it merely a tale of a profound misunderstanding?

The deep cleavage that obtains between church and state on the issue of mining as currently practiced is turning into a dark chasm because of another issue – that of population management in our Third World developing economy.

Government seems determined to push a bill into law that the church opposes in the most passionate terms.  The same institution identified with people power in 1986 because of its facility for almost instantaneous mobilization of big numbers toward a well-focused moral target seems at it again – in a practicing mode. Thousands upon thousands turned out to participate in a Mass rally at the Edsa Shrine on August 5th despite the rains that traditionally keeps this warm-blooded nation at home.

What, gardeners ask, are the real issues in this hot debate? Who are the true believers? Who are the riding opportunists? Is the passage of the bill for the good of the Filipino nation? Or will it merely serve a few mega vested interests that have succeeded in clothing themselves with the mantle of the common good. The length of time spent on this bill has enabled all sorts of political and economic interests to position themselves comfortably and there is need to return to basics to see what’s really what in a very divisive topic.

Is the major premise right?

IN its Explanatory Note, the House Bill known as “An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development and for other Purposes” virtually takes as dogma the line that “rapid population growth exacerbates poverty while poverty spawns rapid population growth.”

It says it merely “recognizes the verifiable link between a huge population and poverty. Unbridled population growth stunts socioeconomic development and aggravates poverty.” And so it aims for improved quality of life through a “consistent and coherent national population policy.”

Its “bible” are papers from the University of the Philippines’ School of Economics: “Population and Poverty: the Real Score” (2004), “Population, Poverty, Politics and the Reproductive Health Bill” (2008) and its 2012 updated version. The signatories of these papers are a veritable “Who’s who” of the practitioners of the dismal science from out of the state university.

At the outset, gardeners recognize that these economists are not an extremist group that views “population growth as the principal cause of poverty that would justify the government resorting to draconian and coercive measures to deal with the problem (e.g., denial of basic services and subsidies to families with more than two children).” No, they simply want recognition for the fact that “rapid population growth and high fertility rates, especially among the poor, do exacerbate poverty and make it harder for the government to address it.

They compare the economic growth and population growth rates of Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, wherein the first two grew more rapidly than the Philippines allegedly due to lower population growth rates. They stress that “poverty incidence is higher among big families: 57.3% of Filipino families with seven children are in poverty while only 23.8% of families having two children live below the poverty threshold.”

Kuznets

Ranged against the U.P. Group are economists from the University of Asia and the Pacific (UAP) who claim with Nobel Prize winner Simon Kuznets that “no clear association appears to exist in the present sample of countries, or is likely to exist in other developed countries, between rates of growth of population and of product per capita.”

They claim “that in the Philippine experience, poverty incidence actually went down as population got larger. From 1961-2000, population increased almost threefold, from 27 million to 76 million, while population incidence decreased from 59% to 34% of all families in the country.”

They claim that “larger family size is not the cause of poverty, since the more probable cause of poor families is the limited schooling of the household head: 78% to 90% of the poor households in each family size had heads with no high school diploma, which prevents them from getting good paying jobs.”

They (e.g. Drs.Villegas and Sandejas) also go so far as to claim that “contrary to the view that the Philippine population is still exploding (seemingly supported by the common sight of overcrowded slum districts in the Metro Manila area), the Philippines’ National Statistical Coordination Board in its website, quotes the Philippine Population Growth Rate (PPGR) for the year 2010 to be at the slowing rate of only 1.82 percent per annum (vs. the 2.36 percent during the census year 2000, which figure is often still used to justify the view that PGR is ‘exploding’).”

They also find it worrisome that “the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), the average number of children per woman, quoted by the NSCB for the year 2010 [is] at 2.96 births per woman. This represents a significant decline from the NSCB figure of 3.41 births per woman.”

In their view this big drop in the TFR can be seen all around us, as “we see young couples having fewer children than their elders (even in informal dweller areas), with many young couples saying that they plan on having no more than two or three children (or much less than their elders who had four to six children per family). In fact, in 1975 the TFR was six children per fertile woman. This decline in fertility has happened without aggressive population control campaigns. The main factors for the decrease in fertility are urbanization, later marriages, and increased education of women.”

Non-economists who form a big majority may conclude that even geniuses, like our economists, in trying to understand complex problems like population and poverty reduction are not exempt from being trapped in the proverbial chicken-egg vicious circle.

Malthus and Clark 

Malthus

Most educated Filipinos have somehow heard of the hugely influential and controversial British scholar of two centuries ago, the Rev. Thomas Malthus, who taught that the dangers of population growth precluded endless progress and prosperity because “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man”. Malthus argued that, “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.

Luckily for all, he observed, “sooner or later population gets checked by famine, disease, and widespread mortality” and, in modern times by population control. Malthus himself advocated for the education of the people about the use of “moral restraint,” or voluntary abstinence, which he believed would slow the growth rate.

After Malthus, came eugenicists who promoted birth control “for the unfit”, followed by doomsday scholars who warned the world of a population bomb that necessitated the automatic inclusion of support for population control activities in the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act.

In their view, population growth was like cancer. A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. And we know what they do with cancer, don’t we?

Poor Reverend Malthus! He did not know empire builders would posthumously recruit him for dubious purposes.

Kissinger

Of record, the most famous U.S. National Security Adviser, Dr. Henry Kissinger, targeted 13 populous countries including the Philippines for strong population reduction measures because the “U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad,” and these countries can produce destabilizing opposition forces against the United States. The Kissinger Memorandum stated the need to work with UN agencies to achieve the population control objectives.

This is why, even today, the UN-sponsored Millennium Development Goal grants amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars are highly suspected to be tied to the government’s all-out support for the RH bill. In fact, the head of the UN Millennium Project Jeffrey Sachs is also a heavy proponent of decreasing the effects of overpopulation.

Okay, then—if that was Malthus, who was Colin Clark?

Clark

Colin Clark was a British and Australian economist and statistician who pioneered in the use of the gross national product (“GNP”) as the basis for studying national economies. An Oxford economist, his Herculean data collection efforts remain unparalleled to the modern day.

The more famous John Maynard Keynes said of him: “Clark is, I think, a bit of a genius: almost the only economic statistician I have ever met who seems to me quite first-class.” It was no wonder that the World Bank in 1984 would name him one of the pioneers of development along with Sir Arthur Lewis, Gunnar Myrdal, W.W. Rostow and Jan Tinbergen.

Colin Clark the agricultural mathematician estimated the world’s potential agricultural area at between 7.7 and 10.7 billion hectares. Taking account of these estimates and those of the amount of arable land to support various types of food consumption, Colin Clark said that Earth can support 47 billion people at American food-consumption levels and 157 billion at Japanese levels.

He also referred often to the law of increasing return showing that an industrial country benefited economically from the enlargement of its population. Clark found Malthus’ approach uncongenial at best. He rather drew on Hagen, Hirschman, Streeten, Sauvy, Kuznets and others for support of his view that population growth tends to make for rising average output. He never tired of presenting statistical data positively correlating percentage of net national product saved with rate of population growth.

Colin Clark argued that only countries with growing populations can really flourish economically. He pointed out, however, that 5 percent exceeds the rate at which a country can increase its nonagricultural labor force through natural increase and immigration.

What is ours?  Jesuit scholar Emeterio Barcelon wrote:

The Philippine annual population growth rate is somewhere between 1.6% and 1.8% per year according to the United Nations Population Commission. And the World Health Organization (Western Pacific website) reports that Philippine average population growth rate between 2000 and 2007 was 2.04 which is below the 2.1 needed for replacement. We may not reach 100 million Filipinos before the population starts going down. If maternal mortality is not the problem and the population growth rate of the country is below replacement, what is the need for the RH bill? But there are plenty of Filipinos in poverty and these are the ones who want children. We can either give jobs and livelihood or condoms. In the first alternative everybody wins; in the second we may be violating the consciences of the poor if we make it a condition to use condoms or sterilization as a condition for receiving alms from the government.”

Colin Clark had seen in his voluminous studies that the location of industries and population couldn’t be left entirely to the free market.

Population explosions were nothing more than society’s not dealing with land use in urban areas and the distribution of populations within these areas and the prior maldevelopment of rural areas that often made immigration and consequent urban blight the kind of population problem our world is now familiar with. Overcrowding for lack of government planning and social justice is not the same as overpopulation.

Value-free economist that he seemed to be, he was describing a need for social justice—without using the phrase that had all too frequently been banished from polite scholarly talk.

A Revolution in Scientific Views

Simon

Julian L. Simon pointed it out: “In the 1980’s a revolution occurred in scientific views toward the role of population growth in economic development. Revolution is usually the most newsworthy of events. Yet this revolution has gone unreported in the popular press, and conventional ideas therefore continue as before the revolution. The lack of news of this revolution is itself newsworthy.” What is it about? It is about the economics profession turning almost completely away from the previous view that population growth is a crucial negative factor in economic development. 

“To all,” said Simon, “the view that population growth is either neutral or favorable to development in the long run is at least a controversial pole in a legitimate debate. And there is consensus that if population growth has a negative effect in any given country, it is not a factor of overwhelming importance.”

In the light of all these, it would now seem that the major premise of the House Bill known as “An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development and for other Purposes,” namely, that “rapid population growth exacerbates poverty while poverty spawns rapid population growth” may not seem to be all that solid at all. Well, this should not be surprising in a multi-causal world and the gardeners believe the U.P. scholars may not really disagree with this observation. 

A different Jesuit point of view – the Bernas take on the issue

The constitutionalist Joaquin Bernas has said in earlier interviews with other journalists (like R. Robles) that:

Bernas

“I am very much aware of the fact that we live in a pluralist society where various religious groups have differing beliefs about the morality of artificial contraception. But freedom of religion means more than just the freedom to believe. It also means the freedom to act or not to act according to what one believes. Hence, the state should not prevent people from practicing responsible parenthood according to their religious belief nor may churchmen compel President Aquino, by whatever means, to prevent people from acting according to their religious belief.” 

Also:    “Specifically,  I advocate removal of the provision on mandatory sexual education in public schools without the consent of parents. (I assume that those who send their children to Catholic schools accept the program of Catholic schools on the subject.)”

And:    “I am pleased that the bill reiterates the prohibition of abortion as an assault against the right to life. Abortifacient pills and devises, if there are any in the market, should be banned by the Food and Drug Administration. But whether or not there are such is a question of scientific fact of which I am no judge.”

Quite significantly, he emphasized:

I hold that there already is abortion any time a fertilized ovum is expelled. The Constitution commands that the life of the unborn be protected ‘from conception.’ For me this means that sacred life begins at fertilization and not at implantation.” 

“There are many valuable points in the bill’s Declaration of Policy and Guiding Principles which can serve the welfare of the nation and especially of poor women who cannot afford the cost of medical service. There are specific provisions that give substance to these good points. They should be saved.” 

“I hold that public money may be spent for the promotion of reproductive health in ways that do not violate the Constitution. Public money is neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Muslim or what have you and may be appropriated by Congress for the public good without violating the Constitution.”

Author Lagman

The principal author of the proposed Reproductive Health and Population Development Act wants to be clear: “My bill does not legalize abortion. It expressly provides that ‘abortion remains a crime’ and ‘prevention of abortion’ is essential to fully implement the Reproductive Health Care Program. While ‘management of post-abortion complications’ is provided, this is not to condone abortion but to promote the humane treatment of women in life-threatening situations.

Lagman

The question asked of Edcel Lagman, however, is whether his bill would make public funds available to pick up the tab on such abortions in the first place. And the answer, as read by the church, is in the affirmative: “SEC. 10. Contraceptives as Essential Medicines. – Hormonal contraceptives, intrauterine devices, injectables and other allied reproductive health products and supplies shall be considered under the category of essential medicines and supplies which shall form part of the National Drug Formulary and the same shall be included in the regular purchase of essential medicines and supplies of all national and local hospitals and other government health units.”

Contraception should not be equated with abortion if there has been no implantation of the fertilized egg. It is, in fact, the prevention of the human egg from being fertilized.  However, the latest studies in scientific journals and organizations show that the ordinary birth control pill, the IUD, and RU-486 are abortifacient in that they dislodge already implanted fertilized eggs: they kill young human embryos, who as such, in the Church’s view, are human beings worthy of respect.

But, Lagman continued, “Contraceptives do not have life-threatening side effects. Medical and scientific evidence shows that all the possible medical risks connected with contraceptives are infinitely lower than the risks of an actual pregnancy and everyday activities. The risk of dying within a year of riding a car is 1 in 5,900. The risk of dying within a year of using pills is 1 in 200,000. The risk of dying from a vasectomy is 1 in 1 million and the risk of dying from using an IUD is 1 in 10 million. The probability of dying from condom use is absolutely zero. But the risk of dying from a pregnancy is 1 in 10,000.” The debate is off, the conversation bogs down. And the “other side” has no lack of counter-arguments showing that oral contraceptives (OCs) are unsafe, conferring “risk of first ischemic stroke,” and that current use of low-dose OCs significantly increases the risk of both cardiac and vascular arterial events.

They would remind us that the World Health Organization (WHO) had announced in 2005 the findings of The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that “there is sufficient evidence in humans for the carcinogecity of combined estrogen-progestogen contraceptives.”  They add that WHO stated that these drugs “have been questioned” and “will be reviewed” by its Expert Committee. The announcement of the scientific findings on the carcinogecity of the pill first came from the WHO that nonetheless kept it in its list of essential medicines.

And they ask: must pregnancy be considered a disease per se rather than a blessing? Aren’t there real diseases among the leading causes of mortality that should take on a higher priority, given the limited budget: heart diseases, vascular diseases, pneumonia, cancer, tuberculosis, diabetes, lower chronic respiratory diseases, etc?

The budgetary “counter argument” comes quick from an NGO concerned with women’s health (Likhaan): “If all women who wanted to avoid pregnancy used modern methods, there would be 1.6 million fewer pregnancies each year in the Philippines. Unintended births would drop by 800,000, abortions would decline by 500,000 and miscarriages would decline by 200,000. Expanding modern contraceptive use to all women at risk for unintended pregnancy would prevent 2,100 maternal deaths each year. It would also reap savings on medical care for pregnant women and newborns that would more than offset the additional spending on modern contraception.”

There seems to be no disagreement at all about the RH provisions on setting up of birthing services, which greatly help to reduce maternal deaths and the promotion of breastfeeding, adolescent and youth health, elimination of violence against women, and maternal and child health. Again, the quarrel is about the key proposal that the government funds and undertakes widespread distribution of devices such as birth control pills (BCPs) and IUDs, dissemination of information on their use, and enforcement of their provision in all health care centers and private companies, as a way of controlling the population of the Philippines.

The gardeners conclude for now that given all of the above, we just may have to convince drafters to go back to the drawing board. Yes, the issue of reproductive health is urgent. And we must hurry to address it. Therefore let us hurry in the most efficient way known to the human experience: let us hurry slowly. FINIS.

Charles Avila
The Gardener

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