Jesuit On The Burden Of Raising Children

Fr. Joaquin Bernas, S.J.

Influential Jesuit priest and constitutional lawyer Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ said that family planning as proposed in the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill is not necessarily "anti-life", putting him at odds with conservative Catholics who oppose the bill. In a column published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Monday, Bernas sought to clarify what being "anti-life" precisely means, for the term has been used "in the most pejorative way" in current RH bill debates. "It is used in the sense of being against existing life. Murder, in other words," he said. However, he said that in the currently toxic debate on contraceptives, "anti-life" could be construed to include people who do not want to add more human life to an already crowded population. He cited for example a married couple who decide to abstain from acts that bring about life, and a man who chooses a celibate life because he feels he can accomplish things without the burden of raising children. "I would not categorize such a person as being anti-life," Bernas said. "People like him love life so much that they take it upon themselves to contribute in some other ways to the improvement of the quality of life of those who are already born."

Link (here) to GMA