{"id":8527,"date":"2003-01-17T23:34:28","date_gmt":"2003-01-18T04:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2003\/01\/17\/fertilizers-and-party-favors\/"},"modified":"2003-01-17T23:34:28","modified_gmt":"2003-01-18T04:34:28","slug":"fertilizers-and-party-favors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2003\/01\/fertilizers-and-party-favors\/","title":{"rendered":"Fertilizers and party favors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=#0000ff>Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) &#8211; Rural health care<br \/>\nworkers in the Philippines reportedly are using contraceptives in ways never<br \/>\nanticipated by donor agencies.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=#0000ff>The country&#8217;s health secretary, Manuel Dayrit, was quoted<br \/>\nthis week as saying that contraceptive pills are being used to fertilize<br \/>\nplantations of orchids, while condoms have found a new role as party<br \/>\nballoons.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=#0000ff>Dayrit attributed the novel uses for the items to the<br \/>\nfact that the supply is so abundant, the pills and condoms aren&#8217;t<br \/>\nneeded.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=#0000ff>But in the mostly Roman Catholic Philippines, birth<br \/>\ncontrol acceptance levels are also relatively low. The church opposes artificial<br \/>\nbirth control methods.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=#0000ff>According to official figures cited late last year, only<br \/>\n3.7 million Filipinos &#8212; or about one-tenth of the sexually-active population &#8212;<br \/>\nuse contraceptives. Of those, 43 percent take the pill and just under 10 percent<br \/>\nuse condoms. [<a\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.cnsnews.com\/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=%5CForeignBureaus%5Carchive%5C200301%5CFOR20030116d.html\">Full<br \/>\nStory<\/a>]<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=#000000>I once read a story about the introduction of<br \/>\ncontraceptives into Africa. They demonstrated condom usage via a stick and<br \/>\nshowed the women how to use birth control pills. When they came back some time<br \/>\nlater they found that pregnancies hadn&#8217;t decreased and on further investigation<br \/>\nfound that the men took the pills instead of the women and that they stuck<br \/>\ncondoms on sticks and placed them by their beds.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=#000000>It&#8217;s amazing what can happen in a country where the<br \/>\nChurch actually teaches about contraception instead of dissenting. My wife is<br \/>\nFilipina and so I can attest to the fact that they have a very Catholic culture<br \/>\nthere (she probably prayed as much for men as St. Augustine&#8217;s mother did for<br \/>\nhim). When the Pope visited the Philippines in 1995, four million people<br \/>\nattended a Mass in Manila making it the largest crowd in<br \/>\nhistory.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) &#8211; Rural health care workers in the Philippines reportedly are using contraceptives in ways never anticipated by donor agencies. The country&#8217;s health secretary, Manuel Dayrit, was&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-song-parody"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}