Everything about : RH Bill ( Reproductive Health Bill)

[r3roble]

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That should be the proper way. COUPLES should only make babies up to HOW many they can AFFORD. They should be RESPONSIBLE and NOT abusing their RIGHTS.

I pity those kids who have no food to eat, no clothes to wear, etc because of IRRESPONSIBLE couples! Pataka anak og dili kaya buhion!

that's right... if parents (or everyone) should only be responsible enough.. i think there's no need for this bill...

[wakkanakka]

Stop the corruption and the country will get better.

[Luskan]

Economic prosperity and urbanization normally leads to less need for many children.

Economic prosperity is an extravagant exaggerated term, it could either refer to individual or overall economic growth, let's take India for example, they are experiencing rapid economic growth yet their population is rapidly increasing as well.

OT:

Family Planning Still a Challenge for Many Poor Women

July 10, 2008—Over the last 30 years, birth rates have been falling steadily around the globe, but fertility levels and the pace of decline vary widely among and within countries, says a new World Bank report.

In most of the world today, women on average have three children or less.

However, in 35 of the world’s poor countries, birth rates remain high, with an average of more than five children per mother. Thirty-one of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa; the rest are Timor-Leste, Afghanistan, Djibouti, and Yemen. The same countries also have low levels of education, high death rates, and extreme poverty.

This year’s World Population Day, July 11, reaffirms the right and ability to plan when to start a family and determine freely and responsibly the number and timing of children.

Birth rates have fallen fastest in Asia and have been lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Regional Fertility Rates:

* Sub-Saharan Africa: 5.2 children per woman
* The Middle East, North Africa and South Asia: between 3.3 and 3.4 children per woman
* Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean: between 2.5 and 2.6 children per woman
* E. Asia and Pacific: 2.1 or less children per woman

But for many poor women, obtaining this control to plan their families remains out of reach. Women in developing countries experience 51 million unintended pregnancies each year because of lack of contraception, according to the World Bank report,Fertility Regulation Behaviors and Their Costs(pdf).

"Giving women access to modern contraception and family planning also helps to boost economic growth while reducing high birth rates so strongly linked with endemic poverty, poor education, and high numbers of maternal and infant deaths," says Joy Phumaphi, the World Bank’s Vice President for Human Development, and a former Health Minister in Botswana.

Education, economic opportunity also important

In addition to better health programs, Phumaphi says that improving girls’ education, giving women equal economic opportunities, and lifting families out of poverty are also important for lowering birth rates.

Getting an education—even if only at primary school level—is a good predictor of low fertility, according to Sadia Chowdhury, a co-author of the report and Senior Reproductive and Child Health Specialist at the World Bank.

"Promoting girls’ and women’s education is just as important in reducing birth rates in the long run as promoting contraception and family planning," says Chowdhury.

World Bank contribution to population and reproductive health

The World Bank continues to play a central role in ensuring access to all reproductive services through policy advice and financial assistance. In its policy discussions with client countries, the Bank continues to affirm its long-standing and strong commitment to the Cairo Consensus—the landmark 1994 agreement on family planning and sexual and reproductive health—and to provide countries with whatever financial and technical help they request in this area.

At the present time, the Bank is carrying out more than 90 population and reproductive health projects worth $965 million.

News & Broadcast - Family Planning Still a Challenge for Many Poor Women

Family size and the poor
By John J. Carroll, S.J., Institute on Church and Social Issues

There is good evidence that large family size makes it difficult for families to move out of poverty. Many children mean more competition within the family for food, education and health services, for the attention of the parents, and, within the community, for low-skilled jobs. To be sure, some parents may wish to have many children as "insurance" against their old age, but at most this ensures survival at a subsistence level.

We do not have data from Payatas on family size, though frequently I hear of scavengers with seven children or more. On the other hand, we do have figures on the ages of household members who have been relocated from the depressed flood-prone area of Camanava (Caloocan-Malabon-Navotas-Valenzuela) to three sites in Bulacan province. A sample survey done among the more than 7,200 relocated households indicates that the median age (the age which divides the population equally into an older and a younger group) in mid-2003 was 17 years, four years younger than the national medium of 21 years. Those 14 years old and younger made up 45.4 percent of the population. Coupled with high unemployment and mainly semi-skilled jobs, this means a very heavy burden on working-age adults, and a scarcity of resources available to the young.

The 10 couples mentioned above are fortunate, in that they are being introduced while they are still young to NFP. We have a program there, with three trainers who themselves have been prepared by Sister Pilar Verzosa, R.G.S., and more than 90 actively practicing it, some using the Billings Method and an increasing number using the simpler Standard Days Method. The program "rides on" the feeding program for malnourished infants, since the parents of the latter are an obvious target, and I have been surprised at the acceptance it has received. Some of the husbands are reluctant to abstain during the fertile period; those in the group mentioned above agreed to do so but asked that they be given two weeks "to get ready"! Others are quite willing, saying, "The pill is why our wives are always sick," or even, "The pill is why our wives have tuberculosis"!

These latter reactions remind us that, for many, the chief advantage of NFP is precisely that it is natural as well as inexpensive, with no side-effects. This is significant because the great majority of the poor are not regular churchgoers. Even at Payatas, most of the mothers in our feeding program are not churchgoers, and Sunday Mass attendance is probably less than three percent of the population. They know little of the Catholic Church's teaching and see family planning as purely a technical matter.

The tragedy, however, is that our NFP program is reaching so few: 90 couples out of the 10,000 households in Payatas B alone. And that the Church, while vigorously opposing distribution of contraceptives by the government and refusing to collaborate with the latter even in NFP, seems unable to develop a program of its own which is proportionate to the need. As a result, 33 years after the Church withdrew from the government's Population Commission, it becomes increasingly difficult to hold back a vigorous population control program on the part of government that could have little regard for freedom of conscience or the position of the Catholic Church.

The reader will note that I am not speaking of a "population problem" for the national economy, but of a "family size problem" among the poor. There are many steps that could be taken to boost the national economy other than population control (one thinks immediately of eliminating corruption and the wastage of "pork barrel" funds, of improving tax collection and getting the politics out of economic policy, of improving the educational and health levels of the people and developing infrastructure in the rural areas). But even with the best of intentions (which is not to be presumed), these steps will take time.

In the meantime, unless something is done about family size among the poor, the tragedies of childhood malnutrition, street children and child laborers will continue. On this, history and the Lord of history can be unforgiving.

Huge population doesn't make a country poor, that is a fact however a most poor people produce large numbers of children which they cannot handle alone based on their existing income, that is why there should be a proper education on contraceptives especially on the poor populace,

If that huge population is composed of middle or rich class rather than the poor, then population control would not be a problem. Another problem I noticed about a huge population of the poor is that it peels too much of our food resources and the national economy. Rising cost of commodities are products of high demands from a very huge population which adds burdens to large families of poor people, also hundreds of millions of pesos are wasted on feeding programs and subsidies by the government just to feed and the malnourished kids of the poor families.

[Luskan]

Stop the corruption and the country will get better.

Better of what? individually or as a whole

If you're talking as a whole, it will get better because the government has more money to pay for the remaining taxes which will empower the peso, (pro's: might lower the price of oil and foreign commodities, cons: add burden to the OFW'S and our exporters), build more infastructures, etc.

If you're talking about individually, that's not true, many people think the government is a "genie in a bottle" figure, whether a country is corrupt or not, you have to work on your own to prosper.

Note: Stop the corruption, or corrupt free is a joke because even the most richest nations in the world have a share of corruption especially China, America and Japan. Also a corrupt free country doesn't translate a rich country, because an official can be honest but lazy.

Corruption in some of the Richest Nations in the World

Japan
JPRI Working Paper No. 76
GLOCOM Platform - Media Reviews - Weekly Review

America
America's Corrupt Legal System
Finance and Corruption in America

Even South Korea has lots of corrupt politicians yet their economy is prosperous because people there don't wait for the government for bread to land on their mouths.

AsiaSource: AsiaTODAY - A resource of the Asia Society

[mannyamador]

Huge population doesn't make a country poor, that is a fact however a most poor people produce large numbers of children which they cannot handle alone based on their existing income, that is why there should be a proper education on contraceptives especially on the poor populace,

I think you reduce family size more effectively if you empower the poor economically.

Bad governance (a broad term which includes corruption, mismanagement, indiscriminate debt servicing. bad policies, etc.) is what keeps people poor. Reduce or minimize bad governance, as other countries have done, and you will empower more people. Corruption may not be totally eliminated, but it doesn't have to be. It just has to be lessened. This is especially important when you consider that corruption in the Philippines is far greater than in those other countries you cited. When minimized and combined with better policies on debt servicing, reduction of pork barrel, strengthening of the justice system, etc., you can have much better governance. This will allow people to prosper and then family size tends to shrink.

Contraceptive programs will not empower the poor. But they will divert resources and -- even worse -- divert attention and fool people into thinking they are solving the problem even when they are not. If you look at your own sources, your will see that Philippine fertility is around 3 children per woman, like much of Asia. it has already gone down a lot and continues to do so. But if we play with that we risk upsetting the normal trend and we risk having other issues (population ageing is one).

[koykoy]

I will comment on the population issue. I just came from an economic briefing for the last quarter of this year. To summarize, it's just GDP growth vs. population growth. Our GDP growth could not cope up with population growth.

With the global economy now shaking, inflation rates at an all time high, central bank slowly rising the key interest rates, unstable exchange rates, foreign domestic investment in the negative this quarter, it pays to SLOW DOWN population growth.

Add to that the dangerous move by the govt to give subsidy to the poor? And the cause? Overpopulation.

So please, populate responsively. If this bill aims to slow down population growth, I will support this.

[r3roble]

If this bill aims to slow down population growth, I will support this.

i think responsible parenthood is the answer to overpopulation and not this bill...

[branluther]

this bill is not anti-life. this bill even decreases the number of people who die hungry.

[mannyamador]

this bill is not anti-life. this bill even decreases the number of people who die hungry.

That is what some people hope for, but that will NOT be the result of this Bill. it will waste resources on programs that do not attack the real causes of poverty, allowing even MORE children to die hungry.

I think GDP growth is poor because of other factors (and NOT population). These include: massive corruption throughout the government, war in Mindanao, indiscriminate debt servicing that diverts hundreds of billions, wasteful pork barrel that enriches congressmen, a dysfunctional property system that makes it difficult for the poor to own and use the full value of their property, and unjust economic structures that impoverish the poor while enriching the rich.

The money used for foreign debt servicing alone could eliminate all financial shortages in the education budget in a few years. With better education. the poor can be more productive and begin to prosper.

[johnny22aa]

brader, if u keep on posting about massive corruption, war, indiscriminate debt servicing, economic choochoo, then u are on the wrong thread. again, this is not an economic issue, nor an anti-war or an anti-corruption bill. we are talking about sound reproductive health here & formal *** education. i suggest u create another place to express your wrong & irrelevant concern, not here.