Pinoy Kasi
Hope in Quezon City
By Michael Tan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:23:00 03/04/2008
I sometimes find myself defending the Catholic Church during debates on family planning. This happens when friends, usually foreigners, go something like this: “The Catholic Church is so inhumane with its opposition to family planning.” I actually reply, “But the Catholic Church is not against family planning.”
There is, of course, a catch there because the official stand of the Church is to support family planning, but only using “natural” family planning methods. If people, both Filipinos and foreigners, get the impression that the Catholic hierarchy is against family planning, it is because that is the position they project locally. More Catholic than the Vatican, our conservatives are vehement in speaking out not just against “artificial” contraceptives, but against family planning itself, exemplified by that huge painted wall on a building on Shaw Boulevard showing Christ with a baby in his palm and saying: “This is a child, not a choice.”
The campaign against family planning has been most virulent when it comes to proposed legislation. For several years now, there has been a running battle against the Reproductive Health Bill, whose main sponsor is Albay province’s Rep. Edcel Lagman. Every year, Catholic conservatives have been able to block it by claiming the bill supports abortion and mandates a “two-child” policy.
Which makes you wonder if they ever really read the actual bill. What the bill does is require the national government to offer a cafeteria of family planning choices, both “natural” and “artificial,” as well as provide support services, such as counseling and education.
Souls
There’s hope, though. A growing number of responsible and courageous local government officials have been passing their own measures to make sure there will always be budgets for family planning, and that an array of services are provided. The province of Aurora set the pace, with its feisty Gov. Bella Angara-Castillo, who keeps getting reelected despite (or maybe because of) religious conservatives campaigning against her. Since then the provincial governments of Mountain Province and Masbate, as well as several cities, have also passed similar measures.
Some people might say, “Oh, but these are mainly small and poor provinces.” But, precisely, it is these poorer provinces where the needs are greatest. The governors, vice governors and other officials of these provinces will be remembered, many years down the line, for having had the foresight to mainstream and protect family planning.
Those were small, but important, victories. But just this week, there was a major victory: Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte signed a reproductive health city ordinance. Why “major”?
First, we’re talking about one of the most important cities in the country. Quezon City hosts many national government offices, and the Batasang Pambansa legislative complex, and has been setting the pace with good governance.
Second, it is the country’s largest city, attracting migrants from all over. Just five “barangay” [neighborhood districts], several of them close to the Batasan, account for 20 percent of the city’s population. The results of the latest national census, conducted last year, still have to be released, but from 2000, these are the staggering population figures for the city’s five largest barangay: Commonwealth, 120,569; Payatas, 112,569; Batasan Hills, 109,723; Pasong Tamo, 64,656; and Bahay Toro, 54,118. There are other barangay with populations of more than 30,000, making them as large as many of the country’s municipalities.
The barangay populations tend to follow the rich-poor divide. The upper-class Horseshoe Village, for example, had a population of 2,817 in the 2000 census. UP Village, also upper-class, had 3,699, but the adjacent Barangay UP [University of the Philippines] Campus, with quite a few informal settlers, had a population of 23,226.
Politicians are ambivalent about these urban poor communities. On one hand, they’re vote-rich areas; on the other hand, they are a nightmare when it comes to delivering social services, and keeping peace and order. Almost one-half of the city’s population is below the age of 20, ready to produce more votes as well as headaches for politicians.
But then the more cynical would argue, that’s also more souls for the Catholic Church. The Church didn’t take the reproductive health bill sitting down. They pressured its main sponsor, young Councilor Joseph Juico (a product of De La Salle University, as Catholic as Catholic will ever be). But Juico held his ground, together with the co-sponsors, Bernadette Herrera-Dy and Lala Sotto, and the city council. The mayor and the vice mayor also threw their support behind the measure. Juico’s point, explained in one interview with the Inquirer, was that the city could no longer afford “band-aid solutions” to poverty.
Truth
The conservatives went all out, distributing leaflets saying the bill would promote sexual promiscuity and “kill unborn children.” There were negotiations, and modifications to the proposed ordinance. Originally, sex education would have been provided as early as elementary school; in the final version, this is limited to high school. The bill also repeats, over and over again, that it does not support abortion, and that abortion is illegal in the Philippines.
But that wasn’t enough to calm the conservatives. I had friends from Quezon City who started going to Mass in other cities because their parish priests had become unbearable. At a time when the ZTE national broadband network (NBN) issue was breaking out with mega-corruption allegations, some parish priests were silent about the scandal, but ranted and railed against the proposed measure. When it was coming up for third and final reading, priests read out a pastoral letter issued by their bishop, calling on people to march to City Hall. A group did show up at City Hall, but the ordinance was passed.
It has always been clear, from the public opinion surveys conducted by Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia, that Filipinos want family planning, and expect the government to provide these services. But Catholic conservatives have worked on the supply side, threatening politicians who want to do family planning with a so-called Catholic vote, which doesn’t exist. Each election has shown that the most pro-family planning candidates get elected.
In the long run, though, the greatest harm being done by the conservatives is their spread of misinformation about family planning itself (oh, you’ll end up old and alone, with no one to take care of you), and family planning methods (the pills cause cancer). This is why we need those reproductive health bills to ensure the delivery not just of pills and condoms and natural family planning charts, but also of information, through schools and health centers.
In these difficult times, we need to thank the Quezon City officials for crossing party lines and creating the space and support for truth-telling. There’s hope yet in Quezon City, and beyond.
|
