Breaking with the tradition of offering commentary on election-related moral issues without endorsing candidates, two Philippine bishops have endorsed the candidacy of John Carlos de los Reyes of the Ang Kapatiran political party.

“You can’t separate faith from political life,” de los Reyes said in October. “As a Catholic, my role is to assert my principle and values to the society.”

“I am against abortion in all cases and the use of birth control pills and condoms even among married couples,” he added. Instead, de los Reyes has supported the use of natural family planning.  Read the whole story.

Here’s the bottom line: we want to reduce Filipino poverty not Filipinos! The secular “solution” of increasing birth control and contraception is a quick and cowardly fix that avoids facing the real problem and in turn creates problems that are even worse.  As the Vatican recently told the UN, population growth, not population control, is the solution to poverty.

FRONT ROYAL— International Pro-Life leaders from Africa, Europe, South America, Asia and Oceania have come to the nation’s capitol to stand in solidarity with their American brothers and sisters and protest the radical expansion of anti-life policies under the Obama administration. They will speak at a conference on January 22 at the Washington Court Hotel in Washington, D.C. before joining the hundreds of thousands of other pro-lifers in the March for Life.

“America’s March for Life is now the world’s March for Life,” said Joseph Meaney, Director of International Coordination for Human Life International (HLI). “It has become the world’s pro-life protest because of the aggressive promotion of abortion and population control that is now official policy of the United States, thanks to the administration of President Barack Obama.”

“This is not only the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which has led to the destruction of almost 50 million American children,” said Dr. Ligaya Acosta, HLI Regional Coordinator for Asia and Oceania. “This is now the anniversary of President Obama’s allowing Americans’ taxpayer funds to be used to promote abortion and other assaults on life in my own country of the Philippines, in Africa, in China… all over the world where 40 million babies are killed every year. It is wrong and we are here to tell him and Congress to stop paying to kill our children!”

Dr. Acosta was referring to President Obama’s January 23^rd, 2009 reversal of the Mexico City Policy, which had, under the Reagan and both Bush administrations, restricted the use of federal funds to support any organization that promoted or performed abortion abroad. In December, this reversal allowed Congress to pass an omnibus spending bill, signed by President Obama, which included almost $ 700 million for abortion-promoting organizations internationally.

“We are tired of the arrogant American government trying to tell us how many children we should have,” said Emil Hagamu, HLI’s regional coordinator for English-speaking Africa. “President Obama is of Kenyan descent. How can he do this to his own people?”

“These aggressive policies are undeniably hurting America’s stature with the people of the world, even if they help America appeal to the cruel international elites who want to run everything,” said Raymond DeSouza, HLI’s coordinator for Portuguese-speaking nations. “When international aid is tied to abortion, it’s like holding a nation hostage, telling them that children are bad, which translates into hopelessness for the future. This is a terrible violence against the families and children of the developing world.”