MANILA — Ask Josephine Gonzalez how many children a family should have and the stick-figured 31-year-old mother answers without hesitation. "I only wanted three," she says, trying to soothe the naked baby boy who tugs at her ragged dress.
But Gonzalez is, in fact, a mother of six. Her sister Angie Maquiran, two years older, has seven children. Together with the fathers, the pair are raising their families in a public park across the street from one of Manila's oldest Roman Catholic churches, sleeping on the ground, their possessions stuffed into a small cart that marks where home is.
Maquiran says the priests at the church tell her that "children are riches, and the more you have, the more blessed you are." But health officials and some politicians here say that the Philippines has too many poor mouths to feed, an overpopulation problem that condemns millions of children to poverty.
Population size is an issue of perennial debate in this predominantly Catholic country, which has seen its population jump to 92.5 million from 60 million in 1990. But the situation has become more acute amid this year's global food crisis. With the price of rice soaring, the poorest Filipinos are faced with spending more of their minuscule incomes on food or going hungry.
Critics lay some of the blame on the family-planning policies of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who has sided with the church in its campaign against any form of artificial birth control.
"Those of us who study population have seen this food crisis coming for 30 years," says Dr. Alberto Romualdez, head of the graduate school of health at the University of the City of Manila and a health secretary under former President Joseph Estrada. "Already these people couldn't buy enough rice. Now we are having more babies born to those who can least afford it, and unfortunately one of the main reasons is the Catholic Church."
The church rejects accusations that its anti-contraception activism is responsible for the high birthrate, citing the 2007 census, which showed the rate of annual population growth dropping to 2.04% last year from 2.36% in 2000.
"We accept that the growing population is a problem, but the facts are that when a country is poor, you will have more children," says Msgr. Pedro Quitorio, spokesman of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines.
"We had almost the same number of people this time last year and there was no rice crisis then," Quitorio says. "Give people a job and the population will drop."
