Overpopulation alibi revived

MANILA, Philippines - After being caught for not being earnest in their surveys by withholding the ugly penal provisions of the Reproductive Health Bill in Congress, the supporters of the bill are now calling for a compromise, insisting that the bill is still necessary. Really?

Again their ultimate reason is, hold your breath, that there is overpopulation and that it is the main culprit for the poverty we see around. Some of our politicians are mouthing that mantra. We have to be careful with these simpletons passing for our most concerned leaders, as if they have the exclusive rights to compassion.

The overpopulation argument is a myth. In the first place, who among us can really say that beyond a certain number or level of population of our country, we are already too many?

Who among us can really say that such-and-such a person, for being old or handicapped or poor or whatever, should not have been born? And worse, who among us can really say that such couple or such family should only have so many in their household?

But that — what this overpopulation alibi in the end amounts to, already shorn of its beautiful adornments. It tells us, nay, it dictates to us how many we should be. Crazy! The congenital infirmity of this approach is that it reduces the population issue into a numbers game mainly. And that is always wrong.

We are not dealing here with animals, plants or some products. We are dealing here with persons whose exercise of their reason and freedom, no matter how improperly done, just cannot be confined to a math exercise.

We need to deal with this population issue in a more humane way. And while the economic aspect is important, and even indispensable, we have to recognize the more important aspect of the morality involved in crafting any policy related to population or reproductive health.

Granted that there is some relation between the incidence of poverty measured in economic terms and population, this is no absolute, ultimate reason why we have to stop our considerations there. Our dignity requires a lot more.

Morality probes far deeper into human dignity and propriety than what the best economics can hope to cover. It should always be considered and in fact given priority over other criteria when dealing with delicate matters like the population and reproductive health issues.

Obviously, there are those who are quick to produce a morality to suit the numbers bias. They can talk about freedom of choice, cafeteria approach, etc., as if morality is just at these primitive or infantile levels.

Sorry to be blunt about that. But if all this talk about freedom and rights are not based on an absolute law, on God, but rather on one — “best” ideas, I don´t think we will see the end of that talk. We´ll all be wrangling all the way to our tombs.

There had been so much playing around in this field it — no wonder we continue to remain precisely in those levels. To somehow resolve the issues, attempts at dialogue had been aplenty, as well as efforts to conclude everything in the level of legality alone, never mind morality. Fine.

But unless the dialogues and the legal efforts are based on the solid foundation of a moral law, one coming from an absolute source, we would just be shadow boxing and not really taking the bull by the horns.

Besides, some dialogues with a very questionable character had been made. They were dialogues meant to delay things, or worse, as in the case of some Church people dialoguing with population controllers, to undermine morals again.

In their desire to find some common ground, they have entered into unacceptable compromises with immorality. Their eagerness for unity and harmony is pursued without clearly drawing the line as to where white that becomes gray now has gone really black.

Pope Benedict in his encyclical, Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth), has some relevant words to say: “Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way.

“In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word ´love´ is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite.”

The population and the reproductive health issues just cannot be handled by economics and our human laws. Morality should be their primary criterion. — Fr. Roy Cimagala, Chaplain, Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Cebu City