Word: atienza
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Bing planned on having one child, but birth control was never an option. For much of the last decade, the City of Manila, one of Metro Manila's semi-autonomous municipalities, has engaged in a campaign against modern contraception. In 2000, Mayor Lito Atienza issued an order effectively banning birth control from city-funded clinics. Eight years and a new mayor later, the ban persists. The city's affluent minority buys birth control from private clinics or procures condoms on the sly, but poor women, like Bing, go without...
...architects of the ban deny a link between population and poverty. "I reject the notion that we are poor because we are plenty," says former mayor Atienza. "Poverty is caused by mismanagement, not by the number of people." He?s partly right, of course. Endemic corruption and sluggish agricultural production helps keep the Philippines poor. But government statistics and a host of studies show that population is part of the problem. Access to nutrition, education and employment decreases dramatically when a family outgrows its means...
...Archbishop Paciano Aniceto, who chairs the influential Commission on Family and Life for the Catholic Bishop's Conference in the Philippines, calls birth control advocates "propagandists of a culture of death." Sex, he says, is a privilege and should always be open to the transmission of life. Former mayor Atienza agrees. Family planning advocates have been "brainwashed" by the West, he says. His ban succeeded, he adds, by teaching Manila's "innocent and ignorant" women "true" Filipino values...
Three things salvage the production: the visual ingenuity of Director David Giles, who, for example, opens this play about the loss of loved ones and renewal through fresh love with an image of autumnal leaves being swept aside; Edward Atienza's bravura performance as Feste the fool, repeatedly given center stage to emphasize the folly of lovers; and the glowing impersonation of Viola, the girl dressed as a boy who inspires love everywhere, by Seana McKenna. She is young enough for the role but experienced enough to seduce an audience as ably and innocently as her character seduces the nobles...
...without shelter. Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo rushed to the scene in jeans and a shirt and ordered the survivors to be evacuated to government buildings. (Arroyo, who is running for election this year, also distributed T shirts emblazoned "Gloria loves me.") Hours later, she and Manila Mayor Lito Atienza announced their intention to build a settlement for the victims. When?and if?that will happen is unknown...