The pro-family planning article you published (MT, Feb.14) betrays a screwed-up set of ethical priorities. It subordinates everything to the goal of reducing family size: it calls for higher education and better jobs for women not because these are right but because they will lower the birth rate.

Worse, it even is bad science.

The University of the Philippines Population Institute has found out that better-educated and better-paid women have fewer children than the less-educated and worse paid. But it does not necessarily follow that raising women’s education and job level would lead to fewer children.

The UP data could just as plausibly be interpreted this way: women who do not like to have children gravitate toward higher education and as a result, obtain higher-paying jobs.

Can an article based on poor ethics and bad science qualify for good journalism?

POLLY HERNANDO