"The media have not given the issue the proper attention," Enriquez acknowledged, speaking in Filipino. "Much of our news tends to center on politics and disasters. It's difficult to convince our editors that a story on family planning deserves to be aired. When a rally or some political development comes up, we're told: 'Let's just air your story tomorrow.'"

Family planning and reproductive health would forever be consigned to low news priority status unless, joked Susan, "a man underwent a tubal ligation and not a vasectomy -- that would really be news!"

But is it really true, as Enriquez mused, that "family planning has no news value"? Or are the media simply finding it difficult, as a woman reporter noted, "to make family planning interesting and sexy"? This indeed is a puzzle, since reproductive issues are, after all, all about sex, fertility and reproduction.

We would find this dilemma amusing if it didn't have very real and indeed tragic consequences for Filipino families. Enriquez, who hosts the weekly magazine show "Kay Susan Tayo" aside from her reporting duties, says that based on her field coverage "it's in urban poor areas where mothers don't seem to be conscious of the need to limit the size of their families. Their motto seems to be 'the more the merrier.' Those who are better off are the ones who say they want to plan their families."

The environment would also seem to affect the attitudes of couples, notes Enriquez. She mentions the "kantiyaw [teasing] factor," as when a man who says he intends to undergo a vasectomy is suddenly dissuaded when his friends and neighbors start "warning" him about losing his manhood.

* * *

IT'S certainly disheartening to find out that poor parents, who can least afford to provide their children the basic needs such as food, education, health care and nurturing, would be the ones having more children -- five or six on average, compared with the national average of three or four children.

But perhaps it's not so strange to find poorer couples leaving their children's fate to chance and providence rather than planning ahead and preparing for the future. When you live on subsistence and your biggest concern each day is simply finding the means to feed yourself and your family, it makes little sense to plan for a future over which you have no control or even influence.

Sure, an unwanted pregnancy might cause considerable anxiety or stress. But, what is one more source of hardship in a life of constant struggle? Poor women perhaps have learned how to cope or even accept life's many challenges, including an unexpected and unwanted pregnancy. A new pregnancy simply means further scrimping on the family's already strained resources, with the parents perhaps finding acceptable the risk that only the hardiest of their children would survive to adulthood.

Another coping mechanism is induced abortion, which is more prevalent, especially in the poorest communities, than our "moral guardians" would have us believe. Enriquez observes that when she visits a community where an abortion provider enjoys a brisk business, she is hard put to find anyone willing to give her the abortion provider's identity or address. "The community protects her," she notes. "To them she is providing a valuable and necessary service."

* * *

THIS is why reaching young people and instilling in them the need to make plans for their future, to dream big, and most importantly, to ensure that these dreams come true and that their future will go according to plan, may be a more effective family planning campaign than simply flooding localities with contraceptives.

Before a couple or a mother can be motivated to plan a family, time her pregnancies, or make decisions about fertility, they must first be convinced that a better future awaits them. Only then can they be bothered to practice or adopt family planning.

Enriquez also observes, a view which is validated by current research, that religion or morality plays only a minimal role in the decision-making process of a couple on whether and what family planning method to use. "When I ask the women what method they use or prefer, they say it depends on what's available at the health center and what they can most afford. Those who don't practice family planning say they can't afford it, or they are afraid of side effects. Only very rarely do I hear anyone mentioning religion or the Church."

* * *

IF lack of motivation and poor awareness are the main reasons those who most need family planning are the least likely to adopt it, then it's clear the media have a big role to play in the campaign.

It's certainly a shame that while hundreds of millions are spent on successfully convincing the public to buy a brand of shampoo, toothpaste or cell-phone service, so little is spent on "marketing" a vital social need like reproductive health, specifically family planning.

Enriquez succinctly puts the issue in perspective when she explained that her reporting on family planning efforts is born of a personal advocacy, her individual commitment to "helping" others by giving them the information and motivation they need to create happy and successful families.

If it takes but a small number of committed people to change the world, as Margaret Mead asserted, all it takes to make a difference in the media is the personal commitment of an individual, who not only believes in reproductive health as a social good, but also as an individual right.