Unchanging values

The last weekend World Meeting on the Family held in Valencia Spain brought to the fore once more, man’s difficulty in maintaining a balance between the old and the new. The ever changing world constantly brainwashes man to adopt everything new at the expense of old traditional values because modern technological advances seem to have rendered these values obsolete. The constant flux in the world has indeed rendered man vulnerable to all sorts of changes including those affecting the unchanging Gospel values. Hence the news reports about the said world congress have mentioned that Pope Benedict XVI himself deemed it worthwhile to travel to Spain as part of his campaign in defense of traditional family precisely because Spain is a predominantly Catholic Country that now allows gay marriage, divorce and abortion.

To be sure even our own home front is beleaguered with so many moves to introduce changes that are anti-family and anti-life. In the Senate, six bills on reproductive health, population policy, two-child policy and sex education for the youth are now being discussed and considered by the Committees on Health and Demography, Youth, Women and Family Relations, Ways and Means and Finance. These are Senate Bills (SB) 81, 1280, 1281, 1480, 1546, and 1816.

The main thrust of these bills is obviously to control our burgeoning population that has been pin pointed as the cause of poverty. Their proponents continue to entertain and accept the Malthusian theory that "in order to grow, we must reduce our human resource capital". They refuse to accept the reality, as shown by statistics, that there is no connection at all between population growth and our country’s underdevelopment; that poverty continue to stalk our land because of the unequal distribution of wealth and the country’s resources and the over-concentration of population in the urban areas; that the main culprits of our under-development are the ruling political and business elite who would like to maintain their hold on power and wealth by preserving the status quo where the greater part of the population continue to be politically and economically dependent on them due to ignorance or lack of proper education.

It is truly quite perplexing why the population control methods introduced by these bills are even being considered by our legislators when other countries that have adopted them are now regretting having done so. Europe and Japan have reversed their population control policy because they are now experiencing huge population losses unprecedented in human history according to Population Reference Bureau, a Washington think tank. Several other countries, like Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Bulgaria are encouraging or even begging their women to have more babies after realizing their mistakes and unfortunate experiences in population control using methods now being introduced by these bills. In considering these bills our legislators are therefore openly ignoring the lessons learned by other countries.

It is not even guaranteed that the proposed methods of controlling population are effective. In the U.S. where these methods have been used for so many years already a recent report says that it is the fastest growing industrialized nation adding about 2.8 million people a year through higher fertility rate and immigration. But while its population continues to grow despite efforts to control them America is nevertheless growing older because it is trying to check the rising fertility rates by killing the fetus through abortion and contraceptives.

The worst part is the deceptive manner of introducing the methods mentioned in the bills to make them acceptable. Emphasis is laid on the supposed "reproductive health" that they are supposed to achieve when in fact the ultimate effects are harmful physically and morally. Our Senators perhaps are not aware that "reproductive health" is a universally accepted term used in international conferences as to include abortion which is illegal in this jurisdiction. Furthermore the effects of the use of contraceptives do not really contribute to reproductive health care. The WHO report says that oral contraceptives are carcinogenic to humans. Statistics from countries allowing contraceptives also show that it leads to abortion which, in turn has so many adverse consequences on the family and society like broken marriages, divorce, drug addiction and rise in criminality.

It is true that the only constant thing in this world is change. But not all changes are for the better. In making changes therefore we have to apply some "brakes" in the form of the traditional values arising from the eternal teachings of Christ in the Gospel.

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