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Palace not discouraging artificial birth control - Apostol
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MANILA, Philippines - A senior Malacanang official on Sunday said the Arroyo administration is not cowed by the hard-line stand of the Catholic Church against artificial birth control.
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Chief presidential legal counsel Sergio Antonio Apostol said the Catholic Church, which advocates natural family planning methods, is a partner of the government in its population program.
“[The administration] is not discouraging artificial control and it is not scared of the Catholic Church," Apostol said.
He said population authorities have organized national consultations with all sectors, including religious organizations. However, he said the discussions were not publicized and that some government critics turned down the invitation to participate in the dialogue.
Former Health secretary Alberto Romualdez has called on the administration to adopt a family planning policy after the National Statistics Office (NSO) revealed that the Philippine population grew to 88.57 million last year compared to 76.5 million in 2000.
Pressure from the Catholic Church has prevented the administration from implementing modern family planning methods. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a Catholic, advocates the natural family planning methods and
birth spacing of every three years.
However, the NSO said the annual population growth dropped from an average of 2.34 percent to 2.04 percent, and that the growth rate will ease further to
1.95 percent by 2010 as a natural tendency because of economic development.
Romualdez has said a 2.04 percent population growth still means two million babies to feed per year and that the government should push for 1 percent or less
population growth rate.
He said the government should consider that the country is experiencing rice shortage, soaring prices of basic commodities, high unemployment rate, housing shortage, brain drain, and the lack of basic services to accommodate the poor.
Romualdez warned that there would be more uneducated and unhealthy children in the future because of less money for health and education.
source::
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