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The
highest courage is to dare to be yourself in the face of adversity,
choosing right over wrong, ethics over convenience, and truth over
popularity.
Travel the path of integrity without looking back, for THERE IS
NEVER A WRONG TIME TO DO THE RIGHT THING.
-
Bishop Soc Villegas
25 July 2007
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It is a massive
population control program
By Ligaya B. Anacta-Acosta
Inquirer News Service / http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=1&story_id=31627
Editor's Note: Published on page A16 of the March 27, 2005 issue of
the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I WAS an avid promoter of
contraceptives when I was with the Department of Health (DOH). Promoting
contraceptives is a very big part of DOH programs. There was, and still
is, a lot of money for family planning.
For a long time, we have been told that contraceptives prevent
conception. However, during the training I had undergone with Mercedes
Arzu-Wilson, president of the Family of the Americas Foundation (FAF),
it became clear to me that intrauterine devices (IUD) work essentially
as an abortifacient. It does not prevent conception but causes constant
inflammation and infection in the uterus. Thus, the newly
conceived baby cannot implant
in that kind of environment. No wonder then that the most common side
effect suffered by IUD users is severe menstrual bleeding.
As our trainer said emphatically, "that was not ordinary blood, it
was the baby being aborted in what is called micro-abortion." For
pills and Depo-Provera, we learned that they make the endometrial lining
and uterus dry and barren like a desert, thus, the newly conceived baby
cannot implant as well.
Natural vs artificial
After my training in Manila, I conducted 10 batches of training for more
than 300 midwives, nurses, doctors and parish pastoral workers. After
watching the video titled "Natural vs Artificial" produced by
the FAF, participants came one by one to testify (they were sobbing)
that indeed all these things were happening to them and their clients.
I heard very dramatic testimonies of deaths (particularly due to pills
and IUDs), ailments (most common of which were high blood pressure,
ovarian cysts and cancers due to pills, and pelvic inflammatory diseases
and infections brought about by IUDs), and couples and families being
drawn apart by contraception and sterilization, which caused depression
and reduction in libido. Some women using pills also reported mood
disorders.
Health workers even shared, without my asking, the fact that tetanus
toxoid immunization was indeed causing abortions. I was shocked. I
remembered that during the height of the tetanus toxoid controversy,
when former health secretary Juan Flavier first ran for senator, I was
constantly on radio and TV defending it, since I was Flavier's campaign
manager for Region 8 back then.
Losing babies
Today, I hear a lot of testimonies of women, who are between two to four
months pregnant, losing their baby because they had been injected with
that drug. Also, a lot of single women who had been injected with it can
no longer achieve pregnancy.
I constantly gave this feedback to the health secretary and to my
regional director in Region 8 but they didn't seem to care. It seemed
that they were more concerned about our targets than the health of our
people.
Through research, I discovered that the Philippines received an annual
budget of $144 million in the mid-1990s for population control. The
money was "used primarily in media, the House of Representatives
and Senate affairs to help change people's views regarding contraception
and family planning." Today, that amount has even increased.
I kept quiet for a long time. I knew too well that being an insider, and
a spokesperson for the DOH, I would cause a scandal if I made an expose.
The last straw, however, was Ligtas
Buntis.
Deceptively named
Ligtas Buntis is a masked population control program, targeting men and
women 15 years old and aboveregardless of marital status. I found it
very unusual that we just had our orientation on Jan. 17 but the program
was ready for implementation by Feb. 1.
I also felt nauseated with the fact that we were partnering with Marie
Stopes, an agency the DOH did not even accredit in the past, because
it knows too well that the group is into abortion in the guise of
menstrual and fertility regulation. Very deceptively named, Ligtas
Buntis is nothing but the provision of contraceptives and sterilization
services house-to-house. It is apparent that the DOH now considers
pregnancy a disease like tigdas and polio. When I objected, my director
told me to "separate [my] morality and [my] work."
I never thought that at my age I would be saying goodbye to government
service. However, I thought I have only one life to live, so if I could
offer this one life to make a difference in this world, so be it.
The DOH tries so hard in telling people that contraceptives are safe and
that it is not true that these are abortifacients. But I have a copy of
their bible, "The
Essentials of Contraceptive Technology: A Handbook for Clinic Staff"
published by the Johns
Hopkins Population Information Program (March 2003), and funded by
the United States Agency for International Development (
USAID).
That book details the possible side effects of each and every
contraceptive and sterilization service. And even if that book makes
horrible side effects look normal in a very deceitful way, on pages 12
to 14 for IUD, it says, "possibly could prevent egg from implanting
in the wall of uterus." Let us not be deceived. That is synonymous
to abortion.
The DOH is even trying to redefine human life to start from implantation
rather than from conception as very clearly stated in Article II,
Section 12 of the Philippine Constitution.
As I told the health secretary when he called me last January (right
after I was relieved as natural family planning program manager because
of my change of heart regarding contraceptives), I now know exactly why,
despite spending billions of dollars over a period of more than 35
years, we only have a 35 percent contraceptive prevalence rate. It is
because our products are intrinsically defective. However hard we
promote them, people don't buy them because of the horrible side effects
they experience.
Men and women are forced to resort to sterilization because they are not
aware that it too has a lot of ill effects. In fact, the Matching Grant
Program implemented by the DOH through a grant from the USAID-funded
Management Sciences for Health is massively promoting vasectomy.
DOH people vow that they are pro-life. In fact, one of the four
principles of the DOH family planning program is "respect for
life." But when you promote contraception, you can never call
yourself pro-life. That's why it's called contraception. It is against
conception or against the birth of human life.
Abortion mentality
The DOH also fondly argues that it is anti-abortion. But I have found in
my research that it is common knowledge around the globe except at the
DOH that many contraceptives are indeed abortifacients.
I have also found that the Church statement that a contraceptive
mentality leads to an abortion mentality is true.
Because women who take contraceptives don't like to have a child, when
they get pregnant (since no contraception is 100-percent effective) it
is very easy for them to go to the next step of having an abortion. The
womb, which should be the safest place on earth, has become a tomb for
countless number of children. As Mother Teresa of Calcutta puts it,
"if we accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell
other people not to kill one another?"
Obviously, there is a need to revisit and overhaul government
priorities, particularly its continuing effort to promote population
control despite overwhelming evidence that there is no overpopulation.
Political pressure
The roots of the government's family planning program are deep, with a
tangle of branches entwined in public programs. The intricate complex of
power and money, fed by an annual flow of millions of dollars in grants,
not only supports population programs but also finances lobbying to
sustain the programs.
The claim that the poor lack access to family planning services is
untenable. If the poor "lack access and want more birth
control," why should government programs like Ligtas Buntis need to
exert such tremendous pressure on them? Why go to the extent of
conducting a house-to-house campaign? And why go to the extent of
harassing health workers like me who choose not to support the program?
I'm not saying that couples should not plan their families. You must
know, however, that there is a tremendous difference between family
planning and population control. Family planning implies that the
decision is made by the couple, taking into account their own belief and
circumstances-financial or otherwise-regarding the number and spacing of
their children. Population control measures, in contrast, are
implemented by governments and international agencies after they have
determined the number of children per couple.
Gift of love
Genuine family planning gives couples control over their reproductive
behavior. Population control relinquishes this right to the government
and international agencies. As Mother Teresa puts it, "The way to
plan the family is natural family planning not contraception. In
destroying the power of giving life through contraception, a husband or
wife is doing something to self.
"This turns the attention to self and so it destroys the gift of
love in him or her. In loving, the husband and wife must turn the
attention to each other as happens in natural family planning, and not
to self as happens in contraception. Once that living love is destroyed,
abortion easily follows."
Shifting public health policy from contraceptives to natural family
planning will considerably bring down the expenses of our cash-strapped
government and will rid us of graft and corruption brought about by the
multimillion dollar grants. Natural family planning will truly promote
health because there are no side effects. It can also be taught and
learned by anyone. More importantly, it will bring back the needed sense
of values and morality not only in government but also between and among
couples and families.
(Acosta is a former information officer of the Department of Health and
its regional program manager for natural family planning for Eastern
Visayas.)
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