Ferdinand E. Marcos on Philippine Population Policy

Abstract

Ferdinand E. Marcos, President of the Republic of the Philippines, opened the 19th General Population Conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population in Manila on 10 December 1981 with a statement on the significance of the study of population for the people and the Government of the Philippines and on the objectives and achievements of the Philippine population program. His speech, entitled in the official text A choice by conscience, is reproduced below. Against a backdrop of increasing uncertainty about the commitment of the Government of the Philippines to the population program-reportedly there has been a recent move to delete references to family planning and demographic targets from the draft of the five-year development plan-Marcos's unequivocal support for the program and its demographic objectives and his stress on the constitutional provision that empowers the state to regulate population levels are particularly notable. The strong affirmation of the noncoercive nature of the program and the explicit opposition to abortion as a means offamily planning -ven though these features of the speech were given the greatest attention by the local press-merely reiterate long-standing basic principles of Philippine population policy.