Should the Government and/or our Current Cultures Control the Reproductive Life of Women?
Should the Government and/or our Current Cultures Control the Reproductive Life of Women?
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Interesting question. This is one question where the answer may be a simple shoulder shrug, or it may be an answer based on remnants of the early autocratic cultures that formed human civilizations, or on later cultures based on the understanding that all human beings, males, females, all ethnicities, and all colors, ?share the same human personhood.
One must first realize that the species Homo sapiens are part and parcel of the animal kingdom. Every human being is an animal, a mammal in the mammalian species in the order of Primates, and despite our civilizations, ancient and modern, our lives are formed by our evolutionary biological past. And our biological past is sculptured by both the survival and the demise of our early Homo species and the evolution of our recent Homo sapiens ancestors. In life and in death, we are not supernatural beings.
We are not unique and/or special because we possess unique physical and mental characteristics, developed through ages of evolution that enhance the survival of our species. Every species alive today possesses unique and special physical and mental characteristics that have enhanced the survival of their species. For example, whales can dive to great depths in oceans and sing songs to communicate, some species of birds can navigate and fly great distances in migrations to lands that favor their reproduction and survival, and lions exist in family groups that make it possible to prey on herds of herbivores, and even insects such as bees, termites, and ants create social and physical structures that provide for their survival. Each species in its own way has evolved special structures and behaviors that provide survival in a competitive and violent ecology. Humans are no different, it is just the specialties that are different.
The first primates that could be described as members of our species were present on Earth about 300,000 years ago, early Homo sapiens , and human brains were physiology modern about 100,000 years ago. So human beings were in existence and were evolving and developing “cultures” for at least 100,000 years. For almost all of that time, at least up to the last couple of hundred years, we humans did not know who and what we were (and many of us still don’t know), and we did not realize that “under the skin” we are all the same, different only in superficial structures, colors, and cultures.
The strong always thought that it was (is) OK to kill, take land and wealth, enslave, and destroy civilizations with foreign cultures. This was acceptable based usually on the subterfuge that ‘our’ beliefs and cultures, based on religion and superior technologies in peace and war, were all that was necessary to justify control and the use of other human cultures to aid the survival, growth, and development of the conquers. Many of the cultures developed over the last few thousand years, survived, and grew on the sweat and blood of slaves, the compelled work and natural resources of other cultures, and beliefs and convictions that God gave innate superiority over other cultures.
These attitudes and behaviors formed the cultures of the past and are present in our own cultures today as well but are more subdued and not usually enforced by violence. Women were often thought of as smaller, weaker, intellectually lesser, and intrinsically servants to men. They could be bought with dowries, had to produce children, behave and dress in certain ways, and pretty much became the property of a man. Remnants of these attitudes and beliefs are still with us today. Women were constrained to the kitchen and the bedroom, controlled in dress and behavior by laws and attitudes, and often “collected” in harems as auxiliary wives and servants to men. In some cultures, these attitudes and behaviors, are modified but are still in place.
In the past, and to some extent still in the present, religion and law codified, expressed, developed, and enforced control of women in matrimony in the civilizations that humanity developed. Birthing progeny was demanded and aided the survival of many cultures through the thousands of years of wars and tensions created by the spread of aggressive human countries throughout the world.
So, there are two answers to the question in the title of this essay.
1, YES, of course, government and religion are forces of truth and justice in our civilization, and these ancient customs and demands that we still follow cannot be ignored. Despite the moderate changes in our perceptions of freedom and control of individual behaviors, these foundations of truth and justice must be interpreted as they have been for generations. Men always controlled the reproduction and lives of women, and women always obeyed and served men. Women typically have genetic mandates to reproduce that at certain ages guide them toward giving birth and this drives relationships with men. Men are men and women are women and biology be dammed, both must remain in their place through the application of modern truth and justice.
2, Horrors, NO, women are the equals if not the superiors of men in many aspects of modern life. Ancient attitudes of superiority and inferiority based on primitive tribal life and customs must be recognized as having no place in modern human civilization. Human females are individuals within all aspects of our cultures and just as men have personal and cultural responsibility over their reproductive behavior, women have reproductive rights that extend to all citizens, men and women together, and they have the right to decide if and when they together will give birth to another human being. But in biological childbirth, there is no equality. Women alone produce the egg that creates the child and women alone create the child that results from the fertilized egg. Women have the right to exist as free human beings and the right to determine if and when they will birth a child.
However…
Giving birth to a child is a serious and life-changing undertaking for both husband and wife, and certainly, the wife bears the brunt of whatever that decision might be. To both a husband and wife, a wanted child is a blessing, and an unwanted child can be a curse. Those are the simple biological extremes. But life is a journey, and the birth of a child is often a biological, emotional, financial, and socially complex undertaking. Unlike other mammals, humans have the recently developed capability of safely exercising the choice to keep a pregnancy or to abort it. The choice to complete or terminate a pregnancy could be a mutual decision made by the prospective mother, the family, or even a decision made by a controlling culture, or a mandate made by whatever governing structure controls the population. In some cultures, a woman may have no control over the father of her fetus or the progress of her pregnancy.
There is another factor that also adds great complication to human reproduction and that is the biological and societal functions of human sexuality. ?For most mammals, sexuality is a seasonal event. Estrous cycles occur in all mammals except for the higher primates. Estrous and rut in males is cyclic reproductive behavior when females and males become sexually active. Over months, males have biologically prepared themselves to fight for the opportunity of having sex with females, such as the growth of antlers (hence the term ‘horney’), and females have to also prepare with ovulation of eggs and are then ready and willing to seek out and submit to males for fertilization of their eggs. This occurs in the breeding season when sex occupies the entirety of male and female interest and attention.
However, females of the higher primates, including Homo sapiens, do not have estrous, they have frequent menstrual cycles of about 28 days when eggs are produced and can be fertilized. An egg is released about 14 days after the menstrual period begins. Conception and fertilization of an egg occurs within 24 hours of the release of the egg and can occur at any time of year. Human females have external signs of egg ovulation, the menstrual periods, but the monthly menstrual cycles determine when copulation can result in pregnancy. At about 6 days after fertilization, the developing egg, the zygote, implants in the lining of the uterus.
Over the ages of evolution as the progenitors of chimpanzees and humans evolved, copulation in higher primates became closely tied with the social and behavioral conduct of males and females. A strong and pleasurable drive for sexual intercourse developed and sexual conduct became entwined with social behaviors. Thus, the reproductive drive has become part and parcel of social interactions and tribal life in higher primates, including humans. ?
?Biologically, men, women, and children are human beings, which are animals within the order of Primates. However, unlike dogs and horses, wolves and deer, and other mammals, humans are intellectually aware of the meaning of existence and are cognizant of biological choices. And these biological choices involve individuals, families, tribes, societies, and governments, in cooperative systems that interact. The decisions of the individuals affect the tribe and the decisions and mandates of the tribe affect the individual. Eventually, the tribe becomes the government, and then to a greater or lesser extent, the life of the individual is controlled by the tribe.
In a society/government where men and women are equal in law and culture, a woman has or should have the power to decide on whether or not to seek a pregnancy or terminate an unwanted pregnancy. But in both biology and law, there is a conflict. A child must not be killed. This dictate is enforced by the evolutionary demands of survival, parental emotions, and societal law. This natural law is often ignored and passed over by the demands of war, societal pressures, fears of the prospective mother, extreme distress, and demands of family. In our modern world, we have amazing medical capabilities to help a woman either end or complete a pregnancy. But wherever men and women have the freedom to control their own lives a woman should have the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
But reproductive control should not include the right to kill an infant. Thus, common sense, something not shared by all people or all organizations, supports the belief that reproductive control should be determined by the woman carrying the fetus, and the right to abort should not extend into the time frame when the fetus can survive as an independent human being. Science reports that the fetus cannot survive as an independent infant in these days of available exceptional prenuptial care, before week 20 to 22 of development in the womb. Thus, common sense also indicates that the availability of abortion should not exceed beyond about week 20.
In the years ahead, humanity, that’s all of us, has an almost impossible task ahead of us. It’s almost impossible because it will take all of us working together, and that has never really happened before. There is still time, but there are a lot of things that need to be done, none of them easy. We need to stop polluting our lands and waters, and we need to clean up what we have already poured into our environment. We need to conserve what remains of our natural resources, and we need to preserve the animal and plant life that maintains the vitality of our ecosystems. And most difficult of all… we need to control the human populations that are constantly expanding on planet Earth. If we don’t do these things soon, in one way or another, planet Earth will do them for us, and it won’t be pretty.
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Martin Moe