“When you can see your unborn children in her eyes you know you really love a woman.” —Bryan Adams, Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?
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EIGHTEEN-year old college student Zakiya Kennedy dreamed of becoming a model. But of late, her father said, he heard her complaining of body aches, and one day on her way to the New York subway, she suddenly collapsed—and died. It was found out she died because of a blood clot caused by her seemingly safe contraceptive skin patch.
The New York Post last year ran a series of reports on Kennedy’s demise, who, together with 17 women, died from the contraceptive stick-on. The manufacturer’s spokesman claimed that the patch has similar health risks as the pill, but critics point that the info is hardly underscored or admitted.
“I can’t bring her back,” Kennedy’s grandma told ABC News. “But I want something to bring attention to these women.”
With the introduction of the pro-contraceptive House Bill 3773 in our House of Representatives, the same scenario can be expected in the Philippines. It’s sad how proponents of this bill, seeking prevention of reproductive ills, are uninformed of the side effects of contraceptives. The risks are so serious that feminist icon Germain Greer has changed colors and now claims that contraceptive technology, instead of liberating women, turns them into geishas catering to sex. She defended Cherie Blair’s (wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair) decision not to contracept.
In a time when more and more countries are suffering from declining populations, it’s deploring to have old-school legislators hooked on (de)population management. Nobel Prize-winning social scientist George Akerloft in 1998 joined other Nobel laureates in saying that artificial contraception hurts family dynamics and economy. World Bank economist William Easterly sees population growth necessary for progress, as it drives people to devise alternative resources.
Come to think of it, our National Statistics Office data show that the wealthiest regions in the country are the most populated, Metro Manila for example. The richest countries too have high population densities, and history would tell that industrialization follows a baby boom. The world’s resources are certainly finite, but so is human progeny. People die and the reproductive potencies of both man and woman have a pause. “Your body knows,” so cues an American ad on natural family planning.
Opposition to artificial contraception is not just a Catholic issue, as advocates of the bill say. The Greek Musonius Rufus, Theodore Roosevelt, Sigmund Freud, and Mahatma Gandhi are no Catholics, but they opposed reproductive maiming. Mao Tse Tung, against rival Deng Xiaoping who imposed the one-child policy in China, would roll in his grave if he found out that his leftist disciples in our Congress have embraced the reviled contraceptive biopolitics. So would Martin Luther and John Calvin to their followers who now prescribe “onanism.”
Our government has no business going house to house telling couples that their fertile systems and cycles are distasteful. “Pro-choice” legislators have no prerogative peddling for so-called non-abortive contraceptives—or even sitting in the House—when they’re doubtful as to when the life of their constituents begins.
Funny how, during the second public hearing on the bill, solons dabbled on precisely when conception comes about. If they cannot answer elementary issues like these, a matter plain and obvious from Biology 101 to our Records of the Constitutional Commission, it’s no wonder that the country is still at its fetal stage. All that the government does is tax its people, and this time, tax them to pay for contraceptive revenues even if it’s against their reason and conscience.
