RP population policy debate to heat up

RP population policy debate to heat up

MANILA (Reuter): The Roman Catholic church in the Philippines
is mounting a fresh campaign against the government's population
control program.

Manila's archbishop, Cardinal Jaime Sin, yesterday enjoined
Catholics to unite on Aug. 14 for a day of fasting and prayer to
express "indignation and outrage at the abuses being allowed by
the government against the family".

Sin, a powerful figure in this overwhelmingly Catholic nation
of 62 million people, is particularly concerned at the
government's position at the International Conference on
Population and Development in Egypt in September.

President Fidel Ramos, a Protestant, has vigorously backed
family planning measures in support of the government's plan to
curb population growth. The Catholic Church bans artificial
contraception.

In an open letter to parents, Sin warned: "For it is now clear
that global forces, backed by the wealth of powerful nations, are
out to destroy the family by first destroying our children.

"Our children are being conditioned systematically to adopt a
contraceptive mentality," he said.

"Now they are being brainwashed to accept as normal,
attractive and even glamorous certain unnatural, abnormal and
perverse sexual relationships such as homosexuality, lesbianism,
incest, sodomy, oral sex, contraception, sterilization and
abortion," Sin said.

Sin earlier this month lashed at government plans to use
cartoon videos to teach children sex education.

Caught in the middle of the debate, Filipino women's groups
are demanding to be heard.

"Respect for women's self-determination has been
systematically excluded in the population policies and programs
of the government and in the discourse of the church in the
Philippines," a joint statement by five womens's rights groups
said.

"Neither state, through its population policy, nor the church
or the Vatican, through its religious/moral force on 85 percent
of the Filipino Catholic community, should be allowed to exercise
any influence to decide or to intervene on women's lives and
their bodies," it said.