OUR RIGHT TO OUR BODIES

Despite the entry of the Philippines to the new millenium, questions still arise on whether women could control our bodies or not. Other people seem to not run out of reasons for having a say on our bodies -- "no you can't use contraceptives; "no you can't use artificial means when having sex;" "no...no...no...." 

With the piles of "no's that we receive it seems as if we are an evil lot. But who is evil actually? What is evil?

When a mother who can hardly feed three children decides to use contraceptives, is she at fault for wanting freedom from caring for additional children?

When a mother has great difficulty preparing her three children to school, her husband pitching in to bring them to school, are they at fault should they decide to have had enough of pregnancies? 

When local governments have great difficulty balancing budgets so that more would be allotted for education, instead of for maternal child and health care, could they be faulted at all for supporting the passage of the Reproductive Health law?

Our priorities seem to be askew. Most of the leaders in the country do not put themselves in the shoes of parents, especially of women and so are just mouthing this and that platitude. Why can't they go and visit Tondo, the former site of Smokey Mountain, now re-labeled "Paradise Heights" to hide the ugly truth of its past, just to see how many children there are playing in the streets? Just to know that teenaged girls are already selling their bodies in order to be able to eat. 

Now, even the State University has researched that there has been a 50% increase in teen pregnancies owing to the unbridled use of internet that showcases sex stories and/or photos. What will become of these girls once their babies arrive? Will they still be able to continue their education? If not, how will they fend for themselves and their babies?

Pragmatism is needed when dealing with overcrowding, with uncontrolled population expansion. Political leaders need to be practical and say "enough of new people coming into the country." 

I tried talking to an ordinary fellow about instructions on how to get to a place. I had to tell him several times where I wanted to go. Then I thought to myself, if he was not kidding, he could be one of those drop-outs whose knowledge got truncated by poverty. And so his brain did not develop well.This is a clear case of underdevelopment.

And should we have many people who can hardly understand simple instructions, then we can be sure that tyrants will arise, those who have money and power. They will be lording it over in a country full of "yes" people.

If that happens, we can now say that our education was a failure; all that so-called progress is mirage because it fails to touch the lives of the greater number of the populace.

Perhaps we need to find new educators, new leader-visionaries who would see well into the future on how we can move the country forward not in terms of curtailing women's right to our bodies, definitely.