What is your opinion about the practice of family planning? Are you for it or against it?
Seeing the rapid growth of our population and the prevalence of teenage pregnancy in our community, I am absolutely in favor of family planning. Everybody should have access to information regarding family planning methods for them to be able to choose the method that is most suitable for them. Everyone should engage in family planning and become responsible parents. Having a family is a major turning point in an individual’s life. They should be given the choice when and how they want it to occur and they should be physically, mentally, and emotionally prepared for such a huge responsibility. They should be able to plan how many offspring they want and the birth spacing suitable for the family’s financial capabilities and mother’s recovery.
Are you in favor of the Reproductive Health Law and its provisions? Elaborate your answer.
I am in favor of the reproductive health law and its provision as I think the Filipinos in general are not able to keep up with the increasing population and it entails an increase in poverty rate. Children are being born with their parents not able provide them their need and ultimately leading to an impoverished life. Family planning should be accessible to everyone. Information regarding family planning methods should be disseminated and they should be cheap and affordable, if it’s not possible to make them free, for people to be able utilize them.
Discussions regarding reproductive health are still a taboo and information is not that accessible to the masses. I acknowledge that there are resources, but they’re not worded in a way that common people would be able to fully understand them. From my experience, conducting health teaching sessions regarding family planning and safe sex to teenagers aged 13-18, they are still not that open talking about sex and they’re not getting the proper information and guidance that they should be having and I think this contributes to them engaging in high-risk activities and experimentation that ultimately leads to teenage pregnancy. They are also slightly hesitant and a little bit embarrassed when talking about sex education. We had an activity where we were demonstrating how to use a condom and I think they were not taking it seriously. The Reproductive Health Law would help bridge this gap in terms of knowledge and information and would give individuals the opportunity to choose the family planning method that they prefer. It would also help normalize talking about sex education and I think would be a good way to hinder the fast rise in our population
References:
Baccay, K. (2020). Lecture Slides - Responsible Parenthood and Family Planning. https://vle.upm.edu.ph/mod/resource/view.php?id=67363