(First of two parts)
Just outside our village, motorists and their riding companions would be swarmed by children selling sampaguita and other crudely threaded flower leis. Occasionally, one would see an adult man or woman seated on a makeshift bench at the street intersection to whom the children would go to from time to time to get their fresh supply of leis and to hand whatever “sales” they’ve gotten so far.
Sometimes, the children —who don’t look like they’re older than 10 years—would be carrying a baby each, probably their younger sibling, under the noontime heat. Somehow though, one wonders if the babies, who appear sedated, are really their siblings, or just an accessory to move the motorists and their passengers to slide down their windows and buy their sampaguita leis.
Some passersby, filled with compassion, would hand the children several hundred-peso bills, which can very well represent a full day’s wage of an average worker so these children and the babies they’re carrying could go home already. The children would give a profuse expression of thanks and assure their benefactor that they would call it a day and go home.
But as soon as the Good Samaritan has crossed the intersection, the children would be back in the street, the arms of the infant or toddler wrapped around them, repeating their litany of heartrending lines to the next batch of motorists.
It’s truly sad that children, hardly in their preadolescence, are being used as a workforce by some parents. Having these children work instead of letting them go to school, so they could already help earn bread for their respective families, highlights the gravity of our population problem, and the urgent need for an effective and sustained family-planning program.
Misconceptions
A wrong mind-set and several prevalent misconceptions about contraception by the very people who need to plan their families responsibly, impose a formidable barrier—among other things— to an effective implementation of the program.
Former Health Secretary Esperanza “Espie” Cabral recently shared with me a video documentary titled “Womb in Resonance.” The short film, produced by the advocacy group Joining Voices 2020, is a poignant narrative of the challenges women have to hurdle in accessing rights-based family planning in the Philippines. It also underscores the misconceptions, misplaced cultural beliefs and practices, and unfounded fears of many of our women about conventionally used contraceptive methods.
The video may be viewed at this link:
Without realizing it, Filipino women are seemingly helpless victims, made more so by the resignation to the submissive role many of them assume in planning their families.
Minor role
The film focuses on Maritess, mother to a big brood, who laments quite too late that she didn’t plan her pregnancies. Looking back, perhaps trying to say she only had a minor role in her having multiple pregnancies, she said she would refrain from having sex, but if her husband insisted on having sex with her, she didn’t think she had any other choice but to give in.
“When a woman does not want it and the male insists, sometimes I cannot refuse anymore. He’s already doing it to me,” says Maritess in Filipino.
Maritess has been perennially bothered by her asthma and the bouts of acute asthmatic episodes became more frequent during her pregnancies. Since they didn’t have money to deliver their children in the hospital, she just tried to endure the pangs of labor and childbirth, compounded by asthmatic bouts, in their house assisted only by a midwife.
Intense suffering
Despite the usually intense suffering she experienced with every pregnancy and childbirth, she seemed to find solace in the thought that having many kids is also good so they can help to work and earn some money for the family. This mind-set explains the ambivalence that many of our countrymen have about limiting the number of their children.
“I wanted to undergo ligation, but they said I have asthma so I was scared to undergo the procedure,” says Maritess. “Whenever I see my grandchildren having nothing to eat, I feel so sorry but I can’t do anything. I told my daughter Cristina to undergo ligation. Her husband is also unemployed,” she adds.
The camera shifts to Cristina, who got pregnant at the age of 18 and now has two children. With her first baby, she went into labor for a whole day. If she were in a hospital, she would have been given medicines intravenously to enhance her uterine contractions and shorten labor, but they also did not have the money. “So, I just told the midwife that I will endure labor pains even if they are painful. I almost died,” says Cristina.
If only her womb could speak, it would have given Cristina a severe scolding.