The Filipina and HB 5043

My Tita Len has always said that Boholano families are mostly martriarchal or led by its mothers, and its true. I see the bread-winners in the Boholano families around me to be highly 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, what parties to go to, and whether its time to leave the mahjong table.

But like any other country in the world, 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 whatever bills undergo in those big shiny and pointy thingies that look like something you’d call a “capitol.” I believe the title of the bill is “The Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008.” I think it should be called, “The Church is gonna get mad at us, whoops too late.”

The Humanae Vitae (among other religious doctrines), which I believe is the root cause behind the barring of artificial birth control in the known universe, isn’t the root cause behind the plight of women in our world.

It is men. (duh).

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 the importance of being respectful not only to each other, but about the much needed balance of power between women and men? Who is teaching our girls that boys are really idiots? I know our Catholic preists 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, ahem, men.

In the meantime, all I can do right now is link to a photo collection by Lisa Wiltse. Did you know that there is a hospital in Manila that has a birth rate of 88 per day? Whoa, did you feel that? I felt it too. Its either gas or ignorance slowly subsiding. Either way, expel of it immediately.