The Reproductive Health (RH) Bill won’t solve poverty and it never will. What makes me say this?

Firstly, the bill is not designed to educate people and equip them with the knowledge and skills to get a job. For people to liberate themselves and their families from poverty, they need to earn a living.

No amount of contraceptives can qualify them to get a job. Worse, they will suffer the side effects of these pills. Not only don’t they have the means to keep themselves healthy; they also don’t have the means to get a cure. What they need is affordable but high-quality education to qualify them to get a job.

If we want to help the poor people, we have to invest in education. Set aside funds for vocational schools where the poor can enroll and acquire technical skills, so that within a short period of time they can get a good job.

Secondly, the bill won’t feed hungry stomachs. What will the hungry do with a bunch of pills if they don’t have food even for just a single meal? They might not bear children because of the contraceptives, but they will also be famished, without the energy to get some work done; they might even lose their minds because of hunger. We need to come up with a broader solution to hunger like keeping the prices of basic goods affordable.

Thirdly, families that live in shanties are on a survival mode. You see them living on the side of creeks, under bridges, beside garbage dumps. We should not simplify the problem by saying that there are just too many poor people, that is why society is “bursting at its seams.” The problem of overpopulation persists because we, who are capable of analyzing and solving this problem, have failed to make the poor benefit from our expertise.

Let us get things straight. The RH bill is not designed to solve poverty. It is simply designed to make unrestrained sex safe from the risk of unwanted pregnancy. And what help will that be to a nation with an educated population that is dwindling, while its ranks of hungry and homeless citizens are growing? Nothing. The RH bill would just be a waste of precious money.

—CATHERINE SAN JUAN,
csjuan@ymail.com