Tempting choices

There are crucial issues confronting our society today that have tremendous impacts on the shape of our relatively young nation’s future. How we resolve them now definitely has far reaching repercussions on the lives of succeeding generations. On our shoulders rests the momentous task of choosing the road through which they will pass. And I just hope that our children’s children and their descendants down the line will have no regrets as they look back to the here and now. I hope they will not experience the same lamentations and disappointments that people in other, much older countries are experiencing now because of the actions taken and the decisions made by their elders.

The irony is that, as we face and resolve these issues, some of our countrymen and leaders proposing the solutions are citing as models, the very nations which are now regretting what they have done in the past.

Thus, in pushing for the legalization of divorce here, the usual example given is America where parties to a valid marriage, especially women, are given a legal way out of a solemn commitment on the simple excuse that the relationship has become unbearable due to "irreconcilable differences". Numerous studies conducted in that country including governmental research, have however invariably concluded that divorce has wrought havoc in its wake in terms of broken homes and broken lives. Somebody who is apparently from America, Charles L. Jonas, a Doctor of Theology, best expresses the current American attitude on divorce when he said through the e-mail that "To allow irreconcilable differences to break up a family is to open a Pandora’s Box of evil that will inflict itself on society for generations to come. Broken homes produce broken kids and this alone should be enough to cause any clear-minded person to run away from divorce like the plague".

The staunch proponents of the "two child policy" on the other hand constantly harp on the need to check the galloping population growth as a way to get our country out of its present economic woes. They conveniently overlook however that other countries which have adopted said policy are now realizing their mistake as their population gets older and starts dwindling for dearth of new replacements. Singapore in fact has completely turned around on this policy and is now actively encouraging couples to produce two or more children through irresistible enticements.

Then, allegedly for the sake of women’s "reproductive health" the use of artificial contraceptives is being actively pushed in order to control births especially among the poor who cannot afford to have more babies and costly pregnancies. Yet it cannot be denied that artificial contraceptives also entail expenses beyond the means of the poor as well as greater harm and injury to both mother and child because of their medically proven damaging effects on some bodily organs. Unfortunately, statistics from other countries showing their harmful effects and inadequacies are not enough to deter local promoters of this method from pushing through with it.

Finally, the current furor on the seemingly unstoppable illegal numbers game of jueteng once more revives the on again off again move to legalize it. The usual argument advanced for this act punishable by law as a crime against public morals (Article 195, Revised Penal Code, as amended) is that it is an ancient, widespread habit that can already be considered part of our culture aside from providing livelihood to some poor people. The argument thus justifies popularity of an act inherently wrong and harmful to society and the shameless inability to check or stop it as enough reasons to allow and legalize it.

The issues confronting us now therefore presents a choice between the hard way and the easy way out; between the instant and quick fix remedy and the laborious but more enduring solution; between the more enticing but purely materialistic proposal and an apparently unattractive long range plan that benefits society both materially and morally. Let’s not fall for the more tempting choices.

* * *

E-mail: [email protected]