Government steps up promotion of natural family planning method

The government will establish a movement that will step up the promotion of scientific natural methods of family planning in the country, an official said yesterday.

The "Responsible Parenting Movement (RPM)" was designed to balance the promotion of natural and artificial methods of birth control in the Philippines, said Tomas Osias, executive director of the Population Commission (PopCom).

RPM was conceptualized last year after President Arroyo asked PopCom if all methods were being promoted equally.

Osias said they realized that since PopCom was created in the 1970s by then President Ferdinand Marcos, promotion had been focused more on the natural means of family planning.

"Through RPM, we hope to put equal emphasis on both the artificial and natural methods. We want to give couples better options in planning their family," he said during yesterday’s 2006 National Population Congress where RPM was also launched.

Osias said that from 2007 to 2010, they target to reach out to 4.2 million couples in 42,000 barangays nationwide.

He claimed that RPM would primarily target 17 percent of Filipino couples that are into traditional methods of family planning, as shown by the 2003 National Demographic and Health Survey of the National Statistics Office.

"These are the people who want to practice family planning but they don’t want to use artificial methods, maybe because of fear of side effects and complication, husband’s objection, culture and religious belief or affordability and access (to contraceptives). So they turned to traditional methods, instead," Osias said.

But PopCom, an agency attached to the Department of Health, does not promote traditional methods because they are not effective and reliable. These pertain to calendar or rhythm and withdrawal methods.

The scientific natural methods, on the other hand, refer to lactational amenorrhea method; standard days method; sympto-thermal method; basal body temperature and cervical mucus methods like billing ovulation, Mercedes Wilson and two-day method.

Under the plan, people will be trained to become RPM trainors that will educate couples in the barangay level about responsible parenting and fertility awareness. They will initially conduct an eight-hour class and four follow-up sessions with couples.

PopCom is hoping to generate an initial fund of P50 from the local and national governments and other concerned agencies.

He said that RPM is the government’s answer to the scheduled stoppage of contraceptive donations by the United States Agency for International Cooperation by 2008.

"RPM is not supply dependent. It does not rely on contraceptives so it’s actually cheaper," he claimed.

He added that RPM might also become the long-awaited "common ground" between the government and Catholic Church, which has strongly been opposing the promotion of contraceptives.