Hello all, welcome back to my blog.
This week I will be talking about a very sensitive topic, abortion.
First off I would like to voice my own opinion on the matter. As a woman, I would like to believe I have control over my own body and have my own choices over what happens to it. If I were to get pregnant, I would like to be able to have the option to get an abortion or not. In recent times we have seen certain states ban abortion, which is wrong in my opinion. Yes, I do believe abortion a bad thing, but I do believe it is a necessary evil we need to avoid people doing it themselves. When women are denied abortions when they desperately want one, they either do one of two things, they do it themselves, or they commit suicide. Both are terrible outcomes, but it happens every day. Abortions are something that should be allowed, but only for cases deemed necessary, such as abusive relationships, rape, homelessness, other underlying illnesses, etc. This is all just my opinion, do not be offended by anything I say please!
According to an article on abortion, “There are three main views: first, the extreme conservative view (held by the Catholic Church); second, the extreme liberal view (held by Singer); and third, moderate views which lie between both extremes”. This quote just explains the types of views there are on abortion and that there are extremists, liberals, and moderates. Next, I would like to talk about Hawkins, an author who believes that abortion is necessary for multiple reasons. She talks about how our planet has a capacity for the number of humans it can hold which would be around 10-12 billion. Abortion is one tool we can use to limit the number of people. She also believes that once we hit this limit, most people will be living in poverty or homeless. Hawkins mentions that “abortion has recently been viewed as a “masculine” response to unwanted pregnancy” (Hawkins 693), which to me means that abortion is viewed as something that is to be decided by a man, which is definitely not true. The decision of abortion should be between the woman and man that created the baby, but ultimately should be the woman’s decision. If by having the baby, the mother is put at risk of illness or death, I feel as though it should be her decision alone if she wants an abortion or not, not the man. Ultimately, it is the woman who is carrying the baby and therefore it is her responsibility and choice if she wants to put her body through the hardships of childbirth. Hawkins also mentions that without abortion, we would see large spikes in population growth which would then lead us to hit the carrying capacity of the earth. Overpopulation could be a huge issue in our future as it would cause food shortages, land shortages, more disease, and many other pandemics like what we are dealing with today. Right now we are dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, which was so easily spread through overpopulated countries like China. Imagine if the entire earth was as heavily populated as China, we would have no chance of survival in an outbreak like this. Ultimately, I agree with Hawkins’s viewpoints on abortion and believe it is a necessary evil we must keep in place.
I think an underlying issue with your opening paragraph is what a justifiable reason is? For different people, and for different perspectives, many ideas can be considered a legitimate or non-justifiable reason. I think an argument could be potentially made that growing up in extreme poverty can result in a child’s life being statistically shorter and of lower quality, some may make the argument that this is a justifiable reason as well. But to counter a similar point, you could argue that without people who are born and experience these potentially horrific upbringing that the world may not continue to make advancements in the ways that it does. A child who has lived experience these pitfalls of life may be the only one with the wherewithal moving forward to help combat these issues in the future. People born from the struggle, to put it in laymen’s terms, oftentimes are more resilient and can help produce goods and services that could very much help the people going through the same situation they once themselves were in. It is difficult to judge what exactly comes to some every individual scenario, and truly impossible to predict the future of a child who has not even seen the light of day yet. People should be able to live as they wish without imposing on another right to live, there is no one right answer for questions like these and often time are cons and pros to both sides.