E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Erik De Castro / Reuters
Residents living in a squatters area wait for a free meal consisting of rice, chicken and vegetables given on a daily basis by a South Korean missionary in Tondo, Manila, Sept. 21, 2012.
Reuters — Philippine President Benigno Aquino is squaring off against his country's powerful Catholic church in a bid to give people free access to the means to limit the size of their families.
The predominately Catholic country has one of Asia's fastest-growing populations together with significant levels of chronic poverty. While neighbors have accelerated towards prosperity, the Philippines has lagged. Full story…
Erik De Castro / Reuters
Mothers stay with their babies in tandem beds at a ward often occupied by around 300 mothers at one time, in Jose Fabella maternity hospital in Manila, Sept. 12.
Erik De Castro / Reuters
Health workers show the proper use of a condom during a family planning session held in the Likhaan center, an NGO clinic in Tondo, Manila, Aug. 6. The women, who brought along their children, reacted enthusiastically to the session. Attendees are offered free contraception, such as pills or condoms.
Erik De Castro / Reuters
Women hold their babies while waiting for a free pediatric check-up at a local government health center in Manila, Aug. 6. About 50 people come through each day to have their babies checked for common illnesses like diarrhea and colds.
Erik De Castro / Reuters
Some of the 14 Cabiya-an siblings sleep side by side in a cramped one bedroom shanty in Manila, Sept. 12. The household's daily income is $6 U.S.
Leave a Comment:
For way too many centuries the Church has held impoverished countries hostage through its immoral stance on birth control. I am so glad to see that the Pres of the Philippines is taking a courageous stance. When a family has 14 children but can only afford to educate five of them, what does that tell us? Yet the Holy Mother Church, in all its arrogance and hubris, has the gall to say that the people need jobs instead of population control! So, your Holiness, spend your untold billions wherever it's necessary to create all those jobs! Or, get out of the discussion altogether because limiting one's family size is NONE OF THE CHURCH'S BUSINESS!
If you look at the HISTORY of the WORLD.....wherever the Catholic Church HOLDS SWAY.....the country ITSELF is usually ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED. Obviously...this SPEAKS for itself. And....it's USUALLY the poor in the Philippines WHO SUFFER the MOST....because CONTRACEPTION is NOT AFFORDABLE, when the HEAD of HOUSEHOLD makes so very little money to support his family.
And the wife cannot go to work, because she has to take care of her children. And.....consequently, they REPRODUCE like MINKS. .....The Philippines will ALWAYS remain the same.
My wife in the Philippines says that "this is wonderful, and beautiful" since HELP will always be available "on the cheap". And, she may be right.
The Philippines is known throughout the world for it's CHEAP LABOR.
NOW.......you KNOW why. Ten percent of it's LABOR FORCE have to work OVERSEAS, (OFW) known as: Overseas Filipino Workers, because the country's RESOURCES are being STRETCHED to the limit.
"Tama na......masiyado ka naman, eh."