Abortion and overpopulation
May. 10th, 2004 01:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
openspace4lifeOn the one hand, there's the obvious argument that abortion is a form of family planning and will therefore help to control overpopulation.
On the other hand, there's the idea that a teenager who is forced to become a mother of one child will probably never have a larger family, so that legal abortion may result in more children in the world. And there's the much harsher argument that back-alley abortions are more efficient at reducing the population than legal ones, because back-alley abortions often kill the mother as well as the child.
In any case, the right to abortion moves reproduction closer to being a commons, a shared resource with no rules about how it is used. In his famous article, The Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin argues that reproduction should not be a commons because people can't be trusted to voluntarily act in a way that halts population growth.
Until recently in China, the pro-choice movement (such as it was) was a sort of bizarre middle ground between those who opposed abortion and the state, which used forced abortions as part of its program to control population growth. Whether this scenario will recur remains to be seen.
On the other hand, there's the idea that a teenager who is forced to become a mother of one child will probably never have a larger family, so that legal abortion may result in more children in the world. And there's the much harsher argument that back-alley abortions are more efficient at reducing the population than legal ones, because back-alley abortions often kill the mother as well as the child.
In any case, the right to abortion moves reproduction closer to being a commons, a shared resource with no rules about how it is used. In his famous article, The Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin argues that reproduction should not be a commons because people can't be trusted to voluntarily act in a way that halts population growth.
Until recently in China, the pro-choice movement (such as it was) was a sort of bizarre middle ground between those who opposed abortion and the state, which used forced abortions as part of its program to control population growth. Whether this scenario will recur remains to be seen.
