It is said that Boholano families are mostly matriarchal or led by its mothers, and its true. In the United States, the bread-winners in Boholano families are usually composed of female nurses, realtors, or insurance brokers. Even if the income is equal or even less than the male’s, it is the Boholana who decides when and where the vacation will be and what parties to go to.
However, the ghettos and barrios of Bohol where information and education has not touched lives, the men are beating their wives and the women are bearing children they cannot afford to care for.
In the Philippines today there is a bill in the Senate that is undergoing review entitled “The Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008.”
The Humanae Vitae (among other religious doctrines), which I believe is the root cause behind the barring of artificial birth control in the Philippines, isn’t the root cause behind the plight of women in our world.
Catholicism, as with Islam and other world religions, has its place in ensuring that its believers are alive and well. Sure, sheltered Catholics with their shotguns in the U.S and Islamic extremists with their AK-47’s in Afganistan have some push toward women living in fear. But religion itself is not the culprit, it is the lack of information reaching men as well as women in general.
Who is teaching our boys that great men are those who view women as equals, if not the unsung heroes who sustain the very foundations of our communities? Who is teaching our girls that great women are those who care for their own by standing up for their rights? I know our Catholic priests and Muslim imams teach their audiences about caring for their women, but I don’t think it is effective when they are being taught by priests and imams who are men.
We hope this bill is passed, so that the men and women in these poor areas are not only given access to birth-control via contraceptives, but ultimately that they realize the best birth-control is self-control, which is something people of religion and politics strongly encourage.
In the meantime, all we can do right now is link to the above photo collection by Lisa Wiltse. Did you know that there is a hospital in Manila that has a birth rate of 88 per day? With that said, let’s start by informing ourselves, that way we can learn how to plant and cultivate constructive seeds of information in others.
‘Til next time,
The FAFCC
(Photo: Lisa Wiltse / Burn Magazine )
