One-child Philippines, anyone?

After years of debates, name-calling, threats and counter-threats, browbeatings, broken alliances and friendships, the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill is now at the Senate for plenary deliberations (read that as OMG! lots more debates, interpellations, orations for and against) where the good Senator Pia Cayetano, principal author of Senate Bill 2865 under Committee Report No. 48, said she expects “intelligent discussions.”

(I could imagine my barber and the rest of us mortals crossing fingers really tight!)

But give it to another good lawmaker, the feisty Senator Miriam Defensor who delivered the first of three sponsorship speeches in favor of the RH Bill (Phil.Star, August 2, 2011) emphasizing the Church must be on the frontline against “... social injustices,” and recognize “how much the Church is tied up to the unjust system that oppressed the very poor.” If, Senator Defensor argued, “... RH is available to the rich, why should it not be available to the poor?”

Catholics are not anymore blind followers of the Church, the good Senator Defensor said, citing the SWS October, 2008, survey which showed 71% of Filipinos support the RH Bill, and are still in favor last year in a survey conducted by Pulse Asia.

As in past talks, position papers, etc., Senator Santiago's stance will be propped up in the coming days and weeks by other supporters like Senator Cayetano and former Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral, among others, who would “focus on socio-economics, maternal and and child health, family planning concerns, statistics and other social issues.”

Of course, those against the RH Bill have not just been sitting idly by on the other side of the fence.

At the forefront of the anti-RH Bill is the Catholic-based Pro-Life Movement, the Pinoy version of what started as a political movement in the US in the 1970s that “generally maintain that the human fetus (and in most cases the human embryo) is a person and therefore has a right to life” and naturally is “opposed to elective abortion along moral grounds and supporting its prohibitions or restrictions.”

The battle for and against the RH Bill is being waged from the pulpit, on the streets, within the halls of Congress, even at home and among streetcorner beer-guzzlers and has come to a point where we have this skewed and funny declaration that if his parents have used condoms, we would not have a Pangbansang Kamao today; likewise, if his parents have used contraceptives, the Boss and now self-anointed psychiatrist would not be with us for six, count that, six years, treating us lunatics. Which, to my barber is A-Ok.

Stripped of rhetorics, however, it's simply between braving hail and brimstones from heaven and facing the realities of life down here on our planet. An example is the squatters – OK, informal settlers – compound just across our street. On any given afternoon, even when, as they say, it's raining cats and dogs, the basketball court would be teeming with children, some spilling into the street, and on the sidelines mothers with bloated tummies, a couple of them cradling months- or year-old sucklings.

This scene is replicated thousands-fold all over the country as there are an estimated 20 million (which could have grown since 2006 when this figure was determined) informal settlers, families living in slum areas, along railroad tracks, atop pushcarts, under sidewalk benches, bridges and flyovers.

For years, around 19% of Pinoys live daily on the $1-a-day international poverty line, with some 40 million or so living on $2 a day, “the less extreme international measure of poverty.” As for the poorest 30% families, 1) 35 have no access to water, 2) 48 have no electricity, 3) 60 have no decent houses, 4)30 have no toilet, 5) 10 breadwinners are unemployed, and 6) 40 were not able to send their chidren to school.

The sad thing is, as “women usually does the budgeting for the family, this means scrimping on basic needs just to meet both ends meet.” The sadder thing is after the “kapiranggot na pera” is spent for “kapiranggot na pagkain” there is nothing left to address the health concerns of the family, especially the mother who bears the burden of bringing up the children, while the hubby in a dimly-lit spot somewhere signals the cutie in short shorts to bring in another case of beer.

Again, stripped of rhetorics, it's all a matter of what to feed and how to cloth and educate a population growth running out of control. Decades back, China implemented the One-Child Policy when confronted with how to cope with a burgeoning population.

But before one gets any idea, the One-Child Policy successfully instituted in China will never happen, or even get off the ground here, knowing Pinoy's penchant for solving a problem with talk, talk, talk.

We might have misread God when He said “Go and multiply.” He must not have meant to multiply until there is no more space in the “tuwid na daan” to wade through.

Photo: “Mom I Can Feel The Soft Touch” by Easa Shamih, c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved

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