BERNARDO M. VILLEGAS
February 29, 2008
DEBATE ON CONTRACEPTION
BBC News recently reported that a group of 16 women and four of their husbands are
fighting what they consider as a ban on artificial contraceptives in the City of Manila. To set
the record straight, there is no ban on contraception as there is no ban on the selling of
cigarettes in Manila or elsewhere.
The policy instituted in February 2000 during the
Administration of former Manila City Mayor Jose Atienza was a result of a democratic
process through which pro-life forces won over those who promote their own ideological bias
that conjugal sex should not be subject to any moral constraints. The refusal to use artificial
contraceptives and to countenance the allocation of tax money for condoms, pills and other
artificial form of planning is based on a deeply held moral conviction that every conjugal act
must be open to reproduction. This moral conviction is not held exclusively by Catholics
who are faithful to the teachings of their moral leaders but also by people belonging to other
religious groups as can be gleaned from the membership of the pro-life associations that have
systematically defeated repeated attempts of some members of the Philippine Congress to
legislate a national reproductive health policy.
Those who object in conscience against the use of public funds are convinced that
artificial contraceptives can do much damage--both physically and morally--to those who
resort to them in order to limit reproduction. They are not blind to the predicament of poor
families who have numerous children and to the dangers to the health of some mothers-whether poor or not--of difficult pregnancies. For this reason, they are actively promoting
responsible parenthood through means compatible with their moral beliefs. An example of
such a means is the natural family planning method, which can be 98% effective as in the
case of the Billings method, compared to the much more risky condom.
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The women and some of their husbands who are allegedly fighting in court--with the
help of population control advocates--to overturn a policy in the City of Manila making
public funds unavailable for the distribution of artificial contraceptives are completely within
their democratic rights to reverse a public policy which they consider detrimental to their
health and economic well-being. But they have to contend with other citizens belonging to
pro-life organizations who also have the democratic right to prevent the use of public funds
for the purchase of goods which they sincerely believe can damage the physical health of
women as well as their moral values since separating the sexual pleasure from reproduction
has in many countries led to promiscuity and the breakdown of family values.
These pro-life groups will continue to view artificial contraceptives in the same light as
an increasing number of people all over the world consider cigarettes as dangerous to human
health. They consider the use of tax money to distribute condoms and birth control pills as
no different from employing public funds to distribute cigarettes for free. The sixteen women
and their supporters may disagree with this view but the clash of opinions is the very essence
of policy making in a democratic society.
There is too much finger pointing at the Catholic Church as the culprit for the failure of
population controllers to influence Philippine public policy. The fact is in a democracy,
policies are arrived at through public debate involving conflicting views. Many of the
outspoken critics of the policy now in force in the City of Manila are Roman Catholics
themselves, demonstrating the fact that the Catholic bishops and priests can only give moral
guidelines and cannot threaten politicians with the so-called Catholic vote (which does not
exist). It is still the individual citizens who have to make up their minds. It just so happened
that those voters in Manila who object in conscience to artificial contraceptives had greater
influence on the decisions of then Mayor Jose Atienza. It is unfair for journalists to present
the former Mayor as heartless through the usual emotional appeal describing extremely poor
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women burdened with numerous children.
As an economist, I can vouch for the fact that the majority of poor households in the
Philippines deliberately choose to have many children for economic survival. Especially in
the rural areas, where the vast majority of the poor live, children are needed to perform
multiple tasks because of the absence of such infrastructures as farm-to-market roads,
irrigation, post-harvest facilities, etc. In most of the poor households, children are the only
resources that can secure a better future as illustrated by the billions of dollars sent to their
families by overseas Filipino workers.
Furthermore, the pro-life advocates in the Philippines have another reason to object to
enshrining population control in any public policy. They have witnessed how in such a
society like Singapore that implemented an aggressive birth control policy in the last century,
a contraceptive mentality has become so ingrained in the population—especially among
educated women--that it is almost impossible to reverse the steep fertility decline that is
threatening the very survival of the entire nation. By actively looking for many alternative
means of combatting dehumanizing poverty in the Philippines (rural infrastructures, quality
education especially of women, microcredit and microenterprise, social housing like the
Gawad Kalinga movement, and responsible parenthood through natural family planning), the
pro-life advocates are preventing the diffusion of a contraceptive mentality that can endanger
the common good in the future. For comments, my email address is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph.
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