Veganism and Abortion

I was driving home on Sunday when I was flipping through AM radio stations. Came across GoVeganRadio. For 20 minutes, I listened to some guy rant about the "horrors" of animal testing and slaughterhouses. I got home and did a little research on all the claims he made. Researched Veganism and vegetarianism and looked up the mission statements of PETA and some other fringe animal rights lobbyist groups. I was pretty fascinated. One question continually came up in my head, "Can you be adamant about animal rights and also coherently support abortion?"

I contend you cannot and here is why:

Tom Regan, Philosophy PhD and teacher at NC State, wrote a book called The Case for Animal Rights. I browsed the book and it can be briefly summarized here Vegan Ethics


The basic premise of Veganism (and vegetarians who don't eat animal products because they disagree with the methods of killing animals) is that animals have inherent moral worth and deserve the same treatment that humans do. "Any being with a complex mental life, including perception, desire, belief, memory, intention, and a sense of the future --among other attributes -- is a subject of a life. Considerable evidence leads to an understanding that most animals indeed are subjects of a life, as opposed to biological beings without such subjective worlds."

Fair enough. I think you would be hard-pressed to call someone crazy for believing something like that. You may not agree, but you should be able to see that it's a fairly rational way of thinking.

This brings me to abortion...

I am making one assumption in my argument and it is this: Vegans and vegetarians would have a major problem with people killing cow (or other animal) fetuses.

If this is untrue, then my argument fails.

Can you see where I'm going with this? Vegans and vegetarians (and PETA members) would have a serious problem with killing calf fetuses, but don't necessarily have a problem with human abortion. There is no mention of human abortion is Veganism or PETA doctrine.

The only way to reconcile this would be if Vegans argued that humans and human fetuses have LESS inherent value than animals and animal fetuses.

This is clearly not rational and would be virtually impossible to make a valid and sound argument in support.


What does this mean? Not a whole lot unless you're a Vegan or PETA supporter. But it is yet more proof that people don't spend nearly enough time understanding their own beliefs and the logical and practical consequences of those beliefs.




Happy St. Patrick's Day


-T