If you were given an option to abort, would you?
Today we are discussing about abortion and what is it’s significance in our society and for women.
There are many ways to scrutinize abortion. One such way Ronnie Z. Hawkins, in his “Reproductive Choices: The Ecological Dimension” use to highlight some of the important facts about environmental stress and abortion. But in his writings it happens to be ecological aspect of abortion rather than feminist aspect. Hawkins argues that, ” while poor may seek to have larger families as a way of coping with their immediate economic conditions, providing more hands to work and offering an increased chance that parents will be…., while the resources of meeting them will be proportionately less.” In this statement he addresses the environmental issue; poverty as being one of the factor due to which abortion becomes indispensable but because of the pressure on women it cannot come about. Women in poor families has to suffer the most. Not just in agriculture but women who works as a maid in third world countries like mine, belong to a very poor family with no shelter. Women are forced to bare children so that they can earn for their family. The more people work, the more money. But because of this, population increases which have different affects on countries economy as well as environment.
Not only in poor families but there are so many middle and upper class people that plan to have more than two children, sometimes seven or may be more, who knows. Leading to this higher number of members in a family not only the entire population is affected but the resources each family member gets are reduced too such as education, health, etc. Such arguments was made by Sean and Tim in their blog, ” Part 1: Is population good or bad for economic development?”, “Larger families therefore spread their resources more thinly to support more children. This leaves less for saving and investing in growth enhancing activities. It also reduces spending on enhancing the economic potential of each child (e.g. through education and health expenditures).” Considering poverty factor, if a woman gets pregnant by mistake it should be okay if she wants to abort. If society allows abortion, it can be one way to reduce population. But then the question arise that should abortion be only allowed for the sake of reducing population? What about other circumstances?
Poor people have economic pressure due to which they bare more children to get help financially, understood, but it results in increase in population when lower population size is required. “It is at this critical period of time, when smaller family sizes are becoming desirable but contraceptive use is unfamiliar or unavailable…”(Hawkins). Using contraceptive in some cultures are considered wrong as it is believed that using contraceptives is going against God. By virtue of this believe such societies have greater population. More people per given land means less space to accommodate them which also leads to health related issues. Emma in her article talks about overpopulation and abortion, she says, “The perceived needs of ‘humanity’, as an abstraction, should not be allowed to undermine the rights of actual human beings (Emma, 2016).”
Poverty, population and environment all though allow abortion but it isn’t the only reason it should be allowed. Abortion is more of an individual (women) issue rather than ecological. Despite the fact that Hawkins mentioned, abortion should be considered as a serious issue and how critical it is for women. There are multiple reasons of abortion. One of the reason which is most serious then all is when a woman gets pregnant because of rape. Recently, president of United States of America, Donald Trump stigmatized abortion by announcing punishment to women who decides to abort. Regardless of being raped, abortion was not an option. In our society abortion is considered as taboo. Religious or social, either way abortion is considered wrong. Pregnant women are held responsible and accused in all circumstances. Rape is a criminal offense and pressurizing women to not to abort, I think is greater offense. As John-Stewart Gordon in his article writes that, “Forcing her not to abort is to remind her of the rape day-by-day which would be a serious mental strain and should not be enforced by law or morally condemned.”
I do agree with Hawkins ecological approach towards abortion that environment, poverty and overpopulation demands abortion, but I don’t think so that to avoid these matters abortion is the only option. There could be other ways to control overpopulation. There can be laws enforced for poverty. But abortion needs to be address from different angle too especially from feminist aspect.
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Hi Afreen,
I really enjoyed reading your blog post this week on abortion and I would like that talk about a few things that sparked my interest. First, I wanted to point out this quote from you, “In this statement, he addresses the environmental issue; poverty as being one of the factors due to which abortion becomes indispensable but because of the pressure on women it cannot come about. Women in poor families has to suffer the most.” I completely agree that poverty is a huge factor in women wanting abortions because they feel as though they can not afford to have a baby and to care for it. I also agree with you saying that women suffer the most in poor families because some women have children so that they can work and earn money, just like you said in your post. So women are forced to bear these children in hopes to increase their earnings. I also really liked it when you pointed out, “It is at this critical period of time when smaller family sizes are becoming desirable but contraceptive use is unfamiliar or unavailable…”(Hawkins). Using contraceptive in some cultures are considered wrong as it is believed that using contraceptives is going against God. By virtue of this belief, such societies have a greater population. More people per given land means less space to accommodate them which also leads to health-related issues.” Many abortions are affected by people’s beliefs in God and therefore they keep the child and then give it up to foster care systems, which is a whole big problem in itself. If adoption is chosen over abortion, the population is still growing and now you have thousands of unwanted children in foster homes who are never adopted and live their whole life in the system. It is a terrible thing that I have recently become aware of, a family member of mine takes care of foster kids from time to time, and I can not even count how many times I have heard a foster kid say they wish they had never been born because they are unloved and unwanted. It is heartbreaking. Anyways, I do believe abortion should be legal and it is a necessary evil but it is a women’s right to do what they want with their body.
I would like to stem off of where having more kids means more income. It makes sense, but I believe this stems from the days when humans started agriculture. Unlike hunter and gatherers, A farmer can have more kids and it just means more land needs to be used to farm, which the kid can farm and then also have a little surplus. In a hunter gatherer society, population was fairly regulated, because if it was not maintained in years where not enough animals where hunted or not enough plants bloomed, they would starve. Agriculture has artificially allowed for our population to be sustained at the size it is at.
In one statement you say middle class families have more kids too, but that in general is not true. In general as a nation becomes “wealthy” their is a transition period where kids are still being made at large sizes, but people are also starting to live longer. As in Hawkins writings on South Korea, abortion allowed for this natural occurrence, of having a lot of kids while standard of living increases, to curve the population size. In general poverty stricken people have more children in general hopes that they can be cared for and that they may be able increase income. However, if we had a government that was efficient at redistributing wealth and sustain from greed, then the poverty stricken people would be more able to be cared for with out the desperate need of hoping another child could be their savior.