BIG POPULATION AN ECONOMIC PLUS?
Indeed, Jose Sandejas, President Arroyo’s consultant on family matters, downplays the report by Likhaan and company. “There are studies by people who have an agenda to push,” he says, “so you really have to look at who funded it.”

He adds that there are groups in Manila’s slums promoting natural family planning “and they will be the ones to tell you most men are responsible, even in the slums.” He argues that the urban population growth will go down even without contraception. Urbanization, he says, will leave couples naturally wanting smaller families because of the higher cost of living, as compared to living in the provinces.

Sandejas, however, would rather focus on the positive effects of keeping the population growth robust even though 2006 figures show this may be causing a downtrend in major education indicators like elementary enrolment and survival rate in schools.

“Even if you are not able to educate them as well you would like,” he says, “in the end their capability to quickly learn skills in the health services, in construction, as seamen, is going to save the Philippines.” Sandejas says that even the current generation, “where we have low levels of education, our overseas Filipino workers are saving us at this time.”

It’s a line that could well upset people like medical anthropologist Michael L. Tan, who writes a popular column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer. In a 2003 column on Arroyo’s policies, he observed the president, being an economist, should know better than “arguing that a large population is good for the economy because it means more consumers, more business, even more workers to export.”

“There is just no way government or the private sector can cope with the demands for jobs, housing, health, education and other social services, not with the present rate of population growth,” Tan added. “As for exporting Filipinos as caregivers to the world, I find it terribly immoral that we can think of producing children mainly because we see them as possible exports to bring in dollars later, even as we export their parents today.”

Interestingly, Arroyo’s stance is nowhere near that of Ed Panlilio, a Catholic priest who is the new governor of the president’s home province, Pampanga. According to Panlilio, he will pursue the family planning program already in place at the capitol, and that includes providing artificial contraceptives to those who ask for it.

“As governor and a public official,” he says, “the reality is I cannot impose my Catholic stand on the issue. Otherwise, I will be violating the human rights of my constituents.”

Panlilio says he will ask health workers to offer the whole range of family planning options to couples so they can practice a method based on the dictates of their conscience. He admits this may make him a target of attacks by Catholic hardliners. But he says he is confident Church leaders will understand the position he has taken.

“Nobody should dictate the choices couples should take,” says Panlilio, “not even the Pope, not even the president.”