In business and industry circles, the acronym CSR means Corporate Social Responsibility. However, among women’s organizations and reproductive health advocacy groups, the term CSR has a different meaning. It means Contraceptive Self-Reliance.

As dissimilar as Corporate Social Responsibility and Contraceptive Self-Reliance may seem at first, they are in fact interrelated.

The meaning of Corporate Social Responsibility has changed from simply connoting “good corporate citizenship” which translated mainly to the payment of correct taxes to the government by companies; ensuring that employers do not shortchange their workers on their wages and benefits; and other similar principled business practices. It has since evolved to mean companies, like member companies of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines, taking proactive steps and undertaking projects that will make a definitive positive difference in people’s lives.

In pursuit of fulfilling its corporate social responsibility, the American Chamber Foundation, Inc., the socio-civic arm of the American Chamber of Commerce, has found innovative ways of giving back to Filipino communities. AmCham Foundation has concentrated on education, health and poverty reduction programs and it is precisely in the promotion of the right to education, health and a life free of poverty where the similarities between Corporate Social Responsibility and Contraceptive Self-Reliance become more obvious.

Both CSRs deal with health, rights and development, especially of the marginalized. It is obvious how Corporate Social Responsibility, particularly the kind that AmCham is practicing, is directly linked with promoting genuine human development. But how is Contraceptive Self-Reliance linked with ensuring progress and improvement of human lives?

Contraceptive Self-Reliance is firmly anchored on the concept that all governments must be self-sufficient when it comes to ensuring something as basic and essential as providing its citizens with legal and medically safe family planning methods and quality contraceptives. This is because family planning, as a component of reproductive health, does not only help improve lives. Family planning also saves the lives of mothers and infants.

Moreover, reproductive health and rights are inextricably linked to sustainable human development. Providing women and couples with information and access to all forms of legal and medically safe family planning methods, as espoused by House Bill 5043 or the “Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development Act”, will not only guarantee Contraceptive Self-Reliance for the country. More importantly, it will ensure that women and couples will have the chance to plan their families and if they chose to do so, government will be prepared to help them meet their fertility goals by providing much needed RH services.

This will lead to a dramatic decrease in fertility and lower population growth, which will enable government to address more fully crucial determinants of human development such as education, healthcare, food security, employment, housing and environmental protection.

It should be underscored that the social ills directly linked to poverty – ignorance, disease, unemployment, environmental destruction, the low status of women – simply cannot be overcome without also directly confronting the issue of reproductive health and population.

The State and Church need not clash on the issue of population and reproductive health because both modern and natural methods of family planning have a common objective – to prevent unplanned pregnancies.

According to the National Statistics Office there are 12.9 million married women of reproductive age in the country. Of this number, 4.6 million use modern methods compared to 1.75 million who use natural family planning and traditional methods.

But there are 2.6 million women who would like to plan and space their children but are unable to do so for of lack of information and access to FP services. The balance of approximately 4.0 million women do not use or do not care to use any family planning method.

Our total contraceptive prevalence rate remains at a low of 50.7% and the contraceptive unmet need of the poorest Filipino women is a high of 26.7%

I am therefore heartened that AmCham Foundation’s programs are currently concentrating on reproductive health education of the youth by helping them “make the right decisions as they fulfill their dreams” through Peer Education Programs and Information, Education and Communication Sessions.

Moreover, the AmCham’s Leonard Benjamin Program Development Center provides reproductive health services including family planning counseling and referrals to Filipinos who need them most.

Critics of the bill claim that “overpopulation” is a myth being perpetuated by western nations, particularly the United States because the “depopulation” of Third World nations supposedly ranks high in US foreign policy. They also allege that the United States is pushing for population and family planning programs in developing countries like the Philippines because it is afraid that these nations will not as easily succumb to western dominion if their populations continue to increase. I have heard this argument against HB 5043 so many times and I have yet to decide whether to laugh or cry.

It is ironic that the authors of House Bill 5043 have been accused of promoting Western interests, particularly that of the United States, by championing the reproductive health rights of Filipinos. I say ironic because since I have been in politics, I have always espoused purely the interests of the Filipino people and the Filipino nation. And I am certain that this is also true for another principal author of HB 5043, the Hon. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel of Party-list Akbayan, like invariably all of our co-authors.

In fact this is the first time I have ever addressed an American organization.

If all nations which have strong population policies are in effect subservient to American and western interests, then the biggest lapdog of Uncle Sam would be China which has a stringent and punitive one-child policy!

Levity aside, we should bear in mind that if the Philippines can effectively promote and protect the reproductive health of its citizens and it succeeds in sensibly managing its population, it shall have healthier, more prosperous, and certainly more educated, critically-aware and issue-oriented citizens who cannot be muzzled or cowed by interventionist foreign countries or any dominating power.

HB 5043 is primarily about health, rights and human development. It seeks to enact a comprehensive, rights-based and adequately-funded national policy creating an enabling environment for couples and women to exercise freedom of informed choice in planning the number and spacing of their children.

Family planning is more than just a tool to help women and couples to responsibly plan their families. Its principal benefits are:

(1) Lower maternal mortality;

(2) More benefits for children since smaller-sized families assure they will be better nourished and will receive better health care;

(3) Higher human capital investment at the family level that would lead to bigger investments in health and education;

(4) Increased income generating and educational opportunities for women that will, in turn, benefit them and their families; and

(5) Significantly lower abortion rates.

The World Health Organization (WHO) report “Reducing the Risks of Pregnancy – the Role of Contraception” declared with absolute certainty that “increased use of contraception would also have an obvious and direct effect on the number of maternal deaths” simply by reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies.

The WHO estimates that around 515,000 women die each year from complications of pregnancy, childbirth and unsafe abortion. It reports that 90% of all maternal deaths worldwide happen in developing countries like the Philippines.

It concludes that with the correct and consistent use of contraceptives “the fall in maternal mortality is likely to be even greater than the fall in the pregnancy rate.” This would imply that the risk associated with each individual pregnancy is reduced.

Together with the UNFPA and the medical journal Lancet, the WHO also asserts that family planning can reduce maternal deaths by one-third and 1 million infant deaths worldwide can be avoided if women and couples are given the opportunity to use safe and effective contraceptives.

Fewer children will also enable women to seek remunerative work and allow them more opportunities to advance their education, thus diminishing gender inequality.

Studies have also consistently shown that since any pregnancy that ends in induced abortion can be considered unwanted, the precise and regular use of reliable contraception significantly reduces abortion rates by as much as 85%.

Indeed, family planning is an indispensable element in reducing poverty and underdevelopment and a vital factor in the human development equation. It is an essential tool to help families live fuller, more meaningful lives.

In its State of the World Population Report 2002, the UNFPA states that ensuring good reproductive health is essential to reducing poverty. According to the report, had countries like the Philippines reduced its fertility by a mere five births per every one thousand women of reproductive age in the 1980s, the current poverty incidence would have been reduced by one-third.

Local studies conducted by Filipino economists and social scientists also point to the tangible connection between population and poverty.

In the 1970s, Thailand and the Philippines were virtual Siamese twins because their total population, infant mortality rate, and the life expectancy at birth were almost identical. Thailand, however, successfully implemented a serious population program whereas the Philippines continued to dillydally on the issue of family planning and population management.

Today, the Philippines has some 20 million more people than Thailand. Thailand’s poverty incidence was pegged by the Asian Development Bank at 8.5% while the Philippines’ remains at a high of 32%.

These studies show that if the Philippines had Thailand's population growth rate:

•    Poverty incidence would have been 5.5 percentage points lower.

•    The number of poor people would have been 3.3 million less.

•    Estimated savings from basic education would have amounted to P128 billion.

•    Estimated savings from basic health would have reached P52 billion.

•    The average income per person would have increased by at least 0.76 percent per year, for the period 1975 to 2000. This would have meant a cumulative increase of about 22% on the average income per person in the year 2000.

These are missed opportunities that the country will not be able to recover because of government’s long history of an appalling lack of political will in enacting a national policy on reproductive health and population development coupled with its inordinate fear of the Catholic Church.

It must be emphasized that as the population growth rate decelerates, more government resources are liberated for basic social services such as healthcare, education, food security and employment opportunities, all fundamental determinants of human development which will register marked improvement. This will result in a significantly higher standard of living and better quality of life for more people.

I am confident that we can work together in the promotion, protection and fulfillment of the basic human right of everyone to reproductive health and reproductive self-determination.

Thank you.