Patriarchy’s integration into capitalism keeps population rates up in order to sustain a workforce. Empowering people able to give birth to control their own reproductive health and giving them access to education lowers birth rates and in turn lowers carbon footprint. Having community resources which empower people to access sex education, contraception, abortion, and other reproductive health care will both act as population control and fulfill basic needs, allowing people to focus more on environmental and community sustainability.
The practice of providing reproductive health care is incredibly important in sustainability efforts. Reproductive health clinics play a part in furthering sustainability efforts in the community by helping to meet people’s basic needs. Physiological needs and safety must be met before people can really focus on other needs. Low income, marginalized people may be less likely to put time and effort into environmental concerns if their personal health needs are not met. Providing choice-based health care assists in fulfilling the physiological needs of everyone, but especially women and queer people who are already marginalized under a capitalist system. When a person is forced to carry a pregnancy to term or care for a child without proper resources, both financial and social, their needs are not getting met. It’s less likely for people in unsafe and unsupportive environments to view a broader picture of environmental wellness. This should not be traced back to flaws of the individual either, rather seen as a product of a profit-focused system that will inherently marginalize certain groups of people. Although current reproductive health care providers exist under capitalism, they still provide a much needed service which helps empower marginalized groups to overcome the system which strives to destroy them and the environment in which they live.
Abortion and contraception access can act as a form of population control. Population control methods can lower carbon footprint. Many organizations rally for population control as a means to a more environmentally sustainable and safer future. Although this ideology includes some points of merit, it is crucial to consider the ways that blame is being put on individuals when we talk about population control. Often, federal movements to create sustainability culture put people in a state of austerity without having to force it. It causes people to self monitor and and monitor others in their sustainability efforts while disregarding class as an important aspect to a person’s ability to live sustainably. It is a form of privilege to even consider making lifestyle changes to be more environmentally friendly. There are people in the United States without access to food and clean water, yet they are still expected to alter their carbon footprint. The issue of sustainable living is largely aimed at those in the middle class and erases the experiences of low income people who statistically are more likely to be women, people of color, and queer people. The capitalist system which targets these marginalized groups is also directly harming the environment. By shifting the blame to the bodies of childbearers, movements for population control disregard the source of why we would need population control in the first place. The nonprofit Uncrowded.org states, “Whether the average person alive today has between 1 and 2 children, or between 2 and 3 children, will largely determine whether our children live in a world that is safe, healthy, and sustainable, or crowded and polluted, with little if any nature, fewer resources and more crime.” This sentiment is flawed because it assumes individuals or family units are directly responsible for the wellbeing of the Earth. It is problematic to assume that societal and environmental problems can be traced back to population when systems and corporations that are focused on profit above human welfare are the actual cause. Pat Hynes, a feminist activist states, “the military has 1.4 million active duty people, or .0002 percent of the world’s population, generating 5 percent of climate pollution. The U.S. military enterprise is far and away the largest single climate polluter and contributor to global warming.
The issue should be shifted more toward educating people and providing services for population control while simultaneously dismantling the system that causes environmental and societal problems. Assuming for example, that there will be more crime in a world with a higher population may be true in a sense, however it is not directly related to the amount of people, rather to the institutions and disenfranchisement that encourages crime. A mother who has to drive her children to school across a town lacking public transportation infrastructure should not be blamed for adding to CO2 emissions, rather the companies that monopolize oil and prevent widespread use of more sustainable transportation methods should be. Reproductive health organizations are important resources for the people who are targeted by these harmful systems, and it is very beneficial for population control for the time being, but resources such as this should not be the end point.
Reproductive health is a widely contested topic, so a non-profit that specializes in choice based and sex positive care risks negative impacts from political and religious anti-choice advocates. When activists violently attempt to stop clinics from performing abortions they fail to consider their long-term negative impact. If abortions were prohibited and people were unable to access other forms of birth control and health care, not only would people (children included) literally die, the population would also spike. A raise in population during the current state of things would cause even more burden on the environment and the same anti-choice activists wanting to make abortion illegal are generally against environmental sustainability efforts as well as community resources such as education, and welfare programs. Politically conservative people who are anti-choice are also generally supportive of military expansion and the prison industrial complex, meaning that without reproductive clinics there would be more crime and fewer resources (environmental and social), but it would not be the fault of the people having babies.
It is crucial to consider that sustainability is achieved through multiple facets, yet placing the responsibility on individuals is harmful. Population control through access to contraceptives, abortion, and sex education as well as resources for families, women, queer people, and people living with STI’s is incredibly important. Having these resources in a community is a form of progress socially and benefits the environment as well, but while using these resources we should deconstruct the sources of structural violence that targets marginalized people and the environment rather than viewing population control as an end goal. When politicians and religious groups target reproductive rights and the institutions that provide reproductive care, they must remember that they are not only attacking people’s ability to access abortion. They are directly targeting the physiological well being and safety of millions of men, women, trans* people, queer people, low income people, people with STI’s, and children who access the care that these clinics provide. When people from every community and walk of life are lacking in their right to reproductive autonomy and health care, the environment will suffer.
Works Cited
“About BMC.” Blue Mountain Clinic Family Practices. www.bluemountainclinic.org. Web. 2016.
Cohen, Susan A., “The Broad Benefits of Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health.” Guttmacher Policy Review. Guttmacher Institute. www.guttmacher.org. Web. 2004.
“History.” Blue Mountain Clinic Family Practices. www.bluemountainclinic.org. Web. 2016.
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