DAVAO CITY—Three’s the limit.
Amid a highly charged debate on the reproductive health (RH) bill, Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte set the number of children for a family in advising 51 couples whose marriage vows he helped solemnize in a “kasalang bayan” (community wedding) at NHA village in Maa District here on Friday.
“Once you reach three [children], you should stop. Consider that your boundary,” Duterte said in a pitch for pills and contraceptives.
Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church have vehemently criticized the bill still pending approval in both chambers of Congress, calling the measure “antifamily” and “antilife.” Proponents, however, say it aims to provide couples access to contraception and other birth control methods and information as part of a national population policy to improve quality of life.
“The Church has a different stand, but as government officials, we can easily see the situation,” Duterte said.
“I’m telling you there’s no way that a jobless housewife with six to eight children living with an equally jobless husband can raise a decent family,” he told the couples. Most of them have already been living together for years and have a number of children.
Even long before the debate over the RH bill, Duterte said the city had already been implementing its own version of the measure. In early 2006, Duterte, who was then mayor, announced that he was giving P5,000 financial assistance to men and women who would avail themselves of the city’s free vasectomy and ligation services.
Health officials and workers told journalists that the amount, later reduced to P3,000, was not a cash aid but would cover hospital expenses for the procedure. City health officer Josephine Villafuerte said her office had run out of funds for the program over the last two years and was forced to scrap the amount.
Duterte said he was still willing to assist couples seeking contraceptives.
“The cost of pills and contraceptives is so cheap that if you don’t have the money, just come to me, because I will pay for it,” he said.
“I am for the RH bill because it is something good for the people,” Duterte said. “I disagree with the Church. The priests are just taking the debate personally, but when people no longer have anything to eat, they turn to public officials for help.”
Health workers campaigning for the government’s family planning services said the husbands actually refused to have their wives ligated, fearing that it would make the women “unfaithful.”
Duterte acknowledged that the male ego remained a stumbling block for the program.