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It is every Filipino male’s dream to be a Lou Salvador Sr., Ramon
Revilla Sr. and Dolphy Sr. But we cant be like the three.
Definitely, only one in a million Filipino males can be that
prodigious as a reproducer and capable as a provider. Do the math
with a dozen children as start of the equation. You start with food,
shelter, clothing, the basic needs. Then go to education. A dozen
children and the total cost of rearing them up well into this world
is beyond the means of the middle-income Filipino earner.
Fatherhood, the responsible type, carries with it temperance and
moderation.
The failure of the proponents of the family
planning bill to peg their arguments along this line—that not
everybody does have the resources to be a prodigious baby producer
and that not everybody can be a Dolphy, Lou and Ramon—is the most
fundamental flaw of the campaign to get the bill passed. A bill that
under normal circumstances should get 90-percent support is getting
stalled by the absence of clarity in the arguments of the
proponents.
To push for the swift passage of the bill, the
proponents have been sounding alarums and warnings, invoking the big
economic picture and the tragic consequences of a runaway population
growth, instead of injecting common sense into their arguments. This
is all legislative orthodoxy, which would hardly find an audience.
What they are missing is this need: to shift the tone of the debate
to frames of references that are valid, resonant and clear. This is
the only way the proponents of the family planning bill can coast to
real victory.
The proponents of the family planning bill have
the right to invoke the obvious: that a food production growth rate
of less than 2 percent a year over the past several years cannot be
and should not be outpaced by population growth, currently at 2.3
percent a year. But that is essentially gobbledygook to the masa.
Figures do not matter to them, unless they are spiced up with
real-life references such as the fact that not all of us Filipino
males have the privilege to be prodigious reproducers as the three
seniors.
Libido, the masa should be warned, cannot
outpace child-rearing resources.
The other major argument that the proponents of
the family planning bill has failed to develop is the fact that the
bill does not even endorse abortion. It is a safe, moderate,
acceptable bill, even to those with deeply Christian views. It has
no intention, in the strictest sense, to deliberately favor the
killing of the unborn.
It falls short compared with the family planning
bills, the out and out pro-choice bills of First World countries. We
can only wonder at the antediluvian mind-set that has been aborting
its swift passage.
For long, Filipino males have clung to an
orthodoxy that should have been long castrated: that it is our
life’s mission to sow seeds and multiply. That it is our task to
further the reproduction process with wild abandon. The more, the
merrier.
This is all junk science that should be purged
with extreme prejudice.
There is currently a whispering campaign in the
House that is intended to do the reverse—kill the family planning
bill with extreme prejudice. The campaign to “Kill the RHB” does
not generate as much attention as the push the “Cha-cha” but
there are disturbing signs that several powerful sectors want the
RHB to go down into the archives.
Why? This is beyond us for the bill is tame,
utterly timid. It is not even the ideal bill of the pro-choice
groups.
Who are the powerful persons that want it
killed? Right now, it is a movement without a public face. Sooner or
later, those who want the RHB dead have surface and serve as the
public face of their juvenile arguments.
This makes the agenda of the family planning
bill proponents very clear and very urgent—present good arguments.
Seal public support for the bill. Argue from the perspective of
clarity. Tell all sundry that not everybody is in a position to be a
prodigious reproducer as the three seniors: Lou, Ramon and Dolphy.
mvrong@yahoo.com
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