Abortion

[adam antichrist]

Fetuses are not just blobs of tissue. Sperm and eggs are tissue, there is a difference. If vegans are very careful to avoid causing pain in animals that aren't as "developed" or "complex," like fish and insects, shouldn't the same rule apply to fetuses? We should work to prevent pain to all species, not just animals.

Ova and sperm are not tissue, they are single cells. Tissue is a matrix of cells, such as an embryo. If you consider a cluster of cells which could never survive outside the female to be alive, and therefore you can't kill it; what are you doing eating products with yeast in it and other microorganisms? Just because an embryo will develop into a foetus and be born a human baby (provided nothing goes wrong) how does it differ at the point when it is a collection of cells in the shape of a baby bird from the bacteria you kill and eat every day?

I don't disagree that late term abortions are brutal and hideous, and if a better option (other than allowing the child to be born) comes up it is preferred. But to say abortion is not vegan is offensive.

One aspect of veganism is we don't want harm to come to other living beings, but if every fertilised egg comes to fruition how much more suffering will that create? How many children will have to live shitty lives when they otherwise would not have been born?

And as for embryonic tissue being used for research, of course that is a good thing. Tissue from abortions can provide stem cells which mean fewer animals in labs exposed to horrific treatment.

In fact, the more foetuses to be aborted right now does mean less suffering for all concerned in the long term. Less children means less consumption, pollution, waste; all the things that are killing the planet and causing the extinctions of plants and animals every day.

[Roxy]

I have not read all the previous threads.

Today I gave anesthesia to a woman for an abortion. I consider it part of my job and do not pass judgement. She was upset and cried. Her boyfriend also cried. She was poor. She had 3 other children who seldom see their fathers. She recently became an American citizen (4 weeks ago) and had no insurance. My department will not get paid and neither will the ob/gyn or the hospital. She received the same anesthesia I give for someone paying 100% of their bill.

She may have had an abortion because she was too sick to bear another child. Or because she was too poor to afford to bear a child ( Adoption? - people don't line up to pay the maternity bills for an unwed mother who may not know the name of the father). She may have gotten pregnant before she met this boyfriend and he didn't want another child. There may have been no fetal heart rate found on ultrasound, therefor the fetus was no longer viable. There may have been physical abnormalities that meant the baby would have been born and died within a few hours (or months after spending a lot of pain and resources in the hospital). She may have been so depressed after bearing her other children that she thought she would do something violent if she added one more to the mix. She may already abuse the children she has. She may have been raped by her father's best friend. Her boyfriend may have threatened her life if she didn't abort. She may not have cried. Her boyfriend may not have cried. She may have smoked crack 2 hours before coming into the hospital (looks the same when you're upset and have been crying). She may have been a vegan for life. She may have been a wealthy woman with all the resources to raise a child.

Guess what? The reason doesn't matter to me. I just pray that abortion doesn't become illegal. Because every reason above is the right reason for someone. And that fetus was coming out, with or without anesthesia, with or without proper medical care. It has always been that way and always will be that way, so long as unwanted pregnancies occur. And they always will.

Thank you Diane. A post well worth thinking about. :)

[Lagamorph]

Well said Diane.

[greenworlds]

Yes, that is why abortions are not performed in the second or third trimester. By then the fetus is becoming more sentient.

The fetus is the early living part of an human-being, our own species, If you prodded a fetus with a sharp needle, do you think it wouldn't make some sort of attempt to show it didn't like it?

By the way, define human race. Its not just based on feellings and rights. And doing an experiment on a fetus, versus terminating a pregnancy before it becomes dangerous to the mother are completely different things. And eating fetuses? Where did this come from? I don't follow your logic.

There is no need to complicate things here, By human-race I mean human- beings collectively. I know there are people who are cruel, savage that don't have much sentience in them. On the whole, because of the lack of care and sentience through-out the meat-eating world we have this situation where people will abort a child rather then allow it into this world, much like a pregnant caged lioness or many other species that will kill their off-springs if there isn't enough food or their is danger of another species wanting to kill them etc. It seems to me abortion is like choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea. We need to be more caring and sentient world-wide and because the vegan lifestyle has to be the most compassionate way to live we ought to be encouraging a future where noone feels they are cornered into aborting their offsprings and stop referring to them like they are machines or dead matter.


[Lagamorph=QUOTE] I think it would be more cruel, as you say, to bring an unwanted child to term and have it suffer in an environment it is not welcome in.

There are many people who can't have babies for one reason or another ( some even BUY them) I think a pregnant female who doesn't want the baby (for whatever reason ought to be, at least encouraged to think about offering the little fellow to a loving couple/family etc.



[Lagamorph=QUOTE] Do you also believe in euthanasia? Relieving someone of their suffering? How about organ donation? Blood donation?

Abortion is a different situation from euthanasia...the aborted person can have a good quality of life..and person who is terminally ill or someone who can't do anything for them selves or even someone who just wants to end their lives, at least they have a choice. The term pro-choice forgets one little fellows choice..does it not? and I don't agree with blood donations as they can use artifacial blood, but instead they choose to emotionally black mail people into thinking that using human blood (the cheaper option) it the only way to save lives. At the end of the day if people lived as we should be living there wouldn't be a need for organ donations etc etc.

[Korn]

Fuck off idiot.

This is a very good example of the kind of posts we don't need here. To disagree with each other is (of course!) totally OK, but attacking others like this will for sure only make people unwelcome here if they don't have the 'right' opinions (according to those who ask them to f**k off.)

It's also a very good example of the kind of posts that will result in a member being set on moderated/delayed posts - at least when users have been breaking our guide lines earlier.

[Lagamorph]

[/QUOTE]We need to be more caring and sentient world-wide and because the vegan lifestyle has to be the most compassionate way to live we ought to be encouraging a future where noone feels they are cornered into aborting their offsprings and stop referring to them like they are machines or dead matter.

Abortion is a different situation from euthanasia...the aborted person can have a good quality of life..and person who is terminally ill or someone who can't do anything for them selves or even someone who just wants to end their lives, at least they have a choice. The term pro-choice forgets one little fellows choice..does it not? and I don't agree with blood donations as they can use artifacial blood, but instead they choose to emotionally black mail people into thinking that using human blood (the cheaper option) it the only way to save lives. At the end of the day if people lived as we should be living there wouldn't be a need for organ donations etc etc.[/QUOTE]


You are kidding right? A person who is terminally ill can be pumped with drugs and their suffering alleviated. You can not guarantee that a child born to every mother is going to have a good quality of life. So the argument can go either way.
Pro choice to me is the ability to choose what happens to your body.
I am not referring to the foetus as a machine nor as garbage, rather a collection of cells. And we can argue about sentience till the cows come home. Truth of the matter is that we dont know. Just because something seems to react a certain way to stimuli, does not make it sentient. You can make a computer program do that. Or simply take a slab of muscle, run an electric current through it and it will twitch, alas, a reaction.

And, yes I agree with you that we do need to be more caring and respect others, however in todays unperfect world, that also means having the ability to choose and respect others choices, even though they may not be our won.
By the way, it has been proven that certain tree species can also omit chemicals that signal 'pain', when they are being cut, aka under stress. Studies have also shown that certain trees provide feeder roots to their saplings. Ever wonder how a tiny tree in the middle of a dense forest ever gets enough chlorophyl. Larger trees, aka parent trees, link their root system to the younger ones, providing them with nutrition. Using your argument then, you should not be eating any plants or using any wood products, no?

And blood donation? I have been a vegan for over 3 years now and have been a regular blood donor. I dont think I am being blackmailed into doing something. It does not feel good to me. I actually cant stand needles, but I have had a few family members and very close friends who had needed blood. I can produce it, why not use it. What is artificial blood made out of anyway? I have not heard of it. Is it plasma? How is it made? Sounds interesting, but too good to be true.
And regarding the organ donation. Even if you lived "as you should" things still can go wrong. I.e. birth defects, accidents, hereditary things that are out of your control. Again, I have had experience with this, consider youself lucky you have not. I dont see your much advertised compassion towards those undoutedly living and sentient people who need to have organ transplants. Yet for a foetus, you are willing to go that extra step.

By the way, I hope you dont think that I am attacking you in any way. I enjoy hearing everyones point of view.

[absentmindedfan]

RIGHT and WRONG are objective qualities, it's when we try to make them subjective that we make wrong decisions.

If any of you are familiar with a concept called post-structuralism, you will realise that right and wrong are only words. We wish them to be transcendental signifieds-words like justice and morality that describe an attibute that exists-but they aren't. They are just words. Everyone has their own subjective understanding of language and what each word means. My definition of right and wrong will be totally different from someone else's. Language is subjective, we cannot experience it any other way. There aren't huge concrete concepts of right and wrong and justice and love floating out there in the universe, only our interpretation of these words. We invest them with universal meaning because we want them to be something more than just words, but they aren't. We can only see subjectively. That's it.
The abortion argument will go on forever, same as the religion argument, the feminism argument and everything else. It's precisely because we can only experience subjectively that these arguments are never solved. If 'right' and 'wrong' really existed, we could resolve these disagreements.

[greenworlds]

Abortion is a different situation from euthanasia...the aborted person can have a good quality of life..and person who is terminally ill or someone who can't do anything for them selves or even someone who just wants to end their lives, at least they have a choice. The term pro-choice forgets one little fellows choice..does it not? and I don't agree with blood donations as they can use artifacial blood, but instead they choose to emotionally black mail people into thinking that using human blood (the cheaper option) it the only way to save lives. At the end of the day if people lived as we should be living there wouldn't be a need for organ donations etc etc.[/QUOTE]


You are kidding right? A person who is terminally ill can be pumped with drugs and their suffering alleviated. You can not guarantee that a child born to every mother is going to have a good quality of life. So the argument can go either way.
Pro choice to me is the ability to choose what happens to your body.
I am not referring to the foetus as a machine nor as garbage, rather a collection of cells.[Lagomorph=QUOTE]

I, also am not out to attack people, just pointing out, that we ought to not get to caught up in opinions and look at the facts, by trying and sort out what is harmful to us and our general surroundings. If people are oking abortion without even having the view that ultimately it is wrong, then I think we are in trouble if we are going to call ourselves 'sentient beings'.

The point I was making about euthanasia is that most people can choose if they want to be euthanised, the unborn child doesn't get that chance.

[Lagomorph=QUOTE] And we can argue about sentience till the cows come home. Truth of the matter is that we dont know. Just because something seems to react a certain way to stimuli, does not make it sentient. You can make a computer program do that. Or simply take a slab of muscle, run an electric current through it and it will twitch, alas, a reaction.[/QUOTE]

When something can clearly run/move/scream out in pain/ defend itself/ call out for help ( even grow into something in this kind of category) I think we can use that as a guidance for what is sentient...a kind of common sense understanding for now at least, for we could say a ie: grown human wasn't sentient..that they were just reacting to stimulus when being dipped in boiling water.

Even if it were correct that a fetus shouldn't be associated with the human stages of growth, Why does that make it ok to kill it before it reaches it's sentient stages?

[Lagomorph=QUOTE], yes I agree with you that we do need to be more caring and respect others, however in todays unperfect world, that also means having the ability to choose and respect others choices, even though they may not be our own.[/QUOTE]

Of course we ought to respect a person has a right to make a decision, but if that decision is harmful then they need to be enlightened..it's called wisdom( something we humans seem to be losing).

Look up artificial blood on the net...I havn't done much seaching but I know jehovah witness's use artificial blood..not come across any vegan AB yet..will look into it another time.

[Nadine]

I agree, accepting abortion is not vegan. Abortion is another way of excising power in saying who should be allowed to live and who should not.. how many people who have authorized an abortion have let the next baby live?

I think you are being presmptious stating that abortion is not vegan & I too find that statement offensive and IMHO untrue.
Is bringing more humans (highly unlikely to be vegan) into this an already unsustainable situation a vegan thing to do?
I do understand where you are coming from but I don't think abortion & veganism are the same issue, there are as DianeVegan eloquently listed a huge range of reasons why people abort, call me non-judgemental, realistic, not a vegan(or would I have to have had an abortion for that to apply?).:confused:

[DianeVegan]

and I don't agree with blood donations as they can use artifacial blood, but instead they choose to emotionally black mail people into thinking that using human blood (the cheaper option) it the only way to save lives. At the end of the day if people lived as we should be living there wouldn't be a need for organ donations etc etc. I realize this is an abortion thread, so please forgive me for this tangent. I donated blood yesterday, which I do regularly, and I also have given blood in the ICU and operating room to patients. There is no substitute for red blood cells. We have not been able to engineer a substance that carries oxygen like red blood cells. We also have not been able to engineer all of the myriad of clotting factors in human blood, needing to keep you from bleeding once you start. Therefore, when your child bleeds out over half of her blood in a car accident she is going to need human red blood cells as well as other blood components (too complicated to get into unless you understand medicine) if she is to live. We can, and do, perform "bloodless" surgery for people who refuse blood transfusions. Oh, they bleed alright, but we use a system to collect and transfuse their own blood if needed. This isn't an option for sugery involving cancer or infection or emergency trauma. Every artificial or human blood product/expander is expensive and has negative side effects. Sad but true.

About organ donations - I agree to it if I die in a way that my organs can be used. I know nurses and doctors who are going to need liver transplants because they contracted Hepatitis C from patients. I hope you agree they were living as they should be, accepting the risks that come with helping sick patients. There are children who need heart transplants, liver transplants and kidney transplants due to congenital defects. Some of these children make it into adulthood before they need those transplants. They certainly didn't abuse their bodies. Getting E. coli from a salad bar can put you into kidney failure, requiring a kidney transplant.

Some people take illegal drugs, abuse alcohol and/or have unprotected sex which leads to infected organs needing to be transplanted. Many times they turn their lives around and become wonderful, transformed people after an organ transplant. Just like some people who have eaten animal products see the light after causing the death of hundreds of sentient beings (vegans).

I understand that certain things are black and white to many people. I live and work in the gray area. Thanks for letting me show you some of the gray.:)

[greenworlds]

If any of you are familiar with a concept called post-structuralism, you will realise that right and wrong are only words. We wish them to be transcendental signifieds-words like justice and morality that describe an attibute that exists-but they aren't. They are just words. Everyone has their own subjective understanding of language and what each word means. My definition of right and wrong will be totally different from someone else's. Language is subjective, we cannot experience it any other way. There aren't huge concrete concepts of right and wrong and justice and love floating out there in the universe, only our interpretation of these words. We invest them with universal meaning because we want them to be something more than just words, but they aren't. We can only see subjectively. That's it.

The abortion argument will go on forever, same as the religion argument, the feminism argument and everything else. It's precisely because we can only experience subjectively that these arguments are never solved. If 'right' and 'wrong' really existed, we could resolve these disagreements.


I believe there is a way of living, in the best way we can,in harmony with the universe that is as harmless to ourselves and other species as we can possibly be, that it is objective, not subjective,. I believe we have lost sight of that objective or don't have the knowledge yet to clearly make objective decisions, All it seems we have are guidelines, instinct etc. I believe there is an absolute right ( good) and a absolute wrong (bad), regardless of the words used to describe these functions. If we seek the ideal..peace to every creature, non-harming eachother etc, that might be a good starting place to distinguish between right and wrong, using subjectivity to seek objectivity.

[greenworlds]

I think you are being presmptious stating that abortion is not vegan & I too find that statement offensive and IMHO untrue.
Is bringing more humans (highly unlikely to be vegan) into this an already unsustainable situation a vegan thing to do?
I do understand where you are coming from but I don't think abortion & veganism are the same issue, there are as DianeVegan eloquently listed a huge range of reasons why people abort, call me non-judgemental, realistic, not a vegan(or would I have to have had an abortion for that to apply?).:confused:

I didn't first state abortion was not vegan here, but I do agree with it. I believe veganism is about not cutting short human or any other species life. I can understand why some people have abortions, much like lioness,mice or any other species might kill their offsprings through feeling cornered,trapped,fear, not being able to support their offsprings etc. In the case of humans, isn't it a case of not enough support from the people and society surrounding the pregnant lady. I believe abortion is like sweeping things under the carpet, not because I want to be judgemental but because I believe it has repercussions on society,the general morale etc.
I believe eating animals is the cause of most of the destructive human behaviour, encluding abortion. I'm an idealist that believes we shouldn't lose sight of the ideals otherwise we just get lost and start thinking conduct like abortion is prefectly alright.

[greenworlds]

I realize this is an abortion thread, so please forgive me for this tangent. I donated blood yesterday, which I do regularly, and I also have given blood in the ICU and operating room to patients. There is no substitute for red blood cells. We have not been able to engineer a substance that carries oxygen like red blood cells. We also have not been able to engineer all of the myriad of clotting factors in human blood, needing to keep you from bleeding once you start. Therefore, when your child bleeds out over half of her blood in a car accident she is going to need human red blood cells as well as other blood components (too complicated to get into unless you understand medicine) if she is to live. We can, and do, perform "bloodless" surgery for people who refuse blood transfusions. Oh, they bleed alright, but we use a system to collect and transfuse their own blood if needed. This isn't an option for sugery involving cancer or infection or emergency trauma. Every artificial or human blood product/expander is expensive and has negative side effects. Sad but true.

About organ donations - I agree to it if I die in a way that my organs can be used. I know nurses and doctors who are going to need liver transplants because they contracted Hepatitis C from patients. I hope you agree they were living as they should be, accepting the risks that come with helping sick patients. There are children who need heart transplants, liver transplants and kidney transplants due to congenital defects. Some of these children make it into adulthood before they need those transplants. They certainly didn't abuse their bodies. Getting E. coli from a salad bar can put you into kidney failure, requiring a kidney transplant.

Some people take illegal drugs, abuse alcohol and/or have unprotected sex which leads to infected organs needing to be transplanted. Many times they turn their lives around and become wonderful, transformed people after an organ transplant. Just like some people who have eaten animal products see the light after causing the death of hundreds of sentient beings (vegans).

I understand that certain things are black and white to many people. I live and work in the gray area. Thanks for letting me show you some of the gray.:)

regarding Blood transfusions...you will have to admit the medical profession does give the impression that human blood is the available blood the save peoples lives..when there are other substances. and the more people that ask for the alternative the better? I'm no expert, but do not humans produce blood cells themselve? also when I hear that that life saving alternatives are too expensive I wonder why the people who control the general welfare of society( gover-mental, health authorities etc) aren't imprisoned for mismanagement of funds.. feathering their own nests! Why people put up with them I don't know!

[DianeVegan]

Most people have no idea what products are used to maintain their lives when they are in the hospital. If human blood products are used, there is usually other non-blood product expanders used as well. It's not just one or the other, but rather which products will work on which patient for which problem. Patients can't ask for alternatives (ie, a non-existant oxygen carrying engineered substance) if they don't exist. And I'm sorry, but most patients don't have the medical knowledge to understand when an alternative does or doesn't exist. And hospitals aren't like restaurants with doctors offering a menu of engineered and real blood components.

It takes almost 2 weeks for the body to grow a mature red blood cell. Therefore, a person spilling 3 liters of it on the highway doesn't have time to grow his own.

I don't know what you mean by "life saving alternatives are too expensive." Are you referring to the fact that sometimes we don't use the most expensive products in medicine to save lives? That sometimes we use cheaper methods because that way we can do more with less? Should I be paid less so that every person coming into the operating room gets the most expensive alternative even if it's no better than the cheaper one? Or are you referring to the fact that we don't always spend thousands of dollars to save every life? I saw the misconception that every life can be saved by many families with loved ones in the intensive care unit. Saving a life that will never be able to live without artificial means is not quality life to me. I would never put a loved one through the torture of certain life-saving measures (which are always expensive and rarely do more than extend the dying process).

[Seaside]

I think you are being presmptious stating that abortion is not vegan & I too find that statement offensive and IMHO untrue.
Is bringing more humans (highly unlikely to be vegan) into this an already unsustainable situation a vegan thing to do?
I do understand where you are coming from but I don't think abortion & veganism are the same issue, there are as DianeVegan eloquently listed a huge range of reasons why people abort, call me non-judgemental, realistic, not a vegan(or would I have to have had an abortion for that to apply?).:confused:
How is killing vegan?
If people want abortions I will not oppose them. But calling killing vegan is a mistake. Especially when it is voluntary killing. The argument has been made that vegans kill all kinds of microscopic critters like yeasts (which are plants, not animals) just by living and eating. This is unavoidable. Abortion is avoidable killing. We can call it whatever we want, if it makes us feel better, and we can find all kinds of eloquent reasons to justify it, just like the omnis do when justifying their wish to kill animals. But abortion is killing a living thing, and killing isn't vegan.

[terrace max]

We can call it whatever we want, if it makes us feel better, and we can find all kinds of eloquent reasons to justify it, just like the omnis do when justifying their wish to kill animals. But abortion is killing a living thing, and killing isn't vegan.

But there remains a significant difference between getting pregnant and eating meat. Noone can say that they went to the store, bought meat and ate it by accident. It's never a result of human fallibility - it's simply a very bad, lazy moral choice. Which we're entitled to condemn.

This same ethical yardstick cannot be applied to abortion. In the real world (as opposed to the sin-free utopia of religious fundamentalists, or others) people have sex. Sometimes they even get drunk first. Neither of these are morally wrong IMO. But they can result in an unwanted pregnancy. You can file it under 'shit happens', rather than 'moral outrage'. You can't conflate abortion and killing for this reason. Unwanted pregnancy would still arise in any morally perfect society, just through humans doing what humans do.

Still in the real world though, it may be better to destroy that incipient human being than to expose it to a lifetime of misery. Who's to say? Not me. Certainly not some cruel religious zealot. IMO the only person ENTITLED to make that decision is the mother of whom the foetus is still an appendage.

To say otherwise betrays privilege rather than moral insight, I think.

I have to ask anyone who thinks abortion is just plain killing - is the woman who terminates a pregnancy arising from a rape, a killer?

[Troub]

I am for life.

In every sence of the word.



Against Deathpenalty. Against abortion. For animal liberation.

I believe that no man has the right to end or prevent the life of another.

[Lily]

As far as I'm concerned, the only times killing can be justified are when it is a case of self-defence ie. kill or be killed, or to put an end to another's extreme suffering that cannot be relieved by any other means.

[Nadine]

Sometimes going through with an unwanted pregnancy could effectively feel like the end of the mothers life... I doubt that the decision to abort is taken lightly by the vast majority of those who choose to.

[sugarmouse]

well said terrace max.

im vegan, but im not pro life where itcomes to abortion...i frankly dont bother about human life at all..im very much a misanthropist..lol

and i would rather there were no cows/chickens/pigs..than there were millions of them suffering and leading horrific lives day in day out, until theyre killed:(

[TinaBoBina]

[quote=greenworlds]

Of course we ought to respect a person has a right to make a decision, but if that decision is harmful then they need to be enlightened..it's called wisdom( something we humans seem to be losing).

Enlightened? Who is the ultimate decision-maker as to what enlightenment is? If you have cornered the market on the closed category of "wisdom", then congratulations- you've ended thousands of years of debate.

Many decisions are harmful. If you see someone eating a chocolate bar, should you snatch it away from them because YOU know better? If someone makes a bad career choice, should YOU be the one to step in to guide them? A large (and significant) part of the abortion debate is the issue of choice. Where do you draw the line when it comes to what some people think is best for others? Do you know ANYONE with whom you share every opinion? What if every decision you made was regulated by majoritarian rule? Most people in Canada are Christian, most people in India are Hindu- which religion is right? Does "enlightenment" provide us with an answer? We have social checks and balances in place for a reason. A person in a free society holds authority over his/her life.

According to Canadian law, anyway, a woman is NOT held to have a duty of care over her unborn foetus. She cannot "abuse" her foetus, she cannot "mistreat" it in the eyes of the law, and she can, within an appropriate window of time, choose to abort it. Why do you think that is? It is a part of HER body, and she is in charge of HER body. At what point are others allowed to step in and tell her what to do? You can get onto a slippery and scary slope- say we DO give the foetus rights. Should she be monitored, then, by an outside authority to ensure that she eats properly? Who decides what she eats? What if she isn't vegetarian? Perhaps someone should make sure she sleeps enough. Perhaps pregnant women should register so that they can be held accountable under some kind of federal legislation. Maybe these sound like good ideas to you, but they seem ludicrous to me.

Our society takes great care to interfere as little as possible with people's private lives. They can raise their children however they choose- with certain habits, beliefs, religions, whatever. No two families work the same way, which is why we don't regulate things like that. We may disagree with most people and find their beliefs abhorrent, but those are choices that they, as citizens equal under the law, have a right to make. Therefore, to suggest that a woman should not have a right to choose whether or not to bring a child into this world violates the very principles by which we live our lives, and to hide behind a shield of purported "enlightenment" or "wisdom" suggests a belief in a kind of universal, empirical totalitarian morality. As I said before, good for anyone who's discovered that magical code. From where I stand, though, there's only my subjective opinion, your subjective opinion, and a million others. Who's the winner who's right? Don't know? Then maybe freedom to make our own decisions isn't such a bad thing after all.

[Seaside]

But there remains a significant difference between getting pregnant and eating meat. Noone can say that they went to the store, bought meat and ate it by accident. It's never a result of human fallibility - it's simply a very bad, lazy moral choice. Which we're entitled to condemn.

This same ethical yardstick cannot be applied to abortion. In the real world (as opposed to the sin-free utopia of religious fundamentalists, or others) people have sex. Sometimes they even get drunk first. Neither of these are morally wrong IMO. But they can result in an unwanted pregnancy. You can file it under 'shit happens', rather than 'moral outrage'. You can't conflate abortion and killing for this reason. Unwanted pregnancy would still arise in any morally perfect society, just through humans doing what humans do.
Presenting human fallibility as a valid excuse to kill someone is still the same kind of logic used by omnis to defend their actions. Only a very small minority of people view meat eating as a lazy moral choice. I am sure the number of people who see the actions leading up to unwanted pregnancy as lazy moral choices is much larger. To me, none of this matters. Abortion is what it is regardless of how many different viewpoints exist about it. If a person wants to have an abortion, I will neither try to stop them, nor will I condemn them. I just don't think the definition of veganism should be waterd down to include abortion as an approved activity.

I have to ask anyone who thinks abortion is just plain killing - is the woman who terminates a pregnancy arising from a rape, a killer?
Yes. Just as I would be a killer if I had to kill a bear or a mountain lion who was about to attack me, and could find no other way to stop the attack. If I have killed someone, that makes me a killer. Sometimes there are compelling reasons to kill. That doesn't mean that when you have had a compelling reason to kill, and do so, that you haven't actually killed, because you had a good reason to do it.

I am sure that in the vegan community, the whole issue of terminating pregnancy is not viewed as casually as it has been by some women who view it as simply another method of birth control. I just think that trying to deal with attitudes toward abortion by denying its essential nature, calling the aborted being "a collection of cells", and trying to give it the vegan "stamp of approval", is an exercise in fitting your ethics around your lifestyle instead of fitting your lifestyle around your ethics.

[terrace max]

Thank you for your interesting reply Seaside. :)

I'm still troubled that a morality which takes no account of the inevitability of human fallibility - especially in matters sexual - is theoretically attractive, but remains practically useless.

I feel any morality has to work at both theoretical and practical levels - like veganism does.

I suspect the actual choice in this 'abortion issue', in terms of social policy, is between allowing abortion or having mandatory vasectomy/hysterectomy for all sexually competent human beings.

I can envisage, however remotely, a vegan society. On the other hand, sexual continence and humanity just isn't going to happen. (Ask any TV envangelist ;) )

[DianeVegan]

I am sure that in the vegan community, the whole issue of terminating pregnancy is not viewed as casually as it has been by some women who view it as simply another method of birth control.
In my experience as a clinician, I have yet to meet the woman who views abortion as simply another method of birth control. I have met women whom, unable to obtain 100% birth control with barrier, spermicidal or other methods, will certainly use abortion as the method of last resort. But to presume that there are women who would put their body and psyche through the ordeal of abortion as simply a form of birth control is not realistic. I've met thousands of patients whom have had abortions - and I have not met the women you describe.

[Seaside]

Thank you for your interesting reply Seaside. :)

I'm still troubled that a morality which takes no account of the inevitability of human fallibility - especially in matters sexual - is theoretically attractive, but remains practically useless.

I feel any morality has to work at both theoretical and practical levels - like veganism does.
My own moral beliefs are mine alone. I kind of make them up for myself as I go along, rather than subscribing to other people's, and I only apply them to other people's actions in terms of whether I would choose the same behavior. My issue isn't so much the morality of the situation, as the denial of its nature.

But to presume that there are women who would put their body and psyche through the ordeal of abortion as simply a form of birth control is not realistic. I've met thousands of patients whom have had abortions - and I have not met the women you describe.
I'm not presuming a thing. One of my oldest friends is just such a person. I don't like it, and she knows it, but she is my friend, and she knows that too. But she has had more than one abortion, and she is very callous about it.