Philippines First Lady: Bishop Should Encourage Birth Control

In a rare personal attack on the Philippines’ leading religious authority, the president’s wife said Thursday that Cardinal Jaime Sin should stop criticizing her husband’s family planning program and do more to curb population growth.

Amelita Ramos said Sin, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Manila, should visit rural provinces and slums around the capital to see the growing number of children living in poverty.

“I wish he would do more, instead of telling the people to multiply some more,” Ramos told members of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines.

Sin has led the attack against efforts by the government of President Fidel Ramos to curb the growing population of 68 million through family planning, including artificial contraceptives like condoms and birth-control pills.

Amelita Ramos said she believed the cardinal was especially hostile because she and her husband are Protestant.

Sin campaigned against Ramos during the 1992 presidential election, although he said he voted for Ramos after a last-minute change of heart.

“Why don’t they promote natural birth control?” said Amelita Ramos. “We just have too many people. We can never build enough schools, we won’t be able to produce enough food, the mass transportation will never catch up with our birth rate.”

Sin had no immediate response to Amelita Ramos’ comments.

Her direct criticism contrasted with her husband’s reluctance to speak out against the cardinal, the leading Roman Catholic authority in a nation that is nominally 85 percent Catholic.

“I guess my husband is very Christian-like because no matter how he is slapped on this cheek, he keeps offering the other cheek,” Amelita Ramos said.