Some Questions I Wish RH Fans Could Answer

Barely a few days into the new year and the Pro RH camp has fired the first shot into this battle for lives. This time it came in the form of a simple PR from the Population Commission, which said that we will hit 100 million this year. Once again, mainstream and social media are abuzz with people clamoring that we need the RH law, which is now in Supreme Court Limbo following the SC's status quo ante order.

This is by no means an accident or a coincidence. The RH machinery makes sure that from time to time the media will report something about the RH law. Haven't you noticed? Last time around, it was the rising incidence of HIV cases. This time it's the population 'ballooning' to a hundred million. Next time I bet it will be about the rise in unwanted pregnancies. This well-oiled, and well-funded RH machinery will make sure that society will be saturated with news proclaiming the RH Gospel.

For the longest time the pro-life side has been touted by the anti-life side as religious fanatics whose faith rules over the intellect. In short: they think we're the stupid ones. Next time they remind you that you're stupid because you take the side of life, ask them to take time to answer these simple questions.

1. Exactly how many Filipinos does it take to say that we are really overpopulated? No one has been able to give me an exact number yet. Can you?

2. Would God create you if He knew there would not be enough food and resources to keep you alive? There's plenty for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed. The poor remain poor and the rich remain rich because of greed. Lowering the population does nothing to address this problem of greed.

by Jess Abrera

3. Why are we trying to lower our population when the rest of the world is desperate to raise theirs?  A case of gaya-gaya, puto-maya? Countries like Japan, China, Singapore, France, Italy, and Russia are desperate to jack up their birth rates. Why are we imitating their folly? The demographic and economic implications are the same. If they're losing workforce because of too few babies born and too many old people around, it will happen to us too, if we put the breaks on our population.

4. If you're against PDAF, why aren't you against RH? So you went to Luneta and protested the unscrupulous spending of billions of taxpayer's money in things that did nothing to help the poor and advance us into progress. Tell me again how funding RH will give the poor access to basic things such as food, shelter, education, job opportunities, and skills training?

by Jess Abrera

5. Can you look at this, say out loud "we need 13.9 billion pesos to implement the RH law", and be at peace with yourself? 

That is a picture of the bunkhouses they're building as temporary shelters for Yolanda victims in Tacloban. Architect Jun Palafox said in an interview with Inquirer Radio:

“I can confirm they (bunkhouses) were substandard and undersized,”

International standards, he said, require bunkhouses to be at least 20 square meters and should have two bedrooms.

“Daughters should not be sleeping with their fathers or brothers, it’s a basic human requirement,” he explained.

“What I saw there was so inhumane.”

Palafox, who has worked with 38 other countries in rebuilding disaster-stricken areas, compared the bunkhouses that they built in Sri Lanka and Malaysia to the ones being built in Leyte.

“I’m reminded of the saying, `We build monuments for the dead but we can’t even provide decent housing for the living’,’’ he said by phone when interviewed by the Inquirer.

He added that the bunkhouses in Leyte have violated various laws in terms of building construction, saying that the spaces for the families are cramped and the materials used were fire hazards.

“Various international organizations confirmed that they (bunkhouses) are cramped and are fire hazards; there is no privacy; it violates the building code… I would not put my family there,” Palafox said. “How can you put a family of five into a six to nine square-meter room while the materials used were one-fourth plywood.”

Palafox also said that the roofing, which were made with  “dos aguas” galvanized iron sheets (two slopes) were the same materials that were blown away during the onslaught of “Yolanda.”

They used the same materials that were blown away in the storm, and they just repeated what was there in the first place,” Palafox said. “You don’t have to be an engineer or an architect to see it, it is a no brainer, maybe a first year Architecture student can tell you this is substandard,” he said.

This is how the government treats us. This is how the government treats the poor. No wonder the President and his cohorts have no shame in passing the RH law. Their idea of eradicating poverty is making poor people have less children, so they don't have to do the difficult work of finding real, long-term solutions to poverty and corruption. 

Pro RH friends, wake up! 

A Debate Between Quirky Catholic and A Population Control Fanatic

First of all, let me set the record straight: this is more of a discussion rather than an all-out slug fest, and I would not call this a proper debate. However, I think you would like to know one thing about population control pushers, like the one I had a discussion with. They claim to use science and reason to push their agenda, but when it comes down to it... I will let you decide.

Just a brief background. I was tagged in a thread in a certain page. Lo and behold, I see our old friend, Antiqueno Pinoy, peddling his wares again, so to speak. He and I, along with several of my companions, have been debating him since 2010 during the early days of the I Oppose the RH bill page. I sort of lost track of him after the bill passed late last year, and I was a bit surprised to see him on another page. He is a rabid population control believer, and he insists that unless our country goes down to a TFR (total fertility rate) of 1.0, then this country is doomed. In essence, he wants to copy China's one-child policy, even as China has already turned its back on it. The reversal may have come too late, as you guys can read here, but let's save that for another day. Without further ado, I present to you Mr. Population Control Fanatic.

Knowing Mr. Population Control Fanatic all too well, exchanging facts, numbers, statistics, and studies with him in an effort to prove his Malthusian ideas wrong is as futile as Sisyphus rolling up his fabled boulder up the hill. It's like dousing water to Greek Fire - he will not accept any logical or scientific proof that will debunk his population control philosophy. So I took a different route, as you can read above and below. 

Hah! He refuses to answer such an easy question: do you have kids of your own, Mr. Antiqueno? He might as well tie a millstone to his neck and drop to the bottom of the sea if he were to follow my line of arguing, and so he deflects it and refuses to answer my simple question.

See how he tried to duck and weave by saying that my question was 'personal and emotional'. Following his statement of "high fertility(too many babies) causes poverty, the logical conclusion would be that his kids caused poverty too. If he didn't have any, he might as well just have none, lest he and his siring of children exacerbate the poverty we have here in the country.

For the record: Yes, his statement - high fertility rate is the major cause of poverty in the Philippines - is wrong. Many countries have already felt the effects of having too few babies born that would have been the future manpower and labor force of their nation. They have mitigated this by asking for immigrants, like us, to work and live there in their country. Countries like Japan, Singapore, China, Russia, Germany, Italy, Canada, France, and Spain have TFRs below 2.1 - meaning that their ladies are having less than 2 kids. Demographically speaking, countries whose TFRs are below the so-called "replacement rate" of 2.1 are the countries having trouble with too many elderly people and too few young people. In Japan, for example, sales of adult diapers are way higher than that of baby diapers.

This kind of mentality - that too many people cause poverty - is a theory developed by Thomas Malthus in the 19th century, and has been long debunked by Simon Kuznets, a Russian-American economist, statistician, demographer, and economic historian who won the 1971 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development". Here in Asia, scientists Wong Hock Tsen and Fumitaka Furuoka made a study called: The Relationship between Population and Economic Growth in Asian Economies. Their studies concluded that overall, there was no relationship between economics and population growth - debunking what Antiqueno Pinoy said above that very high fertility causes poverty; however, they also concluded that for some countries, namely: Singapore, China, and The Philippines, population growth actually causes economic growth, debunking Antiqueno a second time. 

It is one thing to debunk Antiqueno's claims; however, too many people, many of them RH supporters, still believe in the antiquated and long-debunked Malthusian idea of too many people causing poverty. In fact, this is also the belief of so many ecologists - that too many people cause the destruction of nature, ergo we should diminish the population for the sake of the trees, the animals, the rivers, and the forests. Bullsh*t! That's why I don't adhere to animal groups like PETA either. They place animals' rights before human rights. You don't see too many of animal rights groups fighting abortion and contraception, right? 

In the end, the debate was not meant to be. I was tired of arguing stats and demography with him, and he wouldn't answer my question either. But, I learned something very valuable with my exchange with him. When it all comes down to it, when we're dealing with flesh and blood, science can only prove so much. Beyond the numbers, beyond the statistics, beyond the ideologies, there are people like you and me, happy and grateful to be alive. Who among us, then, have caused poverty in the country? We're working, we're paying taxes, we're contributing to a better nation, and so will our children. 

My life is a gift from God. We are all God's gifts to one another. This way we enrich the world with our lives. This is my belief. This is why I cannot accept Mr. Antiqueno's belief that people cause poverty and misery, precisely because people are also the way out of it.