HAVE BEEN READING the House Bill 5043 (An Act Providing for a National Policy on Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development, and for Other Purposes) and its dissection by Makati City Representative Teodoro Locsin Jr. titled The Culling Fields: Dissecting the Cosntantly Changing Reproductive-health Bill.
Congressman Teddy Locsin has discussed section by section the different provisions and salient parts of the proposed bill. He exposed its inconsistencies and hidden agenda in these words: “Let us keep the foregoing in mind as we proceed to deconstruct HB 5043 into its erratic, selfcontradictory, imperious, overly intrusive, discriminatory, antireligious (specifically anti-Catholic) and overreaching components—and the ultimately personal political nature of its real agenda to seize legislation most of the organs of State and harness them to one system of beliefs and practices regarding population that is, on one hand, distinctive only for its previous failures here and everywhere else in the world and, on the other, its unnecessary offensiveness to one religion while conferring a distinct and tangible political advantage on its advocates, particularly in 2010 elections.”
I would like to highlight some important points mentioned in the presentation. One finds the following points fundamental to a better understanding of what’s behind HB 5043 (all highlights are direct quotes from The Culling Fields). Headings are mine.
On the Reduction of Filipino Race
House Bill 5043, however, is a purely unilateral and local, not to say factional, commitment to reduce or slow the rate of population growth but only of Filipinos. It is brown birth control. Three hours away by plane, another country (Singapore) has adopted a policy encouraging multiracial population growth. The Marcos dictatorship is fondly remembered for the laughable results—kids inflating condoms into balloons—of a massive and, despite its failure, still persisting birth-control program whose only tangible achievement is a building housing an agency dedicated to the reduction of only the Filipino population. The program was adopted to please white donor-countries.
Persistence of a Bill Against the Poor
This bill was attempted many times before without success. That is a testament less to the necessity of enacting the measure as to the persistence of its advocates, on the one hand, and the steadfastness of its opponents on the other. Some people won’t give up if they believe they are right—even when they are actually wrong. This is why other people who are convinced they are wrong won’t stop fighting them either. And then, to be fair, there is the persistence of the small faces of mass poverty. Where are all these dirty-faced children coming from, the rich ask; the answer: from exactly the same carnality as the clean-faced children of the rich. There is no difference in equipment or impulse—or in output. There is no difference in nature or in nurture. What accounts for the fortunes of the one and the misfortunes of the other is that the rich can afford to pay for good schools to nurture their children because they certainly don’t nurture them themselves. (To be sure, one can find rich parents who are good parents but they are as many or as few as you can find good parents among the poor). There is one more difference. If the school fails, rich parents can buy their children out of trouble… A poor family could not do that; and a poor man in jail can find passing relief only when he is let out of jail secretly to commit crimes for the authorities.
This bill is anti-poor; it would be better if it were antipoverty by considering another solution, say, redistributive taxation, than reducing the progeny of the poor.
Ethnic Cleansing of Poor and Unwanted Filipinos
If only for the danger it poses to fundamental principles of democracy, morality and the core concerns of human rights, this bill must get the attention that a time bomb deserves. For it lays down a premise that no one has attempted since the abrupt termination of the only successful birth-control philosophy and program in World War II which targeted Jews and Gypsies, as well as Poles and Russians, in the persistent belief which still informs the birth-control movement today that less is more when it comes to human life, and only a select few, rather than the indiscriminate many, are entitled to live; and that a case must still be made to extend the entitlement to life to the many who will be born into poverty. In World War II, it was so-called Aryans as opposed to Jews and Gypsies, Russians and Poles. In our case today, it is any other race but Filipinos. And in the Philippines, it is the few who are rich as opposed to the many who are poor and will breed more of their kind into the same or worsening poverty. All that on the unproven assumption that wealth confers quality—good in the case of the rich and bad in the case of the poor—and quality is passed on to progeny.
This bill’s obscure intent is to deny the status of fully developed humanity to those whom poverty, lack of opportunity, or genetic defect prevents them from becoming healthy, educated and productive citizens. It follows that national progress and prosperity will elude our country as long as worse-off people—those without the means to pay for full human development— outnumber the better-off, meaning those with the material means to evolve into full humanity. The former will be a drag on the latter.
It is also a eugenics bill that would cull the defective from future generations by preventing their reproduction.
Unproductive people are not assets (Cf. Section 3, provision d). Defective children are… only a burden on their parents who could otherwise go on to more fully productive lives.
Parents of defective children are giving less than their full share in the overall national effort.