SEX IN DEPTH Church has last word
in the Philippines By William
Sparrow
BANGKOK - The Philippines'
Department of Education (DepEd) is aggressively
trying to push through a sex education plan for
high school students, despite the protests and
lobbying of the Catholic Church, which seeks to
muzzle educators from presenting what it considers
to be "immoral" information.
The DepEd
must clear a final hurdle from the Presidential
Council on Values Formation (PCVF) - the body
which is currently reviewing the secondary
schools' "adolescent reproductive health manuals",
according to Education Secretary Jesli A Lapus.
"The new draft modules which are subject
to PCVF review and approval are purely health and
science angles on reproductive health ... They are
not sex educational materials at all,"
Lapus
told
the Philippine Daily Inquirer this week after the
DepEd furnished the newspaper with copies of the
revised manual titled "Secondary Teachers' Toolkit
on Adolescent Reproductive Health."
Lapus
stressed that the revised modules were "products
of nationwide multisectoral consultations".
Although the Philippines has been given
positive marks in recent decades for its sex
education programs, recent years have seen the
progress steadily erode. Getting past the PCVF is
likely to be a formidable challenge as there is a
strong presence of the Catholic clergy on the
council, which is chaired by President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo, who is also known for bending to
pressure of the church.
In 2005, Arroyo
told the UN General Assembly to "respect the deep
Catholicism of the Filipino people" and said that
natural family planning is more effective than
artificial means like condoms. Her statements
prompted outrage from activists and
non-governmental organizations.
The church
in the Philippines - where more than 85% of people
are Catholic - has long held what many observers
view as a negative influence on sexual and
reproductive health. In an era of HIV/AIDS it
seems staggering that a government, or even a
church for that matter, would advocate what
appears to be a "head in the sand approach" that
puts citizens and parishioners at risk.
Statistics as of 2005 showed the country's
annual population growth at 2% - compared to
India's 1.7% and Thailand's 1.3%. The study also
found that there are over 470,000 illegal
abortions each year, nearly 80,000 of which
resulted in complications leading to
hospitalization.
"The government's bending
to the policies of the church is a key force that
is setting back reproductive and sexual health in
the country," said Rhodora Roy-Raterta, executive
director of the Family Planning Organization of
the Philippines, at a 2005 conference.
"Public policy on family planning choice
is also seen as a moral issue, which has drawn the
Catholic hierarchy," said Roy-Raterta, who has
called the church a major hindrance to
reproductive health and sex education.
The
Catholic church views condom use as promoting
adultery and pre-marital sex, and church leaders
believe that sex is meant solely for procreation,
In this context, using of condoms - even for
HIV/AIDS prevention - becomes an immoral, sinful
act.
The problem is becoming very real. An
AIDS crisis threatens the Philippines as the
number of people who are HIV positive has doubled
in just over three years, the Health Department
warned in 2006, echoing earlier concerns raised by
the UN. A Health Department study at that time
projected the number of HIV carriers to have risen
to 11,168, from about 6,000 in 2002, Health
Secretary Francisco Duque was quoted as saying to
local media.
The Philippines, now home to
around 85 million people, has become one of the
fastest-growing populations in Asia with about 2
million new births each year, many of them in
public hospitals so overwhelmed that new mothers
are forced to share beds. Meanwhile, the
Philippines' population is projected to expand to
as many as 142 million by 2040, by the
government's own estimates, and the rapid arrival
of new mouths to feed is straining the country's
creaking infrastructure and choking its efforts to
cut poverty.
While family size has fallen
to 3.5 children per woman - from six in the 1970s
- Filipino mothers, on average, still have one
more child than they intended to, according to
research by the Alan Guttmacher Institute.
Beth Angsioco, chair of the Democratic
Socialist Women of the Philippines, said her group
will join the campaign to press the DepEd to
continue reintegrating lessons on adolescent
reproductive health into the secondary school
curriculum.
Angsioco said other groups,
such as the Philippine Women Legislator's
Committee on Population and Development and the
Theia Initiative, will start their own
signature-gathering drives to ensure that there
will be no let-up in the campaign to have sex
education taught in high schools.
"Teaching the youth the ABCs of
reproductive health and responsible parenthood
would help prevent 'accidents' such as teen
pregnancies or worse, sexually-transmitted
diseases. The youth should be empowered through
knowledge," Angsioco said. "The church should
help, not hinder, young people from rising above
the immorality of ignorance."
Sunny
Cortes, leader of Aksyon LGBT (Lesbians, Gays,
Bisexuals and Transexuals), agreed. "There is no
reason why DepEd should not push through with the
module. Most of us youth are learning sex and
sexuality from the wrong sources, like peers and
classmates and pornographic materials," he said.
The Inquirer reported this week that the
revised modules include teaching notes on
pre-marital sex, commercial sex, abortion and
homosexuality. High-risk sexual practices are also
discussed and classes are urged to debate the
long-term health and social consequences of sexual
risk-taking. However, the new textbooks stress
sexual abstinence among adolescents, and ask
teachers to lead discussions on the advantages of
delaying sexual activities during adolescence.
In the end, so much emphasis has been
given to women's rights and sex in the Islamic
world in recent years that sometimes it can be
overlooked that religious fanaticism and
conservatism in any form can have extensive
negative effects on people's reproductive rights.
The Catholic Church's centuries-old doctrine,
created by a bunch of celibate priests, on sex
only for procreation leaves many people ignorant
about sexual health. This is the sad reality.
Taking away people's right to protect
themselves, and their right to education and to
responsibly manage their sex lives is certainly
taking away some of their humanity.
William Sparrow has
been an occasional contributor to Asia Times
Online and now joins Asia Times Online with a
weekly column. Sparrow is editor in chief of
Asian Sex Gazette and has reported on sex in Asia for
over five years. To contact him send question or
comments to
Letters@atimes.com.
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