So, I am back to the blogs and this week I wanted to discuss a touchy topic, that topic being abortion. I want to first talk about ecofeminists who might be antiabortion. I want to talk about them first because it helps set the stage for Ronnie Zoe Hawkins’ ecofeminist view one would say falls in favor of pro-choice. Ecofeminists who are against abortion believe that getting an abortion or favoring abortion rights “increases a woman’s subordination.” What does this mean? Well, for example, if I were to get pregnant and my boyfriend or husband or whoever said I needed to have an abortion and I did, I would be taking orders from him and would then be considered inferior to him, or he would be superior to me. With this all in mind, Hawkins in her essay on ecofeminists and their accounts on abortion, Hawkins mentions the problems ecofeminists see when it comes to prolife vs prochoice. Hawkins states in her essay “abortion has recently been viewed as a “masculine” response to unwanted pregnancy” (Hawkins 693). What this means, or how I interpreted this is that the male has the say in the pregnancy and he decides what is wanted or what is unwanted. Hawkins goes on to say that abortion “doesn’t respect the interconnectedness of life.” This means we are to live amongst one another and care for each other rather than kill or harm one another. However, within the interconnectedness of life, we must also consider the other life on our planet. This includes our environment, its plants, its animals. What Hawkins is saying in her essay is that without abortion as a form of contraceptive, we would see huge spikes in population growth and eventually reach our cap for what our planet can withstand to hold. With more people also comes more harm to the environment. From reading Hawkins’s accounts on abortion, I must say I see where she is coming from. As a biology student, in one of my classes, we discussed how the Earth can hold roughly 10 billion people before it just can’t hold out anymore. It’s crazy to think it could possibly hold that many people. When you look up how many people the Earth can support it says 1.5 billion, however, we find ourselves creeping towards 6-7-8 billion people. With abortion as a form of contraceptive, those numbers could remain concrete and not put us at risk of overpopulating our overpopulations. When it comes to overpopulation we have to look at when we will run out of food resources and other essentials to life. With more people also comes more man-made damage to the Earth. It puts more cars on the road and pollution in the air and ultimately all our beautiful land becomes overrun with houses and industrial buildings. I want to include this as I wrap things up on this blog. I believe every woman has the right to do with her body as she pleases, she can be for or against abortion and I will respect their decision either way. I wanted to write this blog to mention my reasoning for understanding Hawkins’s accounts on the abortion debate.
Hey Ashton, thanks for your blog this week, especially during such a crazy time! I think it’s important to mention that some ecofeminists are ‘pro-life’ or ‘anti-abortion’ as you called it. This fits in with the conversation that there is no one definition of ecofeminism or what makes someone an ecofeminist. I can appreciate the views of the being a ‘pro-life’ ecofeminist especially when it centers around the fear that women are being forced into abortions by men. However, I don’t think the answer to this is to be completely against abortion. When you use this background information to start discussing Hawkins’ article you refer to her article as the collective input of all ecofeminist thought on abortion. Before Hawkins really even starts writing her article, she says “I will speak from a perspective of concern for life in a broadly inclusive sense referring to the diversity of lifeforms on the planet”. I think this simple statement contributes to what I was just saying, that all ecofeminists can and do have different beliefs about different things. There is no one ecofeminist thought. I liked that you brought up the fact that you’re a biology student, the way you talked about Hawkins I can see your belief system similarly line up with hers. Which I appreciate, because overpopulation is a serious issue and running out of resources is a real threat, but I think the topic of abortion runs much deeper than simply helping our population rate slow down. Your biology background must contribute to your ecofeminist thought on abortion but I encourage you to think about this question, does the reasons surrounding one’s choice to be either ‘pro-choice’ or ‘pro-life’ matter? Or is the outcome the most important thing? Yes, Hawkins is pro-choice, which I can’t argue against, but are her reasons valid? Should she have included more factors surrounding abortion into her article? Great post this week! Stay safe during these hectic times!
Hi Ashton,
I enjoyed reading your post on abortion this week. It seems like we both have similar views and opinions on the matter. I too believe that abortion is a necessary evil that we must keep in place so that we do not hit our carrying capacity of humans on earth. As a species, we are already running low on certain items we need to survive, and we are ruining our ecosystem with pollution. Many species are going extinct due to our pollution, and if we reach our carrying capacity, who knows what will happen to the rest of the plants and animals here on earth. Also, we are now experiencing pandemics of coronavirus that was originated in China, one of the most overpopulated counties in the world. This virus spread so fast and easily through the country, imagine what it would have been like if we were at 10 billion people on earth? We would have barely any chance of survival and thousands of people would die every day. While many other people would feel like abortion is evil and should be banned due to it being against the bible and therefore considered a homicide, I believe that people would do abortions themselves if they did not have the option to do it safely in a hospital. Some women are raped and get pregnant do not want to give birth to the child of the rapist and therefore want an abortion, and that is totally understandable. And for the government to say that they aren’t allowed one and must give birth to the child is against free will and it is just not right. Overall, great post this week.
Hello Ashton,
To start I am curious what your stance on abortion is? I find Hawkins views quite refreshing in that it turns abortion not into emotional reason, but logical reasoning. That there can be more than one way to look at being pro-life or pro-choice. As I said in my post my stance pro-choice, but that also life starts at conception. Which can be a cruel thought that I am agreeing that killing an unborn baby is alright, but I would say most people look at the big pictures in these types of discussions and use somewhat unreal examples to make their point. Like we try to blanket solve these decisions, but in truth many things are a case on case basis. Such as if a man is telling the women to get an abortion, the women should hopefully be in a healthy enough relationship where it can be discussed. You could also argue that it could go the other way, where the man wants to keep his baby, but the women wants to abort. What justice is that for a man if a women just decides to abort and the man has no say. I would state the argument my body my right is entirely misleading, because its not your body it is a babies body, the women is just the lucky vessel that gets to nurture the very beginnings of a human life. On top of the emotional strain that deciding on whether to get an abortion or not on the couple and family involved, Hawkins makes an excellent argument that should we even really be having more kids, that in truth it is never pleasant to abort a life, but there should be another consideration in bringing a baby into this world. How much added strain will it put on the environment. Like you say we are predicted to hold 10 billion people, but thats if everyone is living not like the average american. 1.5billion is probably how many people the earth could sustain for everyone to live like a greedy uncaring american. I would say like we did through industrialization, humans will be able to continually artificially increase the population cap, but the standard of living for most will be horrendous. I would argue overall, that it is our population that puts so much strain on the planet, and it is not the poorest 4 billion, but the richest 3billion putting the most strain on it. We currently are able to feed the whole world, but instead of sharing we keep resources for “our” people, but when the day comes and we wake up, we will realize everyone is “our” people and that we do need to shrink our population, but everyone can live a healthy, content, and fullfilling life now.