House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman urged the Catholic Church to stop attacking the reproductive health (RH) bill which seeks to give couples the freedom of informed choice in planning the size of their family.
“The Catholic Church, with its tenet on free will, has no reason to demonize the RH bill whose central concept is the freedom of informed choice of parents and couples to adopt and have access to the family planning method of their choice which is legal, medically safe and effective,” Lagman said. He added that it would particularly benefit women who bear the brunt of pregnancy, childbirth and childcare.
Lagman made his appeal as he cited reports the world population was going to hit seven billion this October, with the Philippines ranking 12th among the most populous countries with 94 to 100 million Filipinos by that time.
Lagman and Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin are the principal authors of the consolidated RH bill which is undergoing plenary debate.
The two lawmakers said the latest world population report meant a comprehensive national policy on population management was even more crucial.
“The relevance of the reproductive health advocacy and the critical immediacy of enacting the RH bill are in focus with the escalation of the world population to seven billion people,” Lagman said.
He said aside from its 12th ranking in terms of population, the Philippines has a human development index ranking of 97 among 169 countries, a mere one slot higher than Botswana. Sri Lanka placed six ranks higher at 91.
Although the mitigation of the population growth rate (PGR) was not the bill’s principal objective, Lagman said it will be the essential consequence of adopting a nationwide and comprehensive policy on reproductive health with voluntary family planning as one of its salient features.
He said the burgeoning of the population in the face of limited and exhaustible resources, if not mitigated, will aggravate underdevelopment, exacerbate poverty and further marginalize the disadvantaged sectors.
He also said the promotion of responsible parenthood in relation to the basic right of parents to freely and responsibly determine the number and spacing of their children will facilitate the government’s achievement of sustainable human development.
Garin added that the lack of access of the poor to family planning and reproductive health education and services worsened the poverty situation in the country.
While richer nations were concerned about low fertility rates and ageing, poor nations such as the Philippines were still struggling to meet their rapidly growing population, she said.
“Population should not be a problem if resources are available for the additional people requiring public services, employment, housing, education, etcetera,” Garin said.
“But in a country like ours, where the budget is already stretched and where poverty is high to begin with, population growth become a major issue,” she added.
Garin reminded her colleagues in the House who were opposing the measure of the separate roles of Church and State. The lawmaker’s job was to pass legislation, while the clergy were supposed to be concerned with the moral values of the people, she said.