The Insanity of Reproductive Health

Photo credit: http://assistasia.files.wordpress.com

By featured writer Reyann Red

I’m a nurse working in a government hospital, and for most days how I wish I could shove the placentas of those women who give birth in front of those in the Church and everybody who are against family planning, how I wish that they were working in government hospitals all over the country and feel the desperation, insanity and foolishness of the blindness these people give to our leaders with regard to the basic truth that everybody has the right to choose and decide for themselves, hence the right to choose to space the number of children they will have.

No doubt that as Catholics, we must abide with the “rules” given by the Church or face eternal damnation in hell. But I do not see the rationality behind these wrangling about such an overused topic. Contraception is defined by any dictionary both online and in written form as an act to deliberately prevent or reduce the likelihood of pregnancy, hence from that definition and from what I understand about both natural and artificial methods of family planning, both are ways to DELIBERATELY PREVENT OR REDUCE THE LIKELIHOOD OF PREGNANCY.

I have a lot of things to say against the Catholic Church, but I’m not an atheist. I do believe in God, and I believe he knows that, but after all the things I’ve seen and experienced in the real world, I’m beginning to wonder if most of these people are living “IN” the “REAL WORLD” where every struggling Filipino including me is currently living in. I doubt they do, most of these people are from good families that can eat three times a day with snacks on the sides, they don’t worry about health care that much, while the people I see in hospitals, albeit some have money, the rest just get admitted with only the clothes they have on.

I’m writing this because it is indeed stupid, but I fear the word stupid is not enough to describe what have been happening for the past God knows how many years. I’m writing this because I’m just tired of seeing 13 year old women giving birth or 40 plus year old women having a CS for their 14th child. I doubt if my message will change peoples’ minds, I may even get hate mails because of it, but I cannot counter what they say and I can only counter it if those words are ruining my reputation, that is because everyone has the right to speak their mind. It is one of the rights that we have in this country, but the right to choose how many kids a couple can have regardless of their financial status without coercion or fear of eternal damnation is sadly not considered as one of the basic rights.