Knowing

They did not talk about Sept. 21 nor did they remember martial law and the Marcoses. They talked instead of Jimi Hendrix and why he passed away too young. They were once again and as usual stuck in traffic in the late afternoon along the road where now people argue about whether or not to put a flyover. That they argue about it is a good thing. Now is the age of information. They would miss the point of it if they did not use what they know to decide what is right.

The Maker drives the van wherein sit  his two sons, Isagani and Elias, listening to music playing from the laptop; but it is his 12 years-old daughter Linya who answers her own riddle. Why did Hendrix die at a young age? “The good lord Jesus Christ needed someone to teach Him good lead guitar.” They all laugh. And then there was a long silence while the laptop played Bullet for my Valentine, Taylor Swift and Plain White T’s, the children’s music. The father contemplated how different the world has become just simply because of information and how the computer distributes it so well. Did he ever imagine his young daughter would know Jimi Hendrix and listen to his music? That she would know Jesus Christ is a foregone thing. But Jimi Hendrix?

“I have to put ‘Purple Haze’ into the laptop,” he thought to himself. That same night while they were having dinner they heard a sad tragic story, which took away their appetites for the food. Someone they knew, a young mother of two, was in the hospital fighting for her life. Her live-in partner had given her a tablet to take. It had aborted the 5- month-old fetus inside her. The baby was still hanging from her when they took her still bleeding to the hospital. They were of course sorry for what they did. They knew only they were too poor to have another baby. But they never imagined this would happen. They did not know.

In the age of information, majority of people still do not know essential things about life, about motherhood and babies. The condition of general inequality in our country cuts inevitably into the world of information access. Some know more than others. If in the old days we said, “Those who have less in life should have more in law,” we, by the same token, should now say: “Those who have less in life should have more in information, at the very least.” Information ought to be an equalizing and liberating thing. Linya and his brothers know Jesus Christ and Jimi Hendrix. The young mother did not know nor could she imagine what would happen to her and her baby if she took her husband’s pill. If she only did, she would not have risked herself that way. She might even have decided to have the baby instead.

Some will argue it is the fault of the pill. But it is high time they understand that pills are everywhere. This is not about policing pharmaceuticals. This is a country where you can do only so much police work. This is not about religion and Catholicism either. People are free to believe whatever they will. This is about information and why it is important for ordinary people to have access to information and with that defend themselves in the world as it now stands. This is not a world they made for themselves. It is a world made for them by people by far richer and more powerful. That these very same people should now seek to stop legislation that would allow ordinary people access to vital life-saving information  is hard to understand.

Those who drive home in cars can always bring their kids to church and religious schools. They can always know and then teach their children what they know. When the children are old enough they can always be talked to about sex and reproductive health. They can always talk about the pope and the Vatican and put these into the context of their lives. They can always explain, if you take this, this will happen. Armed with this information their children have the best chance to make the good moral judgment of conscience about these things. Who will teach the children of the poor these same things? Not their fathers and mothers unless they knew better.

The debate over birth control and reproductive health is not the religious issue some people make it out to be. No institution in our country can take care of the poor as if they were children even if the Church might call them that, their children. They can not answer for that mother fighting for her life on a hospital bed because she did not know. The premise that the poor will abort their own children if they are informed about abortion is all wrong. Not only is it all wrong, it is a wrong that condemns. And it is hubris to think that we cannot allow legislation that would give people the right to decide these things for themselves. You cannot enforce God by legislation. Every experiment in this field has always failed as it was always meant to fail. It fails because it is not good. Not only is it not good, it is dangerously bad. It is worse than un-Christian. It is inhuman.

“To Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, to God the things that are God’s.” If you want your own children not to steal. You inform them about stealing. You do not keep information away. You would not succeed even if you tried.