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[av_heading heading=’Strength is not always in number’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY HERBERT VEGO
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Sunday, March 12, 2017
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WE HAVE heard it said, “There is strength in number.” Who can argue against that? Certainly not Henry Sy. The more the number of people who patronize his mall, the more money he earns. But it does not follow that each individual customer is also rich.
Despite the geometric increase in population – now more than a hundred million Filipinos who have made our small archipelago the 12th most populous nation – the vast majority suffers from deprivation. The poor do not rise with the rise in prices of oil, rice, meat, vegetables and other basic necessities.
A laborer earning P300 per day could hardly feed a family of six. Working abroad for much higher pay seems his only way out of poverty.
The Population Commission estimates that if our growth rate goes steady at 2.3 percent annually, our population would exceed 118 million by 2025.
The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Law of 2012 (Republic Act 10354) – aimed at helping couples manage family size – remains toothless because of the temporary restraining order issued by the Supreme Court almost two years ago. The order prohibits the government from promoting and distributing certain hormonal contraceptives.
“We don’t want women to have unwanted babies,” said National Economic and Development Authority secretary-general Ernesto Pernia, “because then, they would have difficulty raising their babies to their full potential.”
The Catholic Church has stood in the way, calling the law “pro-abortion, anti-life.”
A spokesman of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has attacked the law, saying, “It’s not the population that is the problem. It’s the great disparity of wealth. If the wealthy would share what they have, then population would not be a problem.”
Tell that to the marines. It is a myopic way of defending an undesirable situation where poor couples make more children than they can afford to feed and educate. Malnourished and uneducated, as present-day Philippine reality shows, these unplanned children – assuming they survive hunger and hostile environment – grow up to be thieves, robbers, prostitutes and even killers for hire in order to survive. More often than not, the cycle replicates itself in the next generation.
Doesn’t even common sense tell us that a worker making barely enough bread for himself is unfit to marry and multiply? The new family consequently becomes a burden, not an asset, to society.
Conversely, it is the rich in the Philippines who limit the number of their children to two or three. Reason: to ensure their good future.
Ironically, if other predominantly Catholic countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Poland control their birth rates, why can’t we for the sake of survival?
I know from personal experience why it pays to limit population. I was 10 years old and in grade four in 1960 when the Philippine population was only 30 million. We were fewer but happier then with wider farms to till, cleaner air to breathe, and coliform-free rivers and seas to swim at.
I remember swimming at Villa Beach as a teenager in 1965 when it was still a healthy tourist spot. There were no squatters there yet.
Ergo, between 1960 and today, our population that took centuries to accumulate has more than tripled!
God forbid that the 100 million Filipinos today would triple in another half century when we might have to kill – like lions devouring a prey – or be killed while scrambling for food and potable water./PN
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