(6/14/99)
MANILA (Reuters) - Former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell began her inaugural tour as a United Nations goodwill ambassador Monday, but her comments supporting birth control set her on a collision course with the country's Catholic Church.
Halliwell, still known as Ginger Spice although she left the Spice Girls a year ago, visited a clinic behind a public market in Manila and spoke to 30 patients about safe sex and family planning.
``I believe that if you can't control your fertility, you can't control your life, and if you're having sex, you've got to be protected against unwanted pregnancy and infection,'' Halliwell, 27, told reporters after the visit. ``Just look at the other Spice Girls.''
Rev. James Reuter, director of the National Office of Mass Media of the Catholic Church of the Philippines, said the church did not oppose Halliwell's visit, but it clearly did not like her message.
``This is a free country, we don't interfere in the right of anybody to go anywhere or say what they believe...(but) we do not need population control, and any effort at safe sex is totally, utterly immoral from top to bottom,'' Reuter said. ``It's much more moral to allow children to slowly starve to death and live substandard lives because of religious doctrine.''
Halliwell selected the Philippines as her first goodwill assignment because she has read that the Asian country has a high population growth rate and a large population of unwed mothers. With 74 million people, the Philippines has an population growth rate of 2.32 percent, one of the highest in Asia and the world.
Satish Mehra, United Nations Population Fund country representative to the Philippines, said Halliwell's fame would help the U.N.'s awareness campaign for reproductive health.
``I'm sure she will make an impact. She has a large following around the world and in the Philippines and I'm sure young people will listen to her,'' he said. ``If she told them all to jump off a cliff, I believe they would.''
Halliwell's popularity as a former Spice Girl also had its downside. Some said they came to the clinic only because they saw so many camera crews and breasts.