Family planning and the dignity of human life
First of two parts
Close to midnight last Oct. 31, as many young children were already fast asleep after a hectic day of trick-or-treating, the symbolic seven billionth baby was born at the Fabella Maternity Hospital in Manila. Many other symbolic babies were born in other parts of the world, marking a milestone set by the United Nations—the world being populated by seven billion people.
Of course, even the keenest demographers couldn’t be that sure exactly if the world’s population already reached the seven billionth mark. It was symbolic after all, and more of a wake-up call on how rapidly man is populating the world, with resources getting scarcer to feed all the newly-born babies until they become mature, self-supporting adults.
Reality can hurt
Demographer Joel Cohen of Rockefeller University put it succinctly in his interview with CBS News when he said, “I have been in poor countries where little kids run up to me with pot bellies and flies in their eyes. And I think, this kid does not have the chance to enjoy the dignity of being human. Nobody takes care of his or her illnesses, nobody feeds this kid. This kid is destined for a short life.’”
Curt and brusque as Cohen’s remark might be, it has reality wrapped all over it. And indeed, reality can hurt. So while Danica Camacho, our seven billionth baby, might have been lavished with a nice cake and many other gifts, a dark uncertainty hovers around her, as her father, a struggling driver, can barely make both ends meet with his below-the-poverty-line income.
The problem is quite clear and everyone must put in his or her share to address it. We’re not even talking here about the Reproductive Health (RH) bill, and we’re not trying to argue either for the pro- or anti-RH sides. We’re also not talking of a problem limited to our country, but something global in nature, or at least in most parts of the world.
The problems stares us in the eyes, and no problem will ever get solved unless it is accepted as such, and looked at in a very objective and dispassionate manner. When we deny that such a problem exists—and look at these inadequately cared for children as “a glass half-filled, and not a glass half-empty”—then no solution can ever be arrived at.
I think everyone shares the common desire of protecting and enhancing human life from conception to the very end through natural death. The belief that human life is sacred and that each person has inherent dignity that must be respected in society is a conviction of not only the Catholic Church but all other religions as well. I have yet to read or hear of a religious teaching preaching otherwise.
In one of his pastoral letters, Bishop Raymond L. Burke of LaCrosse in the United States, wrote: “We believe that every human life is sacred from conception to natural death; that people are more important than things; and that the measure of every institution is whether or not it enhances the life and dignity of the human person.”
I would like to underscore the last part of his statement stressing that any institution, and by that I interpret as any religious, government, nongovernmental, or social institution, should be evaluated on how it is able to maintain the dignity of a human being, and not just a being who is alive.
Providing basic essentials
Maintaining dignity means at least providing for the basic essentials in living life with human dignity—having food to eat, clothes to wear, and roof over one’s head; being treated when sick; and being provided with an environment to develop whatever God-given talents one may have. If these could not be provided, then—unsympathetically harsh as it may sound—it would probably be better for a child to have never been conceived at all than live a life where not even a modicum of dignity could be enjoyed.
The picture Cohen painted so clearly—“pot-bellied youngsters with flies in their eyes”—is not only true for some remote places in Africa, but also in many countries in the world including ours.
The simplistic solution seems to be the always cited one—which is living within one’s means. If we cannot afford to maintain something, then we should not have acquired it in the first place. It’s foolhardiness to buy eight cars when we can only afford to maintain one car, or two at most. It can never be an appropriate basis for comparison but similarly, if a couple has limited means, the couple should be assisted to limit the size of their family to the number they can adequately provide for, so the dignity of human life is maintained as they rear their brood.
