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Update on family planning in the Philippines

The debate in the Philippines continues over a proposal for government-subsidized contraception and sex education. The Catholic Church is going all out to prevent the government from approving the program. Kathy Zeh, writing in The Huffington Post, discusses and refutes the argument of a Catholic archbishop that the legislation would spell doom and gloom for the country.

In an earlier post, I noted that Church representatives in the Philippines argued that increasing the population is the key to reducing poverty, a rather counterintuitive argument. In the most recent speech discussed by Ms. Zeh, the Catholic representative argues that government corruption, not lack of access to family planning, exacerbates poverty. This theme-- that there is nothing wrong with a large family, per se, only in the context of poverty that is caused by something else, namely, bad politics-- is one promoted by population control skeptics, like the Population Research Council. For a review of their arguments, see this post.

Government corruption and politics does exacerbate poverty. It is also true that large families that are wealthy are happy and not a problem for a country. Still, these observations largely miss the point. People in countries like the Philippines-- and in many parts of the United States-- are suffering under poverty. Many studies show that when women and couples have access to family planning information and resources, good things happen economically and developmentally. Addressing government corruption and the unjust distribution of resources in the world is one piece of the poverty puzzle, but family planning is equally important.

Also, the contemporary family planning movement is based on women's rights-- that it is not just pragmatic but right that women should have control over their fertility, the size of their families, and the spacing of their children. Advocates for orthodox Church teaching and advocates for family planning are going to talk past each other on this point, as the position of the Church is that a woman's fertility is not ultimately in her control but in the hands of God, so the basic premise that Catholic women can or should engage in family planning cannot be accepted.

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