After endlessly flicking the remote control and
intermittently listening to the pros and cons being laid down on the Batasan
floor in the midnight hour, it has become clear to me that House Bill 4244 is nothing
more than a population control measure wrapped in a plastic packet marked
reproductive health. Would controlling the birth of babies guarantee the
eradication of poverty in this country? It’s just like asking, would the
average ‘macho’ Filipino male choose to undergo vasectomy in order to reduce
his spawn and make this a better place to live? Hah.
You, male authors and supporters of this bill, would you
agree to remove from women the burden of ‘family planning’, ‘responsible
parenthood’ or whatever fancy tag you call it, and have yourselves castrated?
That is the surest and most effective way of decreasing births – within and
outside of marriage. The line forms to the right, gentlemen. You have two or
three kids already? Time to snip it. Your manhood won’t be diminished, promise.
Sure, provide pregnant women the best health care possible –
including free vitamins and meds but excluding the unwarranted use of
abortifacients – that’s not debatable. But the sad fact remains that women –
being ‘cursed’ or ‘gifted’ with the uterus – have to bear the burden of
reproduction and of controlling population at the same time. Take the pill and
all its side effects, insert those weird-looking wires into their innards –
while the husbands sit and look away. It’s time to man up and ‘bear the
burden’, Dad. Give Mom a break. Make vasectomy obligatory. Then you’ll have my
vote.
Do I want my little nephews and nieces to be taught in
school how to make babies even as they themselves are still babies? NO.
Children these days are already overexposed as they are to sex and violence in
all forms of media, what’s to stop them anymore from ‘experimenting’, i.e.
indulging early and contributing a few more to the population explosion? Sex education is more important for
ten-year-old kids than GMRC, catechism and stuff that have long ago disappeared
from the primary school curriculum? Come on, Brother DepEd, Doctor DoH. Leave
the ill rhetoric to showboating congressmen; they have work to do for their
rich benefactors, um, poor constituents…
Do I want my teenaged nephews to carry condoms everywhere
because it is the ‘safe’ way to do it? NO. That only encourages them to
practice what their elders preach: just do it. Government distributing
contraceptives to teenagers – is it just me or have our morals gone to the
murky waters of Pasig River? Would using condoms guarantee that no ‘unwanted’
babies are made? And would giving away those rubber dickies insure that the
recipients will use it? In the same token, does the presence of CCTV cameras
deter criminals from committing crimes? Incidentally, the grapevine says that
the world's biggest manufacturer of condoms will be brought in by the country’s
most ubiquitous businessman. It’s all about the money, folks. Reproductive
health, so-called, is just a flimsy smokescreen.
Does the Church calling on its faithful to reject the bill
constitute meddling in State affairs? The thin line that separates Church and
State has never been trod more gingerly here. Did anyone from civil society
raise a howl in February 1986 when the late Cardinal Sin called on the people
to march to EDSA, and the nuns formed human barricades to prevent the soldiers
from firing? I rest my case…and my unproductive ovaries. I may not have
personally contributed to the baby boom but I am happy to see my siblings’ and
cousins’ children – living, breathing, smiling, thriving creatures of God
basking in their place under the heavens. I am happy that their parents didn’t
have to be confronted with the dilemma of choice or life, the Great Conscience
Debate, as it were, that couples today are being made to face; that they are
not products of ‘unwanted’ pregnancies (because their ‘protection’ didn’t
work), and they are loved no matter the circumstances.
Most of all, I am happy that my own parents did not practice
family planning because – embryo, fetus, germ, seed, fertilized egg or
unfertilized ovum, whatever scientific term
they call it, the naysayers be damned –
all six of us have the RIGHT TO BE HERE.
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