The topic of Abortion has always been a sensitive debate between many of people of the world. typically there are three main views when looking at the discussion of abortion. The first view is the “extreme conservative” , which typically is a belief that stems from the catholic church. This view considers human personhood beginning at the unicellular zygote level and to have an abortion is the equivalent to homicide. The second held view is the “extreme liberal” side which believes that for most instances human personhood begins after birth. The last view is the “moderate” side which argue that there is a morally relevant break between zygote to birth- which determines whether it is justified or not for an abortion.
Hawkins view on abortion is is one that looks at the global picture instead of individual places or societies. Her view is justifying the need for abortion because of the environmental implications. Most importantly looking at the growth of populations and seeing the lack of proper care and necessities and how that correlates to abortion/ birth and the environment. I was looking at the world clock and some of the numbers that it shows us around the world are quite shocking. there are 841, 636,915 undernourished people in the world and about 802,634,558 people with no access to safe water sources. That is around ten percent of the population. This is something to consider when Hawkins discusses poverty, and environmental degradation. The importance of abortion and population limitation is specifically important when looking at the third world.
Hawkins makes it clear that developing countries do not always have the resources or birth control to stabilize the increasing numbers of births and less people dying. She gives an example of Japan and Korea’s birth rates and explained that without abortion their birth rate would have been around 22% higher. This is detrimental when looking at the long-term welfare of “developing” nations.
The over population in the world is rapidly growing and fellow ecofeminist’s must look at the environmental degradation of the planet and the long term effects of over population has. Without the resource of abortion the sustainability of our planet would be in a much worse position right now.
An article I had from a previous course discusses the UN and its sustainability initiatives and how abortion can help. the title of the article is
“Reuse, Reduce, Reproductive Rights: How Abortion Can Help Save the Planet”
I think it is an interesting read when looking at abortion on the global scale.
bibliography
Abortion Worldwide 2017: Uneven Progress and Unequal Access. (2019, July 25). Retrieved from https://www.guttmacher.org/report/abortion-worldwide-2017
Bess, G. (2015, October 6). Reuse, Reduce, Reproductive Rights: How Abortion Can Help Save the Planet. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vv5kj9/reuse-reduce-reproductive-rights-how-abortion-can-help-save-the-planet
Joanna Erdman: The global abortion policies database-legal knowledge as a health intervention. (2017, November 13). Retrieved from https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/11/01/joanna-erdman-the-global-abortion-policies-database-legal-knowledge-as-a-health-intervention/