I get a lot of vegans and vegetarians blasting me with hate mail on my supposed hypocrisy for gnawing on a medium-rare steak with one hand, while typing out pro-life opinion pieces with the other.
There are many different reasons to be a vegetarian - diet, moral and religious issues or just plain old keeping up with the newest liberal fads - like Scientology or Kabala! Now, without exception, every single e-mail I’ve received from angry tofu-munchers has been of a moral nature, most of whom have aligned themselves with groups like PETA. So that is what I am going to address - the moral aspect.
For the sake of brevity let’s just assume that humans rule the planet and we have an inherent right to eat anything that moo’s. This being the case, there is no contradiction in being a pro-life meat eater. But can you be a moral vegetarian pro-choicer?
To quote a famous vegan pro-choicer, in his book Animal Liberation, Peter Singer states that when it comes to the worth and dignity of a living thing, the basic principle of equality does not require equal or identical treatment; it requires equal consideration. In other words, vegetarians gobbling this bit of green up MUST consider a fetus in the same way they do a baby seal or a lamb or a white whale.
Listed on the PETA ‘About Us’ website, along with the above Singer quote, is another pro-choice vegan guy that veggie-munchers love to cite - Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the reforming utilitarian school of moral philosophy. He stated that when deciding on a being’s rights, “The question is not ‘Can they reason?’ nor ‘Can they talk?’ but ‘Can they suffer?’”
This is the foundation of the moral vegan philosophy. To deny this – by PETAs own standards - is to be a guilty pro-baby-killing ignoramus.
So, the question is - can the human fetus suffer? The results of scientific inquiry indisputably assert that the answer is, yes. Yes they do. (Pro-choice vegans for the lose!)
Science affirms that elements of the pain-conveying spino-thalamic system begin to be assembled in fetuses before most women even realize that they are with child. By the time mommy learns she’s eating for two, anatomical pain receptors spread over the tiny body she is carrying in ever increasing stages. At 8-16 weeks pain impulse connections in the spinal cord link up and reach the thalamus, which is the brain's reception center. Every single child subjected to a surgical abortion withdraws from painful stimulation. And in case the obvious isn’t enough - two types of stress hormones, normally released by adults subjected to pain, are released in massive amounts by the fetus subjected to a needle puncture to draw a blood sample.
In fact, as long as the pain scale is the golden bestower of personhood, it’s worth pointing out that at 20-30 weeks, the small human actually feels MORE pain than an adult human. The period between 20-30 weeks is a uniquely vulnerable time, since the pain system is fully established, yet the higher level pain-modifying system has barely begun to develop. (This is part of the reason why I firmly believe that an unrepentant George Tiller has earned himself a very special place in hell.)
Contrast the physiological development and pain threshold of the human fetus when being killed by the most commonly used Dilation and Currettage abortion method with, say, the physiological development and pain threshold of a lobster being killed by being boiled alive for supper.
Scientifically speaking, lobsters do not possess any kind of receptor akin to human pain receptors. However, they do possess stress receptors and certainly perceive the slice of a knife or the boiling of the pot. But the bottom line is that scientists have not discovered how a lobster's brain processes sensory information from cuticular stress or temperature, so no one can say for sure if lobsters feel pain or not. It is quite literally a scientific mystery.
So on a Singer scale, if we had to rescue an 8 week old fetus or 10 year old lobster from a burning building, we should be saving the baby and using the fire to heat up some butter and garlic. So why then, do the same people who work hard to promote awareness of lobster pain usually work even harder to oppose legislation that promotes awareness of human pain, like The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act that was introduced on January 26, 2005?
This is what I’d desperately like to know, however no vegetarian moralizing up my inbox has been gracious enough to answer.
As I’m sure you know, the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act required that abortion providers notify any woman seeking an abortion more than 20 weeks after fertilization that there is growing medical evidence that the preborn child in her womb can feel "severe and extreme pain" during an abortion. If she decides to go through with the abortion, she would be offered anesthesia for the baby in order to lessen its suffering. She can, of course, still freely and openly kill her silently screaming, thrashing child who is undergoing pain beyond our comprehension if she so chooses... anesthesia or no.
If moral vegans actually believed the drivel they swallow, this would be something that should have PETA groupies up in arms, hardcore. But it appears they too suffer from what Singer refers to as ‘speciesm’. (Come on veggie-munchers… you’re supposed to treat humans and animals equally!)
What gets me - aside from the blatant hypocrisy and the audacity to attack me while being such traitors to their own creed - is that most of these morally impaired brainiacs will argue for abortion using issues such as overpopulation, ‘fetal ownership’ or killing an unwanted kid because “it’s the most compassionate thing to do in the long run”. But try using these same arguments to validate keeping the local pound open, and they would collapse into a swoon.
If euthanizing an overpopulation of feral cats isn’t acceptable or applicable, why apply it to a supposed overpopulation of humans? If it’s “Your Body, Your Choice”, why can’t it be “My Chicken, My Chopping Block”? If women can choose abortion, which is killing a pain receiving sentient being, why can’t a woman also choose to take a shotgun to old pain receiving Betsie and have herself a hamburger? And don’t even TRY telling most animal rights activists that killing a puppy is the most compassionate and dignified thing in the long run when it comes to getting rid of unwanted animals.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for animal rights. I would be an animal activist right now if human babies were currently safe in the womb. But my beliefs in animal rights are grounded in a Christian philosophy and worldview which states that animals were designed for my food, my clothes and my friends and that I must treat them well. So it’s utterly absurd to be attacked on my supposed “moral inconsistency” by vegans whose only logic is that abortion is okay because it is a “Choice”… all while refusing to acknowledge that eating meat is also a “Choice”.
Regardless, as far as PETA is concerned, what it all boils down to, (no pun intended, lobsters) is that it is all a matter of whether inflicting pain on a living creature is acceptable.
Do animals feel pain? Depending on the animal, the answer is yes - to varying degrees. Do animals suffer in the world? Yes. Should they be protected from unnecessary pain / torture / death? Yes! While the details differ by worldview, you’d have to be a sick freak to maintain that poking a caged dog with an ice pick is an appropriate American pastime.
What vegans would do well to remember is that we've all seen the PETA propaganda about meat production, animal testing and poor pet conditions. We know that animals deserve better. But have THEY seen videos of tiny humans being ripped apart thrashing and screaming as they are sucked out of their mothers’ bodies in tiny pieces? How is that not wrong, too? Using PETA logic, fetus or farm animal - it has a heartbeat, it reacts to pain, it is sentient – it deserves to live unharmed and unmolested.
So! The point of this post is simply that if you subscribe to the “ALL life is sacred, animals included!” and “It’s always wrong to inflict pain!” philosophy, (as 96% of vegetarians do, according to online polls at Scribd.com) then I’m sorry to say, you are a hypocrite. Instead of preaching that others conform to your warped worldview, you might try it first yourself.
- Gingi Edmonds
