Priest argues that higher birth rate is good news

This refers to a news article titled “Fertility rate down but mothers dying” (Front Page, 5/2/14): “The good news on total fertility rate in the Philippines is that it has been cut by more than half in a span of five decades. The bad news is that it remains the highest among the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Another bad news is the substantial increase in the number of Filipino mothers dying during childbirth in the last decade—a problem a senior economic manager attributed to the country’s high fertility rate.”

There seems to me a flaw of logic in the assumption that there’s a correlation between the rate of maternal deaths during childbirth and the fertility rate: The higher the fertility rates, the higher the maternal deaths or, inversely, the lower the fertility rates, the lower the death rates.

If we look closely, this assumption flies in the face of the evidence provided by the same article, which points out that “… from 7.2 births per woman in 1960, the country’s total fertility rate declined to 3.1 births in 2010…” If the assumption cited were correct, then we must expect that with the fertility rate down, the maternal death rates must necessarily be down as well. But no, the maternal death rate registered a “substantial increase” instead.

Thus the evidence simply does not support the assumption. Any honest person will reasonably conclude that mothers’ death rates do not correlate with fertility rates. Any person who insists that the correlation exists can only arrive at such a conclusion based on prejudice or faulty thinking.

Another point. The article tags the “highest” birth rate of Filipino mothers at 3.1 births per woman as “bad news.” If the authors of the article had a conversation with Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, they might be surprised to find out that he does not agree that a low birth rate of 1.3 for Singapore is good news. He has been encouraging Singaporeans to have babies and the government has even been giving couples baby perks. Still, their birth rate is not increasing; their desired birth rate is 2.1, the replacement rate which they are far from achieving.

Note that the birth rates of the Philippines have gone down even without the RH Law’s implementation. Simple logic therefore tells us that the contraceptive provisions of the law are not needed to bring down the birth rate. It seems to me though that the contraceptive provisions of the RH Law are aimed at lowering the birth rates of the poor people. This gives the RH Law apparently eugenic motives. I would prefer that we implement the provisions of the RH Law that promote care for the health of mothers.

To conclude, I would say that a “high” birth rate for the Philippines, at this point in our history, is good news. Children are our nation’s future and hope. If we do away with them, we might end up digging our own graves.

—FR. CECILIO L. MAGSINO,

cesmagsino@gmail.com