I remember when I was about 5 or 6 years old, my brother told me that if a penis would find its way into a woman’s vagina, it would get stuck there… forever! Then I asked him in a slight alarm, “what if the doorbell rings and you’re still stuck with each other? Who would answer it?” He said that it’s the prize we have to pay for sticking our shloongs in places where they don’t belong. Silly me, actually believed him and the next day after my class I went home and shared my newly discovered piece of knowledge to my yaya, the neighbors’ helper, my friend’s mom and some other adults. Everybody looked at me in shock then they exchanged glances before exploding in huge fits of laughter and guffaws. I didn’t mind it but later on that night my mom and dad sat me down in their room and talked to me about sex. My mom taught me the basic parts and function of the human procreation tools, both for men and women, after that my dad taught me about the responsibilities that comes along with doing sex. That was my very first real sex education. I was lucky I had sex education at such an early age. Now I am 22 years old and I have around 15 friends who have sons and daughters or both. Can you imagine that? Some of them were as young as 18, 17 or 16 when they first gave birth. How can you possibly provide for the clothes, health care, education, nourishment and shelter of your kids at such an early age? The concept of parenting is much, much different from the actual application. I personally believe that irresponsible parenthood at this age and time is tantamount to abortion. The difference is that abortion is more like mercy killing and irresponsible parenthood is prolonging of the agony and sharing it with the community.

I also remember back when I was an intern at the Lanao Provincial Hospital DR my group delivered a baby for a 13 year old mother, 2 days later we delivered a baby for another 13 year old mom who wanted to leave the baby with us after her rest in the hospital. The next night we helped deliver a baby for a 15 year old mom. Her son was anencephalic (explain anencephalic) she told us she was kind of glad the baby died because she knows that she’d have no means with which she could support the baby. Those little stories are just a slight peeks on how ignorant Filipino kids are when it comes to sex education. How many more stories like these do we need before we come up with a solution? More than anything else what we need now more than ever is the proper awareness, willingness and the appropriate laws to back up our fight against the irresponsible parenthood, population explosion and our sexual ignorance.

The church our “moral compass” cries foul over the reproductive health bill they even threaten politicians who support it by not giving them communions; the church said that it is immoral and should not be made law. The church is basically saying that we can not legislate “immorality,” but can we legislate “morality?” They’re saying the same country who considers prostitution legal should not pass a bill which would pre-emptively protect its citizens from a plethora of societal problems. What is more immoral? Use a condom and prevent annual pregnancy so that you can provide better for your family, send your kids to school and feed them properly. Or have children every year for the next 10 years, and let them grow up hungry and uneducated?

Remember “Ignorance is not Contraception.”