Graying nation

You can take the word “gray” or “grey” to mean the color or the hair that has lost its black sheen but I use the word to mean a nation that is getting old, or where more of its people are old.

I wrote some hundred columns back citing the report of an international news magazine about Japan being a “graying nation” because more of its citizens are getting old with less and less young people replenishing the population.

It is like a man getting old and each day his hair keeps falling and his forehead getting wider and shinier.

I was reminded of this situation when Msgr. Felix Pasquin, in his homily last Friday, cited Japan as a graying nation in the sense that I use.

In his speech in the Senate during the debate on the Reproductive Health Bill last week, Sen. Vicente Sotto mentioned that some nations are losing their young population and Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, chiding the eager-beaver Sen. Pia Cayetano, said that he wants to interpellate some more because he would ask the proponents about the impact of birth control in such countries as Russia.

While Senator Enrile cited only Russia, the fact is that all the countries that have adopted the United Nation’s 1970 program to control birth are now paying the price of implementing that program.

Some countries forced their people to limit birth to two. China mandated not more than two and punished parents who had more than two. India castrated the men and forced abortion on those who had more than two.

Western countries were more “humane” by legalizing abortion, popularizing all forms of contraception and demonizing pregnancy as if it is a disease.

Pope Paul VI issued an encyclical, “Humane Vitae” on July 25, 1968 warning of the dangers of the population control program and the artificial means of attaining this goal. Media all over the world, except for a few, sneered at the Church (they continue to do so) as a hindrance to development and abetting poverty.

The world embraced the UN population program and reiterated it in several international congresses. The proponents of the RH bill, although denying the bill is a population control measure (their slip is really slipping) claim that we are the last two countries, Malta being the other one, that has not implemented the UN Millennium Development Program that calls for the use of artificial methods of birth control, etc.

The government of President Aquino has just said that we must pass the RH bill to comply with the UN program as if our life as a nation depends on it.

But I thank God that we have not jumped into the UN program which is now showing the negative results of birth control – graying nations.

Statistics (check your internet) show that the countries that adopted the UN program are now suffering from dearth of young people who will replenish their race and pay the social cost.

Let’s take a sampling.

In 2000, Canada had 31,281,090 people and in 2011 it had only 34,030,590 or an increase of only 2,949,500, a difference of 0.087, or less than one percent. The Canadians are not even replenishing their people. This increase includes the immigrants.

Last week, a news item came out saying the Canadian government will allow the immigration only of people 18 years old up to 34 because it has few young people to carry the cost of its social programs.

The BBC featured last week a story of Singapore where the government is asking young people to produce babies and offered several incentives for them. Singapore has a declining birth rate that threatens its social services – more old people, the graying generation – with less young people working and contributing to the funds that would insure social services.

But there were very few takers. Singaporeans say they would marry only after they reached 30 years of age and beyond, the majority at 34.

To maintain this long number of years they had to take contraceptives or undergo abortion so that by the time they married they could no longer procreate.

In the US, Europe and countries where contraceptives and abortion are readily available but young people are sexually active, the situation is worse.

Russia’s growth rate is -1 but Europe is worst at minus eleven percent. They are not even replenishing themselves and had to bring in immigrants for their labor force. Their people are not just graying, but ageing with a danger of collapse of their race (causing racial rage in Sweden and London).

The Philippines is being pushed to take the same road by politicians and RH advocates who keep silent that our birth rate is already down to less than replenishment level at 1.873 percent as of 2011.*

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