March 24 – 1

This is a tricky subject this time, but nevertheless let’s get started. Abortion has been a very hot topic for the longest time. I personally believe that it is every woman’s right to get an abortion. I’ll be really frank it say that it irritates me when old male politicians are usually the ones deciding whether it right nor not or women to have an abortion. It’s not their right to govern themselves over a woman’s body, especially if that woman is underage or has gotten pregnancy due to a sexual assault. That really irks me. The right to an abortion is fundamental to women’s equality, not just our privacy,” (Valenti) and it really grinds my gears when people who can’t get pregnant try to decide these things for us. Okay okay, besides that, in the realm of ecofeminism, abortion kind of takes a different form. Or rather, the argument around abortion is rather different, as it considers the big impact of a human life.

Hawkins does indeed bring up a lot of interesting points in her essay such as the big idea of the human population. Living our day to day lives the majority of people, including me, often do not think about the much larger impact we have on those around us simply by existing. Every person alive takes up a space that another potential person could use.Every single person alive eats and uses up resources that another potential person could use. When thinking like thus, the impact that one small family could have an a street, their neighborhood, or their whole town is something to really delve deeper and contemplate. For us in a first world country, we often don’t have to worry about such things as resources are nearly always readily available (let’s just ignore all the ruckus that’s been going on these past few months) and there’s always space for a new family to move in as landscapers and retailers of houses will simply just chop away at another patch of land to make room for another new home. Let’s consider that a single family considered having three kids. And through the years, their own children decided on having three kids each. Now, imagine that each family on a single street or in a single neighborhood decided to follow this same formula. If you would even be generous and say that each family would only have two kids, it’s easy to see that this would eventually get out of hand if we bring the scale larger and larger.

This also comes to mind when thinking about species other than our very own, which Hawkins also brought attention to in her article. It is to no one’s surprise that the human population has been increasing exponentially in the past few decades, but its also very crucial to note the number of animal populations that have been decreasing in these very same years. All these spaces that we take up used to belong to them, and they’re finding it harder and harder to live amongst us with the growing population.

Hawkin’s point is one usually not considered when discussing abortion rights. It certainly does make for an interesting one and completely makes sense when thinking of it from an ecofeminist perspective. Upon reading that some ecofeminists describe abortion as a “masculine response to unwanted pregnancy” I sort of sighed to myself. I’m glad to hear that Hawkins does not think the same and states that it is more progressive for a woman to have that own power over her own body, and furthermore have control over the environment in this sense.Her ending statement that abortion is the route deserving the title of prolife left a lasting impression on me. I do not really think that it should be called that myself but it certainly got me thinking about the bigger implications of abortion and the rest of the environment.

2 thoughts on “March 24 – 1

  1. Abortion has so many angles to approach from. Environment is one of them. The very first thing that I would like to mention is the current situation. With quarantine going on. We get to see changes in our environment. The bellow picture is of Italy showing Swan swimming between the canals in Venice. According to the article by Falah Guzar, these Swans were not seen swimming before due to boats traffic. So yes, increase in human population affects animal habitat the most due to which most of the animals are getting extinct.

    I smiled when I read on your blog that you get irritated by the fact that old politicians are making decision about abortion. And while reading it I immediately think of one person, well I won’t take any names, but I guess you know. Well come back to abortion. Talking about making sound policy that is challenging. But politicians need to consider all aspects of abortion before passing law for it. John-Stewart Gordon in his article writes that, “It seems that one should adopt a moderate view rather than the proposed extreme views. This is not because the moderate view is “correct” but because one needs a broad consensus for a sound policy (16).” In his article he mentioned three views on abortion of our society. Extreme view who argues that human life starts when it is just a unicellular zygote, thus abortion is equal to homicide. Extreme liberal view believe that personhood starts right after the birth. Therefore, abortion is valid if it happens before that time period. Moderate views argue that there’s a biological process that occurs between unicellular zygote and birth which tells us if abortion is justifiable or not. So, it does makes sense that the law for abortion should be approached by moderate views but not moderate view only.

    It was amazing the way you explained about how family planning can result in use of resources that another potential person can use. With increase in one person in a family that is- just say extra one- the resource that the extra individual will use is basically taking the resource of the one that it actually belongs to. Let say there are two families in neighbor that are expecting babies. One of the family has three kids and the other family has one kid only. Having that fourth kid basically means that that child is taking the resource of the second kid in one kid family which is indeed a potential individual. In such cases it is justifiable to allow abortion so that there could be less stress on our Earth.
    Reference
    https://www.iep.utm.edu/abortion/
    https://gulfnews.com/photos/news/pictures-how-humans-slowing-down-due-to-coronavirus-has-had-an-impact-on-our-planet-1.1584457650955?slide=5

  2. Abortion has so many angles to approach from. Environment is one of them. The very first thing that I would like to mention is the current situation. With quarantine going on. We get to see changes in our environment. The bellow picture is of Italy showing Swan swimming between the canals in Venice. According to the article by Falah Gulzar, these Swans were not seen swimming before due to boats traffic. So yes, increase in human population affects animal habitat the most due to which most of the animals are getting extinct.
    https://gulfnews.com/photos/news/pictures-how-humans-slowing-down-due-to-coronavirus-has-had-an-impact-on-our-planet-1.1584457650955
    This is the link for the picture of swan swimming.

    I smiled when I read on your blog that you get irritated by the fact that old politicians are making decision about abortion. And while reading it, I immediately think of one person, well I won’t take names of anyone, but I guess you know. Well come back to abortion. Talking about making sound policy that is challenging. But politicians need to consider all aspects of abortion before passing law for it. John-Stewart Gordon in his article writes that, “It seems that one should adopt a moderate view rather than the proposed extreme views. This is not because the moderate view is “correct” but because one needs a broad consensus for a sound policy (16).” In his article he mentioned three views on abortion of our society. Extreme view who argues that human life starts when it is just a unicellular zygote, thus abortion is equal to homicide. Extreme liberal view believe that personhood starts right after the birth. Therefore, abortion is valid if it happens before that time period. Moderate views argue that there’s a biological process that occurs between unicellular zygote and birth which tells us if abortion is justifiable or not. So, it does makes sense that the law for abortion should be approached by moderate views but not moderate view only.

    It was amazing the way you explained about how family planning can result in use of resources that another potential person can use. With increase in one person in a family that is- just say extra one- the resource that the extra individual will use is basically taking the resource of the one that it actually belongs to. Let say there are two families in neighbor that are expecting babies. One of the family, let it be X, has three kids and the other family, let it be Y, has one kid only. Having that fourth kid in X family basically means that that child is taking the resource of the kid with Y family which is indeed a potential individual. In such cases it is justifiable to allow abortion so that there could be less stress on our Earth and resources could be used by every potential one.

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