Overpopulation In The Philippines - Mary Lizette L. Valde

                                                

The Philippine society is slowly becoming one of the most overpopulated countries in the world. The death rate cannot catch up with the birth rate. Overpopulation causes many problems for our society. It contributes to the lack of employment and to the lack of essential resources like food because of the massive amount of mouths to feed. Not only does it affect on the essential resources we gather, but it affects agriculture as whole. Overpopulation also makes it more difficult for people to focus who to teach, making the ignored part of the population illiterate, affecting the literacy rate of a country.

A good reason for overpopulation could be attributed towards the lack of sex education in the country. One factor for the lack of sex education in the Philippines is because our country is the only predominant Christian country in the entire Asian continent. Due to our beliefs, it is unholy for us to touch the subject of family planning, which is being tackled in sex education.

Sex education is one of the subjects being taught by teachers to students, but it is not present in many educational institutions in the Philippines. This is most especially noticed inside sectarian institutions. The whole point in teaching sex education is to teach people how things like family planning work. One such point is to teach people how a child is conceived, and as to how one could prevent the birth of one through the use of contraceptives and family planning methods. Our religion considers family planning and the use of contraceptives immoral or evil, since it prevents the birth of another human being, depriving it from life. However, we should take into account that contraceptives are not flawless. It does not have a 100% chance in preventing birth. Also, it must be taken into account that family planning is one of the methods that could help us in preventing our overpopulation issue from getting worse.

Family planning helps in controlling the birth rate, which is the primary factor for overpopulation. It applies various methods and contraceptives that could prevent pregnancy. Although abortion could be synonymous to murder, since the fetus is already developing inside, the use of birth control methods and contraceptives are a lesser form of evil that is needed if we are to stop overpopulation. The 2011 Family Health Survey (FHS) results revealed that unmet need for FP among married women in the Philippines remains high at 19.3%, 10.5% for birth spacing, and 8.8% for limiting births. Unmet need for Family planning is substantially lower among women who attained a higher education(17.6%) compared to the women who had little education or nothing at all(29.2%).

If sex education would be taught in the majority of educational institutions in the country, it could very well contribute to the weakening of the country's problem of overpopulation. Although it will take a while for the problem to erase itself, as long as the entire Philippine community work with one another to control the birth rate through things like family planning, laws like the one child policy, or through not mating at all, it will definitely help solve the problem in the long run.