RENEWING THE FONTS OF TRUTH-FILLED CHARITY THROUGH A FAMILY DEVELOPMENT BILL

Roberto de Vera
Local pro-choice groups are disappointed that legislators were unable to pass House Bill 5043 (known also as the Reproductive Health RH Bill) in the previous Congress. But they remain firm in their resolve to continue lobbying for the passage of the RH bill into law because they claim it will reduce the number of poor families, the number of induced abortions, and the incidence of HIV infection. I agree with the RH bill proponents that these social ills are worth curing but I do not agree that an RH bill, in its past, present or future form, is the right medicine to cure them. This paper is divided into two sections. In the first section, I will elaborate on the main arguments presented by the bills proponents on how the RH bill can reduce the above social ills and then I will present arguments which support my claim that any RH bill is the wrong solution. In the second and final section, I will discuss certain sections of Pope Benedict XVIs third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), which I reckon could form the basis of a Family Development Bill which I believe would be the right medicine to cure these ills. Why the RH Bill Is Not the Cure Proponents of the reproductive health care bill (HB5043) claim that its passage will reduce the number of poor families, the number of induced abortions and the incidence of persons infected with HIV. This bill will supposedly do so by providing men and women with information and free access to safe contraceptive options. Proper information about and better access to safe contraceptive options will in turn supposedly help parents have safe sex and avoid unplanned pregnancies.

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First claim: Fewer unplanned pregnancies will mean fewer poor families. Supposedly, if parents can choose the number of children they want to have, then they will be able to give each child the food, schooling and affection needed to become responsible citizens who will land good jobs, raise stable families and contribute to society. Second claim: Fewer unplanned pregnancies will lead to fewer instances of induced abortions. When a woman has an unplanned pregnancy she may abort the baby or, to use a phrase commonly used by prochoice groups, she may terminate the pregnancy. Third claim: Increasing the practice of safe sex will reduce the number of people infected with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. According to this argument, using contraceptives like condoms will protect people from getting infected by their sexual partners who are infected with HIV. I will focus my critique on these three claims to highlight flaws in their arguments which may not have been given enough emphasis in the several critiques that have been produced since the RH bill was put on the table for discussion in Congress.1 In the rest of this section, I will present statistical and philosophical arguments that show why having unplanned pregnancies is most likely not the main cause of poor families and induced abortions and that the practice of unsafe sex is not one of the factors that lead to the increased incidence of HIV infection. Regarding the first claim,2 RH bill supporters argue that having unplanned pregnancies leads to a family being poor since the family ends up having more children than the parents can afford to feed and send to school which will then translate to citizens who are more likely to be poor because they have poor-paying jobs. I claim that large families are more likely to be poor not because they are large but because the heads of poor families likely do not have a high school diploma. Although statistics from the 2000 Family Income and Expenditure Survey show a positive association between family size and the share of poor families in a family size, this does not serve as a basis to conclude that families are likely to become poorer as they become larger. When we examine statistics derived from the same FIES survey, we find that 78 to 90 percent of the heads of poor families (sorted by number of children in the family) do not have a high school education. This second statistic makes it more plausible to think that families, regardless of size, are more likely to be poor because the heads
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of the families hold poor-paying jobs since most of them have not completed a high school education. So instead of finding ways to have smaller families, we might try to implement tested solutions to directly reduce poverty. One part of the solution would be to broaden the coverage of the public school system and implement feeding programs that increase the likelihood that children go to school and stay in school longer thus increasing their chances of landing jobs that pay well. Another would be to improve public and corporate governance that would, among other things, entice local and foreign investors to infuse fresh funds into the Philippines, to start new companies and expand existing ones to generate better-paying jobs for this growing educated workforce. Moreover, the claim that a great proportion of women have unplanned pregnancies because they do not have enough information about and access to contraceptive methods does not appear to hold up when put under the scrutiny of a statistical lens.3 A 1994 study showed that 90 percent of the differences between actual fertility rates were explained by desired fertility rates. Simply put, it is likely that parents, regardless of the size of their families, want the children they actually have. Moreover, this study seems to support the view that parents of small families wanted to have small families to begin with and thus sought contraceptive methods to achieve their desired family size and not the alternative view that the greater availability of contraceptive methods leads to smaller family sizes. In support of this view, Gary Becker argues that major changes [in fertility] have been caused primarily by other changes in the demand for children and improvement in birth control methods are mainly an induced response to other decreases in demand for children, rather than an important cause of the decrease in demand. When I mention this pointthat parents first agree on a family size and then use the contraceptive method--I do not wish to imply that it is morally acceptable for parents at the beginning of their married life to pin down the number of children they want to have and then to stop having children when they reach it. Catholic teaching tells us that married couples are advised to live a heroic parenting.4 In other words, they should keep each conjugal act open to life and be ready to accept and nurture the children which God blesses them with. Heroic parenthood also necessitates that they abstain from the conjugal act or practice
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the NFP method (temporarily or for life, as the case may be) for extremely rare cases which includes cases when the wife has a medical condition which could result in death in childbirth. Neither do I wish to imply that it would be good for society to support initiatives that (a) make contraceptives available in every sari-sari store, barangay clinic and school restroom, (b) subsidize the cost of contraceptives so that families who cannot afford them can get to use them, and (c) conduct age-appropriate sex education classes in elementary and secondary schools similar to the pilot program recently began by the Department of Education. No, they would not be good for society because (a) they would increase the availability of choices that do not promote the true development of persons and (b) they are rooted in and reinforce a mentality that is subtly instilled in people by any reproductive health care program. This reason is the crux of the flaw of the second claim. Let me explain: Fewer unplanned pregnancies will supposedly lead to fewer induced abortions. Pro-choice groups define an induced abortion as the deliberate termination of an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. However, pro-life groups define induced abortion as the killing of fetuses or unborn children in the womb at any trimester of the pregnancy as world-renowned geneticist Jerome Lejeune discovered and proclaimed that life begins at the moment of conception. But everybodyboth pro-choice and pro-life groupsagrees that abortion is not a good thing. Pro-choice groups claim that women get an induced abortion because of unplanned pregnancies. So they claim that the way to reduce induced abortions is to reduce unplanned pregnancies by providing information and access to contraceptive methods through a reproductive health care program. But this solution is flawed. Here is why.5 Any reproductive health care program will say that its reason for being is to help families choose the contraceptive methods that will help them avoid unplanned pregnancies and achieve their desired family size. But at the heart of any reproductive health care program is the unspoken goal of convincing men and women that they have the right to have sexual relations, to use a contraceptive method to avoid having a baby and to abort a baby when a woman finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. This mindset is commonly called the contraceptive mentality.

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The moment we see abortion as the final tragic symptom of the illness called contraceptive mentality and when we see that a reproductive health care programwhose primary agenda is to convince men and women that having sex without having babies at all costs is cool actually causes and aggravates this illness in them, it should not be difficult to figure out that implementing a reproductive health care program will not lead to fewer unplanned pregnancies and fewer induced abortions. On the contrary, it will actually increase both. If a reproductive health care program is not likely to reduce the number of induced abortions, what will? Although he may not have been the first person to suggest this solution, I believe Donald DeMarco states this in a way that is hard to improve upon:
There is only one way to reduce abortion, and that is to reduce its cause, which is in the contraceptive mentality. And the contraceptive mentality can be reduced only by recognizing that procreation is good and by repudiating the attitude that endorses the violent negation of that good. It is surely illogical and unrealistic to try to establish a truly humane civilization where every human being has a right to live by beginning with the idea of reducing abortion, and remaining unconvinced that the natural and procreative consequence of sexual intercourse is a real good. We cannot restore the moral health of civilization merely by eliminating something that is bad; we can restore it only by loving and embracing what is fundamentally good. We begin to build a humane civilization not backwards from the charred remains of a burned-out civilization, but forwards from the realization that new life is a great good.

Advocates of the RH Bill claim that the practice of unsafe sex meaning without the use of condomsis a main cause of persons getting infected with HIV. Then they proceed to reason out in this way: Since young men and women in their teens and twenties are most likely not going to resist the urge to have sex, then it would seem logical to implement an age-appropriate sex education program that would teach them how to practice safe sex to help them to avoid getting infected with HIV. This solution seems to be logical. Yet in the larger scheme of things, this same argument, when broken down, carries the elements of what economists would call a moral hazard typically found in the insurance industry. When the owner of a bike insures it against theft he
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is more likely to become carelessby choosing locks that are flimsier and parking spaces that more dangerous than those he would have chosen before he bought bike-theft insurance. Similarly, when a person insures himself against HIVthrough the use of condomswe can expect that this person will increase the frequency of their sexual activity which will more than offset the reduction in infection rate brought about by condom usage resulting in a net increase in the incidence of persons infected with HIV. In other words, this moral hazard occurs because persons who take on insurance against HIV infection are love without life addicts and policymakers. Having abandoned the possibility of people acquiring virtue, they reinforce this contraceptive mentality and teach or advocate the technology of safe sex. Thus, we can conclude that it is more likely that increasing the number of persons who practice safe sex will not reduce the incidence of persons infected with HIV, but rather could increase it. So what then will reduce the incidence of HIV infections? When we realize that implementing a safe sex program is simply another symptom of the contraceptive mentality, DeMarcos restatement of the solution offered for the second claim strikes a sober chord within us:
It is far more logical and realistic to revolutionize society by teaching men to be virtuous, since virtue is a perfection of something natural, than it is to effect the same revolution by being indifferent to virtue and trying to suppress the evil consequences of mens vices through technological interventions. This is not to say that virtue or civilized society come easily; in fact, their achievement demands the development and pooling of every gift men have (and then some). But it is to say that it is the only way that is logical and realistic. It was the essential insight of Huxley, Orwell, and others that the amoral technological approach produces a dehumanized social nightmare.

To sum things up, we have shown that all three claims supporting the RH bill are flawed. First, it makes little sense to help parents have smaller families because it is the lack of schooling of the heads of poor families and not their family size that makes a family poor. Moreover, it has been statistically shown that families are small because the parents wanted the families to be small in the first place and later sought
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contraceptive methods to do this. These two reasons do not support the need for a reproductive health care program that improves access to and provides information about contraceptive methods because these things are not the major drivers that reduce unplanned pregnancies. Second, reproductive health care programs do not reduce induced abortions because they promote a contraceptive mentalitya conviction that a person has the right to have sex, to use contraceptives to avoid having a baby, and to abort a baby when the woman finds out that she is unexpectedly pregnantwhich is the true cause of unwanted pregnancies. Third, reproductive health care programs do not reduce the incidence of persons infected with HIV because it tries to prevent birthsunexpected blessings are now viewed as unwanted consequences of sexual acts through the technological solution of practicing safe sex. This results in a moral hazard: persons using condoms tend to increase the frequency of their sexual acts with multiple partners which more than offsets the decrease in the risk of getting infected. In short, the practice of safe sex has a net effect of raising the number and incidence of persons infected with HIV. Perspectives from Caritas in Veritate The previous section has shown that a reproductive health care bill is not the solution to the problems of poverty, abortion and HIV. Moreover, it has argued that the solution to these problems begins with people seeing children as the unexpected blessings they truly are and considering children as a happy consequence inseparable from the conjugal act. When we combine these conclusions with the observation that poverty, abortion and HIV are simply problems of underdevelopment and not the alleged results of unplanned pregnancies and the practice of unsafe sex, then we could surmise that the alternative bill that should address these ills should address the problem of development. In this final section, I will argue that in Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), Pope Benedict XVI reviewed three points about development first brought up in Pope Paul VIs Populorum Progressio (The Progress of Peoples) from which can be derived the basis for an alternative to the RH Bill, a Family Development Bill.6 Pope Paul VI saw development as a vocation: in the design of God, every man is called upon to develop and fulfill himself, for every
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life is a vocation (n. 16). In other words, the duty of persons to improve themselves throughout their entire life is a calling from God. If development is a transcendent call, then man finds his true purpose only by being open to Gods cues. Pope Paul VI states: There is no true humanism but that which is open to the Absolute and is conscious of a vocation which gives human life its true meaning (ibid.) Pope Paul VI elaborates his view of development as a transcendent call in three points. First, development as a vocation requires a climate of freedom which allows the persons to freely take on the responsibility of improving themselves and others. This has two implications. First, no human structure or institution can replace human responsibility as the critical driver of development. Pope Paul VI was aware of the various obstacles to development but he was certain that each one remains, whatever be these influences affecting him, the principal agent of his own success or failure (n. 17). Second, underdevelopment can be attributed to developed peoples failure to answer fully to the call to development. In other words, the call to development is not limited to the duty to improve our lives. Rather, it encompasses the duty of going beyond the ordinary routine of our lives to help other people develop theirs. Thus, the common phenomenon of groups of poor people living side by side with groups of wealthy people is a clear indicator that the latter are not measuring up to their transcendent call. Second, the vocation to development requires that we respect the truth about development. Pope Paul VI pointed out that human development can be authentic only when it is integral, that is, it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man. Pope Benedict XVI restates it: The truth of development consists in its completeness: if it does not involve the whole man and every man, it is not true development (n. 18). On the one hand, if at least five million Filipino families are living below the poverty line, it merely means that development programs need to be implemented to get these families out of poverty. On the other hand, government agencies and NGOs who work together to run development programs that focus solely on the needs of the body, but do not meet the needs of the soul are missing out on the true meaning of development. Third, development as a vocation is driven by charity. In this context, Pope Paul VI argued that underdevelopment is not caused by the
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lack of resources. Instead, underdevelopment is due to a weakness in the willingness to fulfill the duties of solidarity: it is the lack of brotherhood among individuals and peoples (n. 19). Moreover, it results from a lack of deep thinking that fails to provide direction to this willingness. Development needs the deep thought and reflection of wise men in search of a new humanism which will enable modern man to find himself anew (ibid.) Pope Benedict argues that we need charity to establish fraternity:
As society becomes ever more globalized, it makes us neighbors but does not make us brothers. Reason, by itself, is capable of grasping the equality between men and giving stability to their civic coexistence, but it cannot establish fraternity. This originates in a transcendent vocation from God the Father, who loved us first, teaching through the Son what fraternal charity is. (n. 19)

In sum, this third point implies that we Filipinos need to educate our hearts to move from a peaceful co-existence based on reason to a fraternity that makes us love our neighbors as brothers. One conclusion stands out from the arguments which have just been presented. Underdevelopmentbe it measured in terms of the five million Filipino families living in poverty, or of the estimated 20,000 induced abortions each year, or of the small but growing number of Filipinos being infected each year with HIVcannot be attributed in any degree to a lack of contraceptives. Rather, underdevelopment can be traced to a lack of truth-filled charity: loving persons with the light of reason and the light of faith. For example, well-intentioned advocates in developed countries who support a reproductive health care program to help the poor in developing countries are exercising a false charity because they continue to implement these programs in the face of evidence that rapid population growth does not cause poverty and that these same problems have eventually resulted in developed countries experiencing problems with a shrinking labor force and weakening pension programs due to declining populations. If true development is sustained only by the presence of truth-filled charity, then we might have to shift our perspective of trying to address the seeming lack of resources to one that tries to renew the fonts of charity which in turn supports the basis of freedom and respects the truth of development as a vocation.
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In this context, I find it imperative that we pass a Family Development Bill containing principles describing the role of family in development. For example, this bill will recognize families as the first school of love and life. In other words, families, together with schools, are the primary institutions that transmit the values and virtues that each succeeding generation will need to foster integral human development for all men and the whole of man. This would include transmitting the importance of exercising a responsible freedom, which entails complementing the negative aspect of freedomfreedom from want, injustices, ignorancewith its positive aspectfreedom for an unconditional and dedicated service to others. Moreover, it is in families that persons appreciate and cherish each child as a blessing from God to be nurtured in a family consisting of a man and wife who will love each other till death. It is in families where children come to view development as a vocation. This means that God calls each person to develop their personalities, talents and character to the full and with the view of helping other persons in other families, barangays, provinces, and countries develop their potentials as well. Defending the family, its rights, duties and dignity will require that companies design jobs that allow each family the opportunity to earn a family wage needed for sober and humane living and enjoy work arrangements that allow them to spend the time necessary for the integral human development of their spouses and children as members of the community they live in. In the end, the principles and provisions of this family development bill must continually open the possibility of the creation of new springs that renew the fonts of truth-filled charity which in the end is the key driver of true development. As Pope Paul VI points out: The individual who is animated by true charity labours skilfully to discover the causes of misery, to find the means to combat it, to overcome it resolutely (n. 30).

NOTES
1. For a comprehensive analysis of the flaws in the RH Bill see The BishopsLegislators Caucus of the Philippines, The Truth and Half-Truths about Reproductive Health (2008). A sober commentary on the ethical implications of the RH bill is offered by John Smeaton, Philippines reproductive health bill has totalitarian effects, August 4, 140

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2008, http://spuc-director.blogspot.com/2008/08/philippines-reproductive-healthbill.html. 2. The discussion of the flaws in the arguments of the first claim is drawn from R. de Vera, Economic Perspectives on House Bill 5043, in The Truth and Half-Truths About Reproductive Health, ed. The Bishops-Legislators Caucus of the Philippines (2008), 79-94. 3. The discussion that follows and the quote originally taken from Gary S. Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981) is taken from L. Pritchett, Desired Fertility and the Impact of Population Policies (Policy Research Working Paper No. 1273, The World Bank, 1994). 4. Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, Standing for the Gospel of Life: CBCP Pastoral Statement on the Reproductive Health Bill, November 14, 2008, http://www.cbcpnews.com/?q=node/5829. 5. Donald DeMarco, The Contraceptive Mentality, accessed March 28, 2010, http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=3417. 6. The discussion on development as a vocation and the related quotes from Pope Paul VIs Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio (1965) are taken from Pope Benedict XVIs Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (2009). The basis of the estimated figure for the number of induced abortions each year can be found in the De Vera, Economic Perspectives, Annex.

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