The message behind the 7th billion baby

Perhaps it’s not just mere happenstance, or a likely synthetic positioning of the stars in the galaxy, or whatever natural phenomenon, that the 7th billion baby is a Filipina, Danica May Camacho, born to poor and humble parents.

Given the fixedly unbending Roman Catholic tenets that Filipinos often blindly follow bordering on illogical religious piety and skimming on bigotry, God in Heaven must have purposely intended Danica May as the 7th billion gift of the stork to Filipinos.

Based on the noisome give and take over the reproductive health (RH) bill pending in the Lower House of Congress, it’s evident that the Roman Catholic Church refuses to believe that there’s the runaway over-population of the country. It also refuses to believe that the 2.1 or so annual birth rate which places the Philippines as the 12th fastest growing nation on earth, is non-manageable for the purpose of feeding the almost 100M mouths in a year or two.

Clinging to the biblical fiat of going forth to the world and multiply, save to observe the unreliable woman’s menstrual cycle, as many husbands find repulsive, or “Ang Ginoo ra ang magbuot” excuse, has become habitual and cyclical as a matter of routine and habit.

In the world map, the composite Philippine Archipelago is just a dot or mote compared to, say, U.S.A., Europe, China, India, and other geographical behemoths. For instance, the latest survey reveals that Uncle Sam’s land has a population of some 350M people; whereas, the Philippines has now95M souls, and counting, and going on 100M in a few years. Probably, compared with less populous Canada, the Philippines is a virtual canned goods factory sprouting babies like crazy.

On the other hand, right-thinking nations, like, Finland, Norway, and Sweden have meticulously regulated their population growth. And even the less frigid European fronts, say, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg – the BENELUX countries – are known to moderate their birth rate; thus, coping with the corresponding need of food resources.

 Giant countries, such as, Russia and China, and even Japan, and European countries, like, Germany, France, and England and all those belonging to the G-20 have likewise reasonably kept tab of their yearly population growth. One thing though, particularly Russia and China who may have enforced the policy of one-child per family, have suffered in their economic development from shortage of labor force in the past decade or so.

 It’s not just an irony of fate per se that the stork brought Danica May to the Filipinos as the 7th billion being on earth, say, if only just to parody in sarcastic farce the nation’s cavalier treatment of over-population. It’s probably more of a stark symbolism of human being’s foremost responsibility to assess population-related issues, not just about over-population, like, poverty, unemployment, hunger, homelessness, ignorance, and such destitute vagaries of mankind.

Incidentally, Bosnian Adrian Mevic was the UN-named 6th billion baby in 1999 whose family is still in poverty, perhaps no better than now 12-year old Lorizze Mae Guevarra, as the Filipinos’ own symbolic 6th billion human being in 1999.

Baby Danica May Camacho could be God’s alliterative analogy or reiterative metaphor

that the Filipinos being the only Roman Catholic country in Asia, has the moral duty and ascendancy to rationalize in Christian sanity that God must not have literally meant for Filipinos to come out and multiply, without other qualifying factors.

Short of any slightest intent of blasphemy, and with due deference to the Catholic hierarchy, one doesn’t believe that the Almighty confers an ultimate license on Filipino religious believers to procreate as they often whimsically do. Indeed, there’s that biblical assurance that “God will provide”, but run-away population has to conform also to the tenet that men and nations have to help to provide their siblings, like, Danica May.