Provocations

ARCHBISHOP RAMON Arguelles says it’s government that provoked first. He cited in particular President Aquino’s warning that the prolife groups who are threatening a tax boycott against the RH bill would be charged with sedition.

“Will you be calm if you are held at gunpoint? We can’t be calm when the results of similar bills like [the RH bill] are evident in other countries … We can’t be calm because they are pushing for what is not right.”

From another end, Bishop Arturo Bastes cautioned the youth not to be swayed by celebrities advocating family planning. “They do not know what they are talking about.” They have not thoroughly studied the effects of the RH bill on the morality of the youth.

I agree completely, the results of measures like the RH bill are evident in other countries. They have progressed beyond our wildest dreams. They have left us biting their dust. And they are far more moral—just look at the 9-year-old Japanese kid—than we have ever been, than we are now, than we will ever be with this kind of Catholic Church guiding us.

I’ve heard the camp opposing RH say again and again that family planning hasn’t really succeeded elsewhere without bothering to offer proof. What can one say? Habits are hard to break, particularly the one that says you should take everything on faith. It flies in the face of reality.

China for one maintains a one-child policy. If they hadn’t done that, can you imagine the mind-boggling size of the Chinese population today? Especially if they had retained the pre-Revolution practice of having epic households? Can you have any more formidable proof of success, and one that has benefited not just China but the world, than that?

The Chinese say that to assure immortality you have to do one of three things, or all of the above: plant a tree, write a book, and have children. The Chinese have done all three, while heroically trying to limit the third. We have done only the third. We do not particularly care to plant trees and write books (let alone read them), we just like to breed like rabbits. My apologies to rabbits. Immortality is the least of the things it assures, oblivion is first.

Indonesia for another has had a successful family planning program, reducing the average number of children per family from six to seven in the 1970s to three today. Courtesy of its current president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, it has leaped out of the pack to become the poster boy of democracy in our part of the world. Or do you still think we hold that title? Indonesia is home to the biggest Muslim population in the world, a fact that has not deterred its inhabitants from trying to limit their size, lest life in this planet stops being sustainable. It’s called responsibility. It’s called morality. It’s called a concern for life. Real life.

Or, what, Allah holds life less precious than Jehovah?

What takes the cake is that Arguelles’ supporters should want to wage a tax boycott against RH. I had been calling for a tax boycott before—against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. That was so especially after “Hello Garci.” You pay taxes only to a legitimate president, not to an illegitimate one. You pay taxes only to a moral government, not an immoral one. I did as I preached, refusing to file my taxes since 2005—I filed it only this year, with the new government, a perfectly legitimate one—urging others to do so as well in my column. (Unfortunately for me, though I wasn’t filing my taxes, I was having them deducted from me through tax withheld. But that is another story.

You want to refuse to pay taxes, refuse to pay taxes for the right reasons. But if I recall right, Arguelles in particular not only did not join the protest against Arroyo, least of all urge people not to pay their taxes, he defended “Hello, Garci” by saying everybody cheats anyway. An astonishing proposition from anyone, let alone a prince of the Church. As I said then, if everyone cheated anyway, then it was time to stop it and not tolerate it. But talk of “pushing for what is not right.”

The provocation began long before RH, except that the bishops did not hurl it at government, they hurled it at the citizenry.

Pray, what are, or can be, the immoral effects of the RH bill on the youth? While at that, who knows less what they are talking about, the celebrities, many of whom have families of their own, or the priests and bishops, some of whom have children of their own but who have neither owned up to them nor taken care of them? Former President Fidel Ramos made the most sense when he said at the “purple ribbon” launch last week that while everyone has been heard on this issue, including the mythical “unborn child,” the mothers have not been so. And they are the ones who really matter.

Who is the more concerned about life, the one who takes care to have only as many children as he or she can take care of—not by abortion but by contraception, it has to be said again and again—or the person who bangs away without thought of tomorrow, without thought of others, bahala na si Batman, it’s up to God, or the throw of the dice, or the spew of the seed? Who embraces life more fiercely, the one who makes sure that the child he or she launches into the world will have a life, and not only a death, of body and of soul, or the one who spawns like there’s no tomorrow, and truly there won’t be any, oblivious to the plight of one’s own, oblivious to the plight of others, oblivious to the plight of the planet? Who is more open to life, the one who is open to love, who sees conjoining of bodies as the supreme expression of it, without fear of producing more mouths to feed, or the one who feels only need and creed and obligation?

Who has the right values?

You say the second, you’re just provoking-laughter.