Dangerous developments

These are times indeed that call for lots of prayers from all of us who love our country. It now appears as clear as daylight that the devil is actively working to sow hatred and division in our land. He is obviously taking advantage of our human weaknesses to ensure that he will succeed in his evil designs to divide our country and people. This time he has provoked our President to go into another fit of rage against the Catholic Church whose faithful consists of more than 80 million Filipinos. This is shown live on various media when he viciously attacks the Catholic Church by brazenly and vulgarly describing it as “full of shit” and “mabaho kayong lahat.”

This reaction is quite shocking and even terrifying as it comes from the leader of this country who is supposed to promote unity rather than animosity and enmity among all Filipinos of whatever political color, social and religious affiliations. The sad part here is that he has attacked the whole Church for the alleged hypocrisy of some of its members reportedly involved in sex and corruption after he himself has recently displayed hypocrisy by even expressing his gratitude and asking the blessings of the head of the Church, Pope Francis. Apparently, the devil here is taking advantage of hypocrisy to create animosity and enmity between the Church and the State, the main institutions in our country which are called upon to work for the common good.

But more unfortunate to note and quite troubling to see in this regard, is the increasing growth not only of the culture of hatred but also the culture of deception in our society today. This practice of deception is very prevalent once again in the continuing attempt to adopt a policy of stabilizing the population growth through artificial methods of birth control under the guise of reproductive health, responsible parenthood and population development, as contained in RA 10354 or the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012.

From the very start, the supporters of this Law have been asserting that bigger population increase leads to slower economic growth. But six economic studies starting with the pioneering study of Nobel Prize winner Simon Kuznets in 1966 have already shown that “no clear association appears to exist in the present sample countries, or is likely to exist in the other developed countries, between rates of growth of population and of product per capita.” Similar conclusions have also been reached by the US National Research Council in 1986 and in the UNFPA Consultative Meetings of Economists in 1992.

Indeed based on the Philippine experience, economic growth or raising per capita income growth is affected more by the political and economic systems, by good governance and well implemented economic policies rather than by reducing population growth. No less than the presidential economic consultant has pointed this out when he deplored the current economic situation where there are more poor and hungry people now despite a seemingly improving economy.

Another deception is the assertion that our population growth is going out of control. This is contrary to the statistics showing that the Philippine annual population growth rates have been decreasing from 3.06% in 1948-60 down to 2.36% in 1995-2000 and further down to 2.04% in 2000-2007. Of course our population is still growing, but this is because of less babies dying and more people living longer. Indeed in the Philippines number of deaths per 1000 births up to age of one year (infant mortality rates) have gone down from 134.4 in 1950-55 to 34.4 in 1995-2000 and further down to 25 in 2005 while life expectancies from birth have increased from 47.8 years in 1950-55 to 68.6 years in 1995-2000. These are statistics that don’t lie.

Lately, the President has even issued an Executive Order for the full implementation of the RH law promoting a wide range of artificial methods of contraception and birth control pills allegedly for purposes of family planning in the exercise of responsible parenthood and the reproductive health of women. These artificial methods have already been medically proven in other countries to induce abortion or directly cause abortion or some other serious ailments and deformities on babies. So in the recent ruling of the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the RH law, it required that the FDA first issue a certification that they are not abortifacients.

Even the use of condoms in schools is being aggressively pursued now supposedly as a means of insuring “safe sex” mainly because they prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS. But studies already prove that the use of condoms will even help spread the disease because the microscopic holes in the latex materials of condoms are 50 to 70 microns in diameter while the HIV-1 or AIDS virus is only 0.1 micron in diameter. Hence the microscopic holes of condoms are 500 to 700 times bigger than the HIV-AIDS virus so they can easily pass through and infect the sex partner. This is the finding contained in the report of Dr. C. Michael Roland, head of the Polymer Properties/ Chemistry Section of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. Indeed here in the Philippines the HIV AIDS incidents have increased only since the use of condoms have been aggressively been promoted in media by some media celebrities.

Experience in other countries particularly Thailand has shown indeed that after condoms were freely allowed, HIV and AIDS have significantly increased. In fact, the Harvard University Center for Population Development Studies already found that the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS is a dismal failure in the developing countries of Africa. Uganda, where the HIV pandemic infected 30 percent of the population in 1980, succeeded in reducing this down to 6 percent in 2004, not through condom use but through behavior change: abstinence for the unmarried and fidelity for married people.

It is not yet too late for this administration to erase these cultures of hatred and deception now prevailing in our country. All they have to do is to accept the truth, be more circumspect and practice self control.

Email: attyjosesison@gmail.com H