Reproductive Politics

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 ar...

Legal change on contraception and sex education may be arriving in the Philippines, which has a birthrate almost double that of the United States: After years of discussion in the Philippine Congress, the House of Representatives finally decided in August  to end debate on a reproductive health bill  that would subsidize contraception and require sex education in the  Philippines , a country with one of the highest birthrates in Asia. If it passes in the House, which returned to session on Monday, the bill will also need to be approved by the Senate. (Source: The New York Times ) The reasons for teaching women and men the basics of human reproduction and making contraception free and available are hard to dispute. First, women should have more control over the timing and spacing of pregnancies as a matter of personal autonomy and dignity. Second, a basic tenet of international development is that poor countries do better economically and developmentally when birthrate...