Catholic opposition to family planning is main reason for high fertility rate, he says
UCA News
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has blamed the Catholic Church for the rapid growth in the country’s population in recent years.
The Philippines is the 13th most populous country in the world, between Mexico and Ethiopia, with a growth rate of 1.72 percent between 2010 and 2015.
It is the second most populous country in Southeast Asia behind Indonesia and has the highest population-growth rate in the region. . . [Full text]
Duterte’s authoritarian diatribe clashes with a ruling of the Supreme Court of the Philippines and turns the clock back to times of harsh and extreme rhetoric when the current law (commonly called the RH Act) was being developed. It also ignores the fact that the Philippines fertility rate was halved between 1973 and 2013, and the birth rate fell 15% between 2000 and 2017. See Philippines RH Act: Rx for Controversy and the 2014 Philippines Supreme Court ruling on the RH Act.