Posted on by mtompkins

Bodies

There are many stances on the controversial topic of abortion in our society. Arguably the most prominent stances are the often conservative associated pro-life stance and the feminist/liberal stance of pro-choice. Ronnie Zoe Hawkins discusses an ecofeminist stance to abortion that not only involves the reflections of feminist thinking of abortion, as well as how the environment should play a role in people’s stances on abortion. Through Hawkins’s stance, she sees abortion as a means to control the population and environmental degradation, how this issue disproportionately impacts women in poverty. I am personally pro-choice myself and I agree with Hawkins’s views on ecofeminist reasonings surrounding abortion. 

After reading Hawkins’s views on abortion being a form of population control, I realized that this was a matter that I had not thought too much into. Hawkins identifies the population growth that has been experienced in the last two centuries from around 1 billion to 5-6 billion as of 1993 (Hawkins 690). According to the Worldometer, our current population is nearing 8 billion people. The growing population should be a legitimate concern to our environment due to the fact that there is a finite amount of resources that can be used to supply the human population. Thinking in Hawkins’s ecofeminist perspective, abortion is a viable means of population control because imagining a world where no abortions are performed makes me think like our world would be entirely overpopulated and resources would be depleted more so than ever. Allowing for women to terminate pregnancies allows for less resources to be depleted at a slower rate than if our population were to be higher from more births. 

Another crucial point surrounding the usage of the planet’s resources for the growing human population is the fact that other non-human organisms would be greatly impacted as well. Hawkins states that a growing population leads to more resources being produced and consumed, meaning that environments and habitats of non-human organisms can be destroyed (Hawkins 691). “…Anthropogenic, or human-caused, species extinctions are occurring at several hundred times the “natural” rate and, since they are the result of abrupt and often total destruction of habitats, are not offset by new speciation (Hawkins 691).” A feminist view of abortion neglects the impacts that abortion may have, whether positive or negative, on non-human organisms. By using an ecofeminist lens allows for it to become more clear that the population control aspect of abortion also leads to benefitting the world’s natural resources and the species of non-human organisms that would be displaced or harmed in the harvesting of the resources needed for the births that could potentially take place.

On a personal note, the looming threat of climate change is one factor that aids my agreement with Hawkins. I would not want to raise a child in the environment that we are potentially headed towards. If serious changes are not made in order to save the planet, we may be facing irreversible environmental damage in a matter of years. I personally would not want to bring even more human lives into the world that would have to live with these irreversible issues that were caused before their time where we would also not be able to sustain such a large population with the amount of resources available.

Lastly, the link that poverty plays in Hawkins analysis of abortion puts into perspective that abortion can sometimes be the most viable method for pregnant women in developing nations to terminate pregnancies. In an op-ed by one of the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s directors, Carmen Barroso, she provides that in 2015 over 200 million women went without access to modern contraceptive methods (Barroso 1). Contraception is not widely accepted or available to women, most prominently women in developing nations, leaving abortion as a common option for these women.

In terms of ecofeminist values, I personally believe that Hawkins’s views encompass what environmentalism and feminism stand for. Hawkins acknowledges that some more traditional ecofeminists see abortion as a “masculine” response to unwanted pregnancies and does not allow for respect of the natural process of gestation and birth to take place (Hawkins 693). As stated, feminist views do not encompass impacts faced by both human and non-human beings, and solely focuses on the rights aspect of human women having free will and agency of their bodies, or the disagreement with this belief. I believe that an ecofeminist perspective on abortion can be beneficial when one can take into the consideration the environmental benefits that abortion has had in terms of Hawkins’s writings. 

Sources:

Barroso, Carmen. “Empower Women for the Health of the Planet.” The New York Times, 8 June 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/08/is-overpopulation-a-legitimate-threat-to-humanity-and-the-planet/empower-women-for-the-health-of-the-planet

Bess, Gabby. “Reuse, Reduce, Reproductive Rights: How Abortion Can Help Save the Planet.” Vice, 6 Oct. 2015, www.vice.com/en_us/article/vv5kj9/reuse-reduce-reproductive-rights-how-abortion-can-help-save-the-planet.

This article from Vice provided an interview from a member of PAI, a global organization that promotes women’s reproductive health, to discuss how a woman’s right to choose can benefit the environment. Allison Doody reinforces in her responses how abortion as a woman’s right can impact sustainability of natural resources, how the United Nations has placed policies into action that benefit both reproductive rights and the environment, as well as statistics surrounding abortin and other reproductive processes. This source provided another ecofeminist perspective that contributed to the ideas shared by Ronnie Hawkins to further the understanding of ecofeminism and abortion.

Hawkins, Ronnie Zoe. “Reproductive Choices: The Ecological Dimension.” Living With Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Social Ethics, 1993, pp 690-694.

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