Pinas Forum

tony · Newbie

Population control - tama ba ito?

Jose · Member

I don't understand why people are still debating the morality, need and wisdom of population control. Are we still in the dark age?

Date: Dec 11, 2007

Sagradang katolika ako pero hindi ako naniniwala sa patakaran ng simbahan tungkol sa population control. Hindi dapat sila makialam sa programa ng gobierno. Ang kawawa dito hindi lang ang mga mahirap at kulang ng edukasyon kundi ang lahat na mamamayan. At tayo lahat, sa ating buwis, ang magbabayad sa pag-aaral ng kanilang mga anak, panggamot, at iba pa.

Date: Dec 11, 2007

That's a really stupid question. Don't you see the numerous dirt-poor children begging in the streets of Manila? People are obviously having more children than they can afford. Much of that is out of ignorance. The government needs to educate them and assist them by providing contraceptives.

Date: Dec 12, 2007

This issue has been debated by the whole world for half a century now. Only the Vatican disapproves of it. It is the imposition of Catholic religious doctrine on the Filipino under the guise of morality. As Jose Rizal says:

Date: Dec 12, 2007

As Jose Rizal said:

Today is Christmas Eve... A grand genius had been born who preached truth and love; who suffered because of his mission; and on account of his sufferings the world has become better, if not saved. Only it gives me nausea to see how some people abuse his name to commit numerous crimes. If he is in heaven, he will certainly protest!

Letter to Blumentritt (24 December 1886)

imogen · Member

To read Birthrates Help Keep Filipinos in Poverty, click here.

dennis · Member

bambu · Newbie

hunger, the child of poverty...

blue sky · Member

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God. - - - Henry Kissinger (b. 1923), U.S. Republican politician, secretary of state. Years of Upheaval, ch. 25, "The End of the Road" (1982).

Former President Fidel Ramos chided President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for not having a comprehensive family planning policy due to "unwarranted subservience to the Catholic church."

Shrouded in secrecy and without the government sanction, the Philippines has about 473,000 abortions yearly, accounting for one-third of estimated unplanned pregnancies, while two out of five women who want contraceptives don't have access to them, the U.N. Population Fund has said.

In May, the National Statistics Office (NSO) said Filipinos now numbered 88.57 million and were growing at the rate of 2 percent every year.

The population had swollen from 76.50 million in 2000, the NSO said.

blue sky · Member

Advocates of reproductive health bills in Congress said they were unfairly being cast as agents of death in the population debate.

They call us pro-abortion when we are against abortion. We are very careful and deliberate in saying in the bill that we are against abortion.

They are trying to make it a black-and-white affair by calling themselves pro-life, Divinagracia said.

At the forum, former senator Francisco Tatad, a member of the Catholic group Opus Dei, defended the Cubao dioceses position.

You cannot cherry-pick as a Catholic and still be in good standing, he said.

The Medieval Witch Hunt

blue sky · Member

In intensely Catholic Philippines, there's another wrinkle to the (problem of poverty and hunger): the population explosion is taxing the government's ability to respond to the crisis.

"No one seems to want to talk about it," Zeigler says.
The one exception may be Congressman Salvador "Sonny" Escudero, a two-time agriculture minister. He agrees that there are just too many mouths to feed with too little food and that the time for a family planning and birth control policy is now.

"When I was a kid growing up, Thailand and the Philippines both had populations of 53 million," the congressman says. "Today Thailand has 62 million people. We have 88 million."
But because of the influence of the Catholic Church, birth control and family planning remain touchy subjects and on the street, they are foreign concepts.

In the house Redentor and Christina Escarcha call "home," where 15 people live, there will soon be 18. Three of the female occupants are pregnant.

Hungry for Answers - Manually enter webpage below to read - the link does not work!!
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/451592

banana · Member

Philippine priest finds unborn foetus in offertory present

Manila: A priest received a rude shock upon finding a human foetus hidden in a "gift" he had received at church on Sunday.

http://www.gulfnews.com/world/Philippines/10227029.html

banana · Member

In the increasingly shrill debate over reproductive health, the voices of poor Filipino women, those most affected by the problem, remain eerily missing. Why this silence?

A study done in 2000 by a Filipino and international research team found that thousands of Filipino women are in effect practicing family planning through induced abortion. Shrouded in secrecy, it is their method of preventing the birth of another child.

Of the 473,400 Filipino women per year estimated in 2000 to have undergone an abortion (about equally divided between induced and spontaneous), statistics from 1,658 hospitals revealed that 105,000 women wound up in hospital beds from complications, mainly hemorrhaging and infections. An estimated 12 percent, or 12,600, died. How many more never made it to a hospital but met the same fate, or continue to suffer lifelong disabilities, is anyones guess. Research on the subject is taboo in official Catholic circles and viciously attacked by militant pro-life groups. The conspiracy of silence triumphs again.

The conspiracy of silence among Catholics becomes even more appalling because the Church of the Poor exhorts us to listen to the voices of the poor. Although the face of poverty in the Philippines is clearly that of a woman, are Church leaders listening to the voices of poor women? Is the Church of Poor Women enabling women to speak without condemnation about the fear of having another child she knows she cannot properly care forand helping her do something about it? Is the Church of Poor Men teaching Filipino males that marital rights do not include forced sexand eventually another childanytime they feel like it? Will both Church and government offer the meaningful and practical family planning solutions poor women and men seek?

The missing voices of poor women

boom · Member

Separating Church and State, fact from fiction
By Raul Pangalangan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:39:00 07/25/2008

MANILA, PhilippinesThe Philippine Daily Inquirer front page on Tuesday featured a photo of a mother and three small children silhouetted against the light, living in a hammock under a bridge, with the fetid tide just two feet below them. I noticed that the children, presumably all hers, were spaced barely a year or two apart, with a newborn cradled in her arms and two older children, neither of whom could have been over five years old. On that same day, the latest Social Weather Stations survey reported that 14.5 million Filipinos experienced involuntary hunger between April and June 2008, a record high equivalent to almost three million households.

The bishops talk about the sanctity and dignity of life. Living with three children under a bridge: Where is the dignity? Where is the sanctity? Do we respect life by making it difficult for that woman to plan for her family? So that her sleeping two-year-old wont accidentally fall into the foul stream and die, if not from drowning, from swallowing poisoned water? Do we respect their dignity if we condemn them to an earthly hell where they inhale putrid air with each breath day and night?

Hardline clergy have labeled as evil the sponsors of the Reproductive Health Care bills pending before Congress, and have called them abortionists. That is a lie.

The only way for the bishops to sustain their argument is to say that contraception and abortion are one and the same thing. But that is a matter internal to Church doctrine. It is binding on true believers. It cannot command nonbelievers. Not all Filipinos are Catholic, and not all Filipino Catholics subscribe to the same level of dogmatism as the local bishops.

Our own Constitution recognizes the right of spouses to found a family in accordance with their religious convictions. In a famous US case cited by the Philippine Supreme Court, it was said: If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion .

Which family planning method to use is for the spouses alonenot for any governmentto decide in their behalf. To confine family planning to the clergys approved methods is to impede that free choice.

What galls me about the raging debate is the in-your-face brashness of the Catholic clergy. Having twisted the facts, they now intimidate our secular officials to toe dogma, threatening to withhold from them the sacraments. I wonder: Do they still give communion to that bishop in Antipolo City who was found a few years back to be keeping a mistress? To the infamous plunderers in government? To all those sexual offenders referred to by no less than Pope Benedict XVI last week? The bishops must be consistent in telling the truth and in punishing sinners before they can pontificate.

Click here for more.

boom · Member

Picture accessible primary health care services including comprehensive womens health, maternal health care and a host of sexual and reproductive health services covering both young and old.

Anywhere else, it may sound like a perfectly good idea. In the Philippines where a segment of the conservative Catholic hierarchy insists on imposing its views on public policy, reproductive health agendas are all supposedly a smokescreen for the legalisation of abortion.

In Manila, the Catholic Bishops Conference Episcopal Commission on Family Life marked the 40^th anniversary of the Humanae Vitae by renewing the churchs stance against a variety of pending legislation supported by womens rights advocates labelling them as DEATH bills (to stand for Divorce, Euthanasia, Abortion, Total Reproductive Health, Homosexuality). Papal Nuncio Edward Joseph Adams also reminded Catholics that sex should not be treated as a pleasurable experience but as an act of self-giving love and called for self-giving that "starts in the God of love."

Click [url=http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/07/22/the-catholic-church%E2%80%99s-abortion-trump-card]here[/url] to read more.

boom · Member

15 bishops lead 12,000 in rally vs House bill

Some 12,000 faithful joined leaders of the Catholic Church on Friday for a prayer rally in Manila to reaffirm their commitment to a Vatican decree against artificial birth control.

Click here to read more.

boom · Member

Friday, 25 July 2008
Thingfish

Bells will ring out across Manila this evening, and thousands of the Catholic faithful will parade through the city proclaiming their right to interfere in other people's most personal business.

The focus of the protest is a proposed new law that churchmen label the DEATH Bill, because it will allegedly lead to "Divorce, Euthanasia, Abortion, Total Reproductive Health and Homosexuality."

Yes indeed. Any law that encourages all those things must surely be a bad thing. It's hard to imagine why anyone would protest against reproductive health, but I guess if the church says health is bad, then they presumably have god's word on the matter, so who am I to argue?

Personally, I'm a bit of a sceptic about anyone who claims to be acting on god's behalf. The cause of this week's protests is a proposed law named the "Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development Act of 2007". The law aims to help "couples and individuals to enjoy the right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and to have the information, education and access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice."

In any logical, caring, modern democracy, that would all seem like a remarkably moderate proposal. But this is no logical, caring, modern democracy; this is the Philippines.

Free will for the favoured few

Today's protests have been organised by a bunch of reactionary, self-interested old bigots known as the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. As has been the habit of Catholic bishops ever since Spain colonised the place, the CBCP are committed to the idea that while god gave us free will, they'll be damned if they let us exercise it.

The bishops will be joined at the protest by a mob of professional fundamentalists including El Shaddai founder "Brother" Mike Velarde. Earlier this week the property tycoon and cult leader described the reproductive health bill as an "evil ideology" designed to eliminate the Filipino race.

As anyone with open eyes can see, the country is already in an economic bind, and hundreds of thousands of unwanted street kids are both a cause and the result. Gloria Arroyo; an economist and frequent target of the CBCP who really ought to know better, will vote against the new law.

The church should have no business in passing laws. The bishops complain that tax-payers money will be spent on promoting contraception, but what right have they to complain? Since when did the church pay tax?

Is a celebate sperm still sacred?

Although the proposed bill focuses simply on education, healthcare and contraception, its opponents in the church have managed to frame the debate like they're fighting Roe Vs Wade.

The bill would require hospitals to provide non-prejudicial treatment of women in need of medical help after getting backstreet abortions (which, thanks to the Catholic church, are disturbingly common here). The church would rather that help be refused, and the women treated as criminals, suggesting that providing such help amounts to support for backstreet abortionists.

The church has already fooled some local journalists to describe its stand as "pro-life," but how can anyone label an innocent condom as anti-life?

If every sperm is truly sacred, then the male of the species sins is truly damned since even the holiest of bishops produces and dispatches an average of three million of sperm per day.

Natural family planning - it's child's play

The various "pro-life" bishops and cult leaders may rant against the evils of family planning, but for those who may be tempted, they offer a holistic, organic, feel-good alternative, in the form of "natural family planning".

Unfortunately, natural family planning evidently doesn't work. How do we know this? Well firstly because the Philippines, where 'natural' family planning is the only option for many, has a soaring birth rate. Secondly, the only proponents of natural family planning also happen to insist that god wants us to multiply. A priest preaching family planning? It's an oxymoron.

Besides all that, as the church well knows, the people to whom they're ministering; the millions of undereducated urban poor, are the least able to understand the whole idea of recording menstrual cycles and predicting fertility. Meanwhile, if your electricity's been cut off and you've just missed another meal, the most affordable pleasure left is that old fashioned original sin.

One in eight women in the Philippines has her first baby before 17 and 30 per cent before they're 21. Most women give birth at home because the health system has already collapsed under the weight of numbers. A documentary last week interviewed slum-dwelling children about how they felt to be mothers. One of them, a pregnant nine-year-old, said she'd rather play with her friends. For a country that tends to expect its women to earn the family wage, the last thing anyone needs is yet another generation of unemployed, uneducated young mothers, but that's exactly what the church wants.

Source: netnewsasia.com

booba · Newbie

The line that the Philippines is a Catholic country is crock. A myth. The Catholic church and some very powerful Filipino Catholics simply are the ruling class who impose their religion on everyone else and claim the country for themselves.

Below is the result of the 1998 Survey on Religion by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) per Mahar Mangahas.

Strength of belief in God (True belief) 79 percent of Filipinos chose this ardent response to one of the ISSP questions: I know God exists and I have no doubts about it. This was the average of 78 percent among Catholics, a much higher 89 percent among other Christians, and 76 percent among non-Christians (mainly Muslims) in the Philippines.

Respect for other religions. When asked if There is truth only in one religion or There are basic truths in many religions or There is very little truth in any religion, 42 percent of Filipinos said There is truth only in one religion.

Several years ago, when I told the eminent psychologist, Fr. Jaime Bulatao, S.J. (author of the essay Split-level Christianity) that the surveys did not make Filipinos seem particularly Catholic, or even particularly Christian, he just flashed a big smile and said, Actually, we are ANIMIST.

Go to webpage below to read more - THE LINK DOESNT WORK! http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20080726-150769/Filipinos-exceptional-religiosity

Most of the true Christians in the country are actually our Protestants and members of the independent Filipino Christian churches, not our Catholics.

booba · Newbie

A Catholic's right to exercise his religion ends where such religious expression infringes upon or violates the equal right of other citizens who do not subscribe to that of the Catholic.