Population Control 11: Church Coercion vs. State Coercion

After figuring in a number of debates this week and in previous weeks and months, about the Reproductive Health (RH) bill, this is one issue that is emerging: many pro-RH people hate what they call as "Church coercion", of demonizing people who support the RH while getting more donations and fees from the public. On the other hand, among the arguments that the anti-RH people use without mentioning any Church arguments (like I do), is highlighting State coercion. I noticed that when I raised this issue, a number of pro-RH are muted.

I am posting three threads of facebook debates below: from my wall, from Ferdie Bolislis' wall, and from Raissa Robles' wall. Again, another good reading materials for those who want to see the pros and cons of the bill. About 13 pages long, Enjoy reading.
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(1) My facebook wall
exchanges from August 5 to 7, 2012:

People are assets, not liabilities. Government should focus on promulgating the rule of law, not in expanding bureaucracies and in population control,

FAT-FREE ECONOMICS: Population decontrol, not RH Bill - InterAksyon.com

www.interaksyon.com

A big population is often blamed as the cause of various human problems. This is 

Valli Faith Estacion Bibit Korak! Government should spend more on teaching your child about math and science and language, than it will on teaching your child about contraceptives. In the end, sex education is not really about giving information--- but rather about a politics of despair where the sex "experts" hope for some damage control in the areas of teen pregnancy and disease.

Doods De Los Reyes I think people can be even more of an asset instead of a liability if they don't have to scrimp for every last peso to buy basic commodities and pay for shelter and their children's education. Governments can allocate more resources to infrastructure if they don't have to subsidize so much for social welfare.

Nonoy Oplas Doods, if you checked my article, I showed there photos of (a) business permits required by various government bureaucracies, and (b) private property by the poor confiscated by some government agencies because they don't have enough government permits. Point -- people want to stand on their own, to get out of poverty, but government says it's a criminal activity unless they get various permits first.

Doods De Los Reyes Hi Nonoy, I think some of the points you made in your article are overly simplistic. For instance, "a bigger population means more workers and more entrepreneurs; more producers and more consumers" is not necessarily true -- not unless you mean the sort of labor and micro-entrepreneurship that does not require formal education. How many streetsweepers, ambulant vendors and fish vendors do we really need? Plus, it disagrees with your former point regarding overconsumption and overexploitation of resources -- more production is good for business but is arguably not good for sustainability of natural resources. It is also a big leap to go from population control to people remaining single and not having kids -- Filipinos will still marry and have kids, but maybe through a reeducation about family size vs economics they will think twice about having more than one kid. The notion that a lot of people will die anyway from natural disasters speaks more about overpopulation than the need to keep up our birth rate -- a lot of these people die because they live along riverbanks, under bridges, and in other unsafe areas not designated for residential purposes.

Nonoy Oplas hmmm, quickly Doods.
1. More people, more workers, more entrepreneurs "not necessarily true". Really? As of April 2012, total employed Filipinos, salary workers + managers + company owners = 37.84 million people, that's big.
2. I used the "over-exploitation of resources" in satire, not my own point of view.
3. I mentioned people being single or married/in relationship but have no kids, in relation to the suggestion of the bill that couples shd target only 2 kids. To keep the population momentum, some couples need to have plenty of children to balance replacement of couples who have no kids.
4. People living in riverbanks, under bridges, etc. is example of government failure. LGUs should enforce their zoning or residential regulations but they don't. That is why I expressly argued, govt shd focus on promulgating the rule of law, not in limiting population.