Abortion

[puffin]

They will not tell you the sex of your child in the hospital here because of the reasons you have mentioned. The whole thing is very upsetting.

[sugarmouse]

~That happens in some areas around here, mothers are not allowed to know the sex of their child in case they ffollow a certain religion which condemns mothers for having girls.madness are some religions:confused: :(

[toma_Paella!!!]

I think eating meat is sub human, so nothing such an eater does is suprising to me, shocking yes, suprising no.:(

Totally agree... :(
The thing is, I've always thought that most Hindus are vegetarian, so awful things like these sound horrible and surprising to me

[greenworlds]

Totally agree... :(
The thing is, I've always thought that most Hindus are vegetarian, so awful things like these sound horrible and surprising to me

I would be suprised if any vegetarian Hindus practiced conscious killing in any form, Surely they wouldn't be practicing true Hinduism. ( not that I'm an expert on hinduism) My understanding is the main teaching of Hinduism is to respect all living creatures.




"Peace to all_kind"

[princessemma]

I saw a documentry/ film a few yrs ago showing an indian lady in india who had been set on fire because she hadn't produced a baby boy,

Why do they still believe it's the egg that determins the sex of the baby?

[greenworlds]

Why do they still believe it's the egg that determins the sex of the baby?

Even with that belief, why blame the women themselves? and even if the women did somehow detemine the sex of the baby, Burning them alive!!??:confused: It can only be the actions of sub_ human meat eating people, After all people that eat animals cause the most horrendous crimes that are imaginable.

[indianvegan]

Totally agree... :(
The thing is, I've always thought that most Hindus are vegetarian, so awful things like these sound horrible and surprising to me


I do feel like you.

But, it is bitter truth. Hindus, do eat Cake/Pastries which usually made with the help of Eggs. People knowingly become ignorant about the fact. They just take it for granted. In Indian Vegetarian community,eating eggs is considered as much as eating Meat.

As far as Abortion is considered, lust for having son as a child is so much that they go to the extereme. However, recently, govt. has made laws for Sonography centers, they have been debarred from declaring gender. Many of Hindus and Jain saints have also raised their voice against the act of abortion, but people are crazy.

It is also true that in some of joint families, women have to face torture/punishment/nagging directly or indirectly by their in-laws and husband too,when they are not able to give to birth to a male baby.

It is common perception and feelings amongst all family that only a Male baby carries/passes on family nucleus/name to next generation.

And for the same reason, male kids are given more love and affection in the family and even better & nutritious foods too. People though deny it but it is again bitter truth of Indian families. :mad:

Having lust for male baby is also one of most important reason for the growing population of my country. People go on producing babies till their lust is fullfilled.

Personally myself do not have any prefernce for my son and daughter.:) I always advice my daughter to make own image and standing in the society.

There are many nice couples in the society also who have only single daughter.

Manish Jain.

[greenworlds]

Regardless of the 'negative' aspects of some families of Indian families, the over all influence of Vegetarianism from Indian has had a positive influence in the west,' would veganism have existed without vegetarianism? I've half be doing some research to see if there are or were any Indians that obstained from all animal products before 1944..It seems the nearest hindus to that way of living are some Jains, but not any that practiced a vegan lifestyle. It seems Donald Watson was the first Vegan of recorded time.

[Smoothie]

i believe that abortion is every womans right - there are too many good reasons why someone would choose not to have a baby. i had an abortion as a 16 year old. i was in school, didn't live home, i'd only been with my boyfriend for a couple of months. and it wasn't cause we didn't protect ourselves, it just happened anyway. no birth protection is 100%. what kind of a life would it be, to be born with a teenage mom, broke and probably without the father? i find that i did the right thing, and nothing you say can convince me that i was wrong. i don't know how many of you who have actually tried to be in the situation - being pregnant, FEELING the child inside you, feeding from you - and how hard it is to just let it go. but i had/have nothing to offer a child, and probably won't for the next ten years. i don't believe that it is respect for life, to give birth to a baby, that you KNOW you can't make happy. that you can't give all it needs to be a fulfilled human being. i believe that i did the right thing.

and then there are all the moral issues: well, what if the woman has a husband who beats her up every night, and she don't think she can let that happen to her child?
what if it is a woman who has no money, no place to live, can't afford the food and what else she needs for a baby?
what if this woman had a one night stand and don't even know the name of the father?
what if.. whatever?
this world is NOT perfect. in a perfect world, people would be able to raise every child ever made, but this is not the reality. people are poor, sick, too young, too mental, just not ready to deal with the consequences of having a baby.

i don't think it is to respect life, to bring up a child, that you know won't be happy. life is not everything. life quality is a lot too. i wouldn't feel bad about killing a creature - animal or human, who was in so much pain that would never end. sometimes death is better than the alternative.

[Tray]

I believe that abortion is a women problem so It's their choice, honestly I find ridicolous people who think that they can decide for other's people problem as men do and as women do for other women

[sugarmouse]

smoothie you took the words right out of my (vegan) cake hole!!

thers a quote i love...lol dont know who said it
'no woman wants an abortion.she either wants a child,or wants to not get pregnant'
abortion is not something anyone WANTS.but it can be a necessary thing to do in certain circumstance.
however, i hear of people using it as contraception, as a complete cynic this is not unbelievable..but at the same time i do hope it is not true, that any woman would think that way.

[Lilac Hamster]

There is always a more compassionate answer to the problems you talk about Smoothie, and that is adoption, not abortion. I do not understand why you did not do this. You could have let your child go alive to a loving family instead of getting someone to kill it. You might be able to feel more proud of yourself if you had done that. Many women are very unhappy and grief-stricken about having had abortions, it can hit them many years later when they come out of the state of denial. Abortion is likely to have affected you deeply, more than you are seeing right now. Did you ever investigate the help you could get with having the baby or with getting it adopted and being sure that it went to a good family and was likely to have a good life? The problem is how many 16 year olds know what the options really are? When you are young you do not know much, and then learn a lot later in life. I did not even decide I was pro-life until I really looked into the issues in my early 20s and IF I had had an abortion in my teens I think it would have destroyed me because it would have been a very much uninformed choice, which I would have regretted later. 16 is far too young to make such a life-changing choice. How sad that no-one told you why it was so very unwise to sleep with someone so soon, a couple of months of seeing someone is way too early on at any age, especially as a teenager. Do you not even regret putting yourself in the situation of having an abortion? Isn't prevention and education better?
Many couples break up right after an abortion, it causes a great strain on any relationship.

Before you bang on about the woman's right to choose maybe you should do some more research about the development of the unborn child, and how early it is a sentient being, just as an animal is, then you will surely see that abortion is morally no different from killing animals to eat. It is very definitely not in the spirit of veganism to kill unnecessarily in this way.

It appals me that many women have abortions not knowing the painful death they are putting the unborn baby through, how many drs tell you it is sentient? If you advocate choice, you should have had the proper information to make the choice, especially about foetal sentience and developmental stages.

www.visembryo.com (this is not a biased pro-life or pro-choice site but a real medical information site)

Abortion might be necessary to save the mother's life in a very small number of cases, but otherwise it is not necessary. Having a baby that is not planned is not a terrible disaster and I cannot understand how people would regard it that way!
Pregnancy and childbirth is perfectly natural after all.

Banning abortion is not about people deciding for other people that which is not their business, it's about whether we should be letting someone decide about someone else's entitlement to life. Abortion is a form of child-killing and should no more be seen as private and personal business than child abuse or wife-beating, so I do want the law to protect the unborn baby's basic human right to live, the same as I want born people protected from violence. It is especially horrible that they allow it so late, so that some are aborted at the same stage as premature babies are born and can survive. Even just a few weeks lower time limit would save a few lives and some of the suffering.

Lesley

[indianvegan]

Lesley, I fully agree with you.

Killing/Destruction is very simple and easy, conservation is tough.

Manish Jain

[veggiewoman]

this link slightly goes off the subject a bit but is still about abortion, I found it today and noticed on this thread about religions etc RE abortion.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/5125810.stm

The 'curse' of having a girl



Last Updated: Thursday, 29 June 2006, 13:49 GMT 14:49 UK http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/dot_629.gif
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/email.gif E-mail this to a friend (http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/email/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/5125810.stm)http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/print.gif Printable version (http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/5125810.stm)
The 'curse' of having a girl

By Navdip Dhariwal
BBC News, Delhi
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/999999.gif


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41823000/jpg/_41823294_india_girl300.jpg Some villages haven't seen the birth of a female in years


India might be a country rushing headlong into 21st century but every year thousands of babies are aborted or killed at birth because they are girls.
Our correspondent contemplates this as she prepares to have a baby herself.
The heat is stifling here. Some days it's pushing 45 degrees. My body is overheating and we're only two thirds of the way there!
I'm not alone - 25 million other women are expected to give birth in India this year. With the very best medical care, our bundle of joy stands a good chance, but one out of 22 Indian babies will not survive beyond its first month.
According to UNICEF, poor nutrition and hygiene, and a high number of young mothers contribute to low birth weights and slim chances of survival.
Killed at birth
If our baby is a girl - her arrival is likely to be greeted, by some, with condolences. A friend - delighted with his new daughter soon became infuriated at comments that his home had been cursed with a girl.
"Relatives arrived laden with gifts of sweet meats," he said. "They cuddled her and shook their heads at our misfortune."
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gifhttp://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/start_quote_rb.gif My mother told me how guilty and how much of a failure she was made to feel when I arrived a year after my older sister. http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/end_quote_rb.gif





These are attitudes engrained in many sections of Indian society. More than 10 million female fetuses have been aborted in India in the last two decades.
The prospect of paying a dowry and knowing a daughter could never generate the income of a son is enough for some families to commit murder.
In my parents' native Punjab, girls are often killed at birth. It has skewed the ratio of girls to boys so much that some villages have not seen the birth of a female in years. Thousands of men in rural areas now have trouble finding a wife.
I remember the stories my mother told me - of the neighbour who would take baby girls in the middle of the night and drown them in the village well. My mother also told me how guilty and how much of a failure she was made to feel when I arrived a year after my older sister.
It is not only in the countryside that daughters are unwanted. Middle class, educated women are often at the front of the queue to terminate.
Blessings and curses
What a contrast to the welcome a boy receives. Then the gates of the baby's home will be crowded with screeching Hijaras.
They are eunuchs - castrated men, long haired and unshaven, dressed in bright Salwaar Kameezes or saris. Fierce, aggressive and unrelenting, they wander from home to home searching out new born sons and demanding cash.
"Your good fortune must be shared," they say, "otherwise we will shower you with curses or steal your baby".
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gifhttp://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/start_quote_rb.gif Did the doctor really think that I would terminate the pregnancy if I was told a girl was on the way? http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/end_quote_rb.gif





Theirs is a flourishing trade, profiting from deep rooted superstitions. The eunuchs' blessings and curses can be equally potent, so neighbours advise you to pay them off handsomely.
But we will not know the sex of our child until it is born. It is illegal for doctors to divulge the information because of the widespread termination of female fetuses.
We suggested to the charming middle-aged doctor that as foreigners surely that rule need not apply to us - he had already told other friends who are both white, the sex of their baby.
But the doctor smiled and shook his head. "Bad timing," he said, "I couldn't possibly - a colleague of mine has just been locked up and paraded in front of the local press for revealing the sex of a baby".
I am of Indian descent but my husband is a blonde, blue-eyed and fiercely proud Scotsman. He was gob-smacked. I felt deflated - did the doctor really think that I would terminate the pregnancy if I was told a girl was on the way?
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41823000/jpg/_41823292_navdip203.jpg Navdip does not know the sex of her unborn baby


We could not know our baby's sex but we reassured each other that at least the scan showed it was healthy.
If all goes well, we will greet our new arrival at the end of August.
When we take him or her home from hospital, the baby will have its first glimpse of Delhi life.
Blaring car horns, loud belching exhaust fumes, the electronic beats of Bollywood tracks - all competing for attention in the kaleidoscope of sound that fills the air.
And the smells too, the foul stench across the highway from the Yamuna river: an exotic blend of poisonous sewage and household waste.
Along these banks sit small children who squat, wash and drink from the river. Their homes are in the filthy shanty towns that line the road the three of us will take home.
Dressed in rags, they will come scrambling towards our car and peer through the windows to stare at the child born into privilege. One grubby hand outstretched, the other motioning to a hungry mouth, they will beg for a share in our good fortune.
This is the world you came into, I will tell our child when he or she is old enough: a country on the cusp of incredible change. Full of contrast, contradiction and sometimes abject horror. It is the home of your maternal ancestors, I will say, and just as my mother raised me with stories of a past that helped shape and direct me - I plan to do the same with you. From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 29 June, 2006 at 1100 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3187926.stm)for World Service transmission times.

[gogs67]

It can only be the actions of sub_ human meat eating people, After all people that eat animals cause the most horrendous crimes that are imaginable.
As do also,some that don't eat animals.;)

[greenworlds]

As do also,some that don't eat animals.;)


weighing up statically on the crimes commited by non- meating people and meat- eating herds, which has the most child- molestors, serial killers, and have a general disregard for sentient life?:confused:

[greenworlds]

As do also,some that don't eat animals.;)

I get your meanimg now, indeed!

[BRobinson]

...When you are young you do not know much, and then learn a lot later in life. I did not even decide I was pro-life until I really looked into the issues in my early 20s and IF I had had an abortion in my teens I think it would have destroyed me because it would have been a very much uninformed choice, which I would have regretted later. 16 is far too young to make such a life-changing choice. How sad that no-one told you why it was so very unwise to sleep with someone so soon, a couple of months of seeing someone is way too early on at any age, especially as a teenager.

It's always going to be convenient for you to say that your age and experience give you a handle on some truth that younger people haven't yet grasped, but let me point out that there are 80 year old pro-choice activists. Your notion that with maturity comes the realization of the truth of the pro-life position does not hold up. Just because you arrived at that conclusion does not mean anyone else will as a necessary result of aging.


Before you bang on about the woman's right to choose maybe you should do some more research about the development of the unborn child, and how early it is a sentient being, just as an animal is, then you will surely see that abortion is morally no different from killing animals to eat. It is very definitely not in the spirit of veganism to kill unnecessarily in this way.

Don't be absurd, in no way does 'the spirit of veganism' 'definitely' reject abortion in principle. Ending unnecessary suffering could justifiably be said to be the end of veganism, but in no way does that logically necessitate opposition to abortion.

Firstly, veganism depends on each individual's definition of what might be involved with the notion of 'necessary' suffering. For most vegans, the deaths of animals through the tending and harvesting of croplands for human consumption would qualify as necessary suffering, but speak to a fruitarian (a group I include in veganism) and you'll see that even that suffering is not necessarily necessary.

As for abortion, as you've noted a fetus might be posited as conscious shortly after the development of its nervous system and brain. But this doesn't begin to happen until the 5th week of pregnancy. As such, we can safely assume that any abortion performed up to the 5th week of pregnancy is entirely ok because we can assume that the fetus up to that point cannot suffer. Just on that point alone, you see how your statement that veganism is opposed to abortion falls apart as a general principle.

Even with abortions performed later into the pregnancy, though we can assume the fetus is conscious, we cannot arbitrarily assume that there are no instances where it would be justified to end the pregnancy. I personally would always leave that decision up to the mother, as there's no need to bring unwanted children into this world when 30,000+ children die every day of starvation.

It appals me that many women have abortions not knowing the painful death they are putting the unborn baby through, how many drs tell you it is sentient? If you advocate choice, you should have had the proper information to make the choice, especially about foetal sentience and developmental stages.

You're assuming Smoothie didn't consider all this. Step off the pedestal for a second and realize that we're all equally blind, and it's only by helping each other that we see anything more through the haze. Don't chastise the poor woman for a choice she's already made. She may well be just as informed as you; many people go through that awkward period of reconsidering their values and perspectives much sooner than their twenties.

Abortion might be necessary to save the mother's life in a very small number of cases, but otherwise it is not necessary. Having a baby that is not planned is not a terrible disaster and I cannot understand how people would regard it that way!

It doesn't have to be a terrible disaster, perhaps, but nor does it have to be some wonderful blessing from on high, either. And going by my observation of how bad people can mess up children, I wouldn't ask anyone to dive right into having them unless they really were sure they wanted to.

Banning abortion is not about people deciding for other people that which is not their business, it's about whether we should be letting someone decide about someone else's entitlement to life. Abortion is a form of child-killing and should no more be seen as private and personal business than child abuse or wife-beating, so I do want the law to protect the unborn baby's basic human right to live, the same as I want born people protected from violence. It is especially horrible that they allow it so late, so that some are aborted at the same stage as premature babies are born and can survive. Even just a few weeks lower time limit would save a few lives and some of the suffering.


I think you're putting far to much interest behind protecting human fetus'. Far, far fewer abortions are performed each year than are animals slaughtered, so wouldn't it be more pertinent to vegan activism to worry about the 20+ billion adult animals slaughtered than to concern yourself with the less clear morality of legal abortions?

I'm not saying there has to be a choice, but in terms of sheer numbers and in terms of what constitutes clear suffering, the pro-life issue doesn't deserve the sort of vehement opposition you're advocating here. Giving it undue priority carries taints of speciesism.

[gogs67]

You're assuming Smoothie didn't consider all this. Step off the pedestal for a second and realize that we're all equally blind, and it's only by helping each other that we see anything more through the haze. Don't chastise the poor woman for a choice she's already made. She may well be just as informed as you; many people go through that awkward period of reconsidering their values and perspectives much sooner than their twenties.



.

Well said.

[sugarmouse]

I feel guilty nw that Smoothie toook the brunt ofthat argment when I had already just said I totally agreed (and still do) with her! I have also had an abortion, and I will nevr regret that.

[Lilac Hamster]

I'm not being speciesist, I am against aborting animals foetuses too, so how does that make me speciesist? It seems to me that abortion is the worst form of ageism, so it is another form of inequality just like racism, speciesism, etc.

I do find most pro-lifers very speciesist, many of them eat animals, but then many vegans are speciesist against their own species, especially against the youngest and most vulnerable, as has been demonstrated in this thread so what is the difference?

Fewer animals are killed in hunting than for food and yet many vegans campaigned vigorously against hunting because it was a more winnable battle! So it seems equally reasonable for a vegan to be actively pro-life if they feel strongly about it, it makes them no less anti-speciesist. Besides you know nothing about me, I am way more active as a vegan than I am as a pro-lifer, but for me the morality is certainly no less clear on abortion than it is on animal abuse.

If someone considers themselves adult enough to make a decision to end someone else's life when it is in their hands then hopefully they are adult enough to accept that they will also at some time attract criticism and disagreement over what they did.

Most women do not know they are pregnant early enough to abort before sentience begins, most abortions are definitely done after 5 weeks.

Lesley

[BRobinson]

Fewer animals are killed in hunting than for food and yet many vegans campaigned vigorously against hunting because it was a more winnable battle! So it seems equally reasonable for a vegan to be actively pro-life if they feel strongly about it, it makes them no less anti-speciesist. Besides you know nothing about me, I am way more active as a vegan than I am as a pro-lifer, but for me the morality is certainly no less clear on abortion than it is on animal abuse.

I was going off what you were arguing in the thread, nothing more.

You are right about hunting being perhaps a 'more winnable battle', but there will be the question of what to do when the wild herds grow too large for their environment to support. Given that we won't be able to convince the US government anytime soon that it is better to induce birth-control measures in the population than it is to let people who enjoy hunting cull the herd numbers, it has indeed become questionable just how much more winnable that fight is. As it currently stands with the issue of hunting, I don't expect any significant progress to be made anytime soon. The NRA is too powerful, as are the other hunting groups.

Perhaps a better example for your case would be vivisection, where the people who we are trying to persuade are more susceptible to ethical and rational argumentation about justifiability of their activities. Here too, the number of animals involved are far fewer than an agribusiness, but the potential for change certainly seems to justify the effort. As can be seen in the more aggressive tactics of groups such as Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty and Win Animal Rights, the potential of this battle is far from over, and change is constantly being won.

With abortion, however, there is the problem of potential for change. The issue is central in the national (US) consciousness, as it would often seem that people have opinions about abortion before they have opinions about anything else anymore. And from what I can tell about most people, their opinion about abortion is so directly tied into their most basic perspectives on life that to attempt to criticize their views is to be received as though you are attacking the person them-self. The potential for change in this debate is very, very limited, regardless of the specific side. It generally boils down to how a person was raised and their developmental experiences, though that is not a rule as I was raised pro-life and am vehemently pro-choice.

Part of the reason for this division is that the basic question of the personhood of the fetus cannot be clearly resolved in a way that makes legislating on the topic feasible. There are simply too many plausible and opposing perspectives on the subject to make clear mediation possible. You and I might agree that the best option would be to increase sexual education and the availability of contraception, but we would then be fought by people such as the Bush administration who feel that abstinence is the only valid policy in terms of contraception approaches. As such, the best we can hope for (in my opinion) is to permit each individual to follow their own moral guidance when the question of whether to abort comes up, possibly with counseling from an unbiased (ha) mediator and a doctor.

If someone considers themselves adult enough to make a decision to end someone else's life when it is in their hands then hopefully they are adult enough to accept that they will also at some time attract criticism and disagreement over what they did.

But you're missing the point that we all don't agree that a fetus that has progressed past 5 weeks is a person. I'll grant that the fetus after that point deserves moral consideration, but that doesn't necessitate any one outcome. If we use utilitarian reasoning, it's entirely possible that abortions all the way up to birth could be morally justifiable, especially if we don't accept the premise that the fetus deserves special consideration due to its future potential as a more developed being.

You may object to such utilitarian reasoning based on the notion of rights, but what about the animals that are necessarily killed in the development of croplands? If we take the notion of rights literally, then it is always morally wrong to terminate a subject of a life. If that's the case, then is the farmer morally wrong if he necessarily kills subjects of a life when he goes to grows crops that will sustain the population? The notion of rights have a problem when it comes down to practical applications of rights-based moral principles.

Again, if I have Regan's rights-based approach wrong, correct me please.

Most women do not know they are pregnant early enough to abort before sentience begins, most abortions are definitely done after 5 weeks.


Certainly agreed. I raised that point only in illustrating that it is not true from the general vegan perspective that abortion is always wrong.

[Old Wolf]

You may object to such utilitarian reasoning based on the notion of rights, but what about the animals that are necessarily killed in the development of croplands? If we take the notion of rights literally, then it is always morally wrong to terminate a subject of a life. If that's the case, then is the farmer morally wrong if he necessarily kills subjects of a life when he goes to grows crops that will sustain the population? The notion of rights have a problem when it comes down to practical applications of rights-based moral principles.



An interesting thing I notice in the abortion discussion is that it closely mirrors the debate on vivisection. In pro-vivisection arguments, the worth of human life is put on a rather high pedestal, which allows for certain utility arguments.

The same measure of worth is implicit in anti-abortion arguments: the potential and life of one mass of cells (fetus) is considered worth more than the actions and sentiments of another cellular mass (mother).

I've never in principle liked arguments that require measures of superiority, since these measures cannot be anything but subjective and usually are incapable of being well-defined.

I think we in the vegan camp sometimes sanctify life a bit too much. Life is just a condition, a state of being, an arrangement of molecules and particles. So is death for that matter. Indeed, the atoms that constitute your body and mind have spent and will spend far more time in a dismantled, non-sentient state than they will as a person. I'm not really sure why we are so attached to our egos, as such.*

In this light, abortion is practically a non-issue, and really carries little more weight than deciding which fork of a forest path to take. (We should note that at first we might be inclined apply the same logic to murder. But murder is a social action, and falls under a different umbrella of ethical considerations. Regardless of whether you see an unborn fetus (able to sustain itself or not) as a full person with rights and privlidges, a fetus is not a social creature by its very nature, and cannot make or breach any social contracts. To extent social ethical systems to include a fetus is an arbitrary choice, and one not agreed upon, not the least because of the arbitrariness.)
---

* I recognize the heavy materialist slant here. However, moralisms that operate with a set of axioms that includes some form of spirituality can only be self-consistent. Never can they be extended to include a more global context precisely because spiritual experiences are anecdotal and personal. We can all agree with some confidence that given any number of sober people with brains and eyes that function normally, they will all agree that they see a rock that is placed before them. This is why we CAN extend materialst philosophies, even though some might reject the basic axioms (Well, it is a paraphrasing of why. The real reason rests with the number and type of underlying assumptions that make up materialist and spiritual moralisms.)

[BRobinson]

In this light, abortion is practically a non-issue, and really carries little more weight than deciding which fork of a forest path to take. (We should note that at first we might be inclined apply the same logic to murder. But murder is a social action, and falls under a different umbrella of ethical considerations. Regardless of whether you see an unborn fetus (able to sustain itself or not) as a full person with rights and privlidges, a fetus is not a social creature by its very nature, and cannot make or breach any social contracts. To extent social ethical systems to include a fetus is an arbitrary choice, and one not agreed upon, not the least because of the arbitrariness.)

The problem with contractualism (i.e. morality based on a social contract) is that marginal humans and infant human children, those that conventional moral intuition tells us deserve moral consideration, and non-humans are excluded on the basis of their inability to engage in any such social contract. If we restrict moral protection to those who can deliberate and enter into such contracts, then we exclude infants, animals, the severely mentally disabled, etc. Social contractualism as a moral theory doesn't permit the sort of general reforms a vegan could be expected to advocate, and so I feel the theory should be discarded from these discussions.

I doubt anyone here would argue against conscious fetus' deserving moral consideration. They are, however, a bit of a special case because they a) are attached and dependent upon the mothers' body, b) and may deserve special consideration because of their potential for future development as a normal member of the human species. Some might be comfortable arguing as such about the fetus in terms of its personhood and/or its life-interest. Here is a relevant passage from David DeGrazia's "On the Question of Personhood beyond Homo Sapiens" (found in In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave; ed. Peter Singer 2006):

Most champions of equal consideration for animals acknowledge some morally important differences between normal humans - persons - and most or all nonhuman animals. The point of greatest convergence is the presumption against killing persons is stronger than the presumption against killing nonpersons. This claim is consistent with equal consideration if your life-interest, your interest in remaining alive, is not comparable to your cat's life-interest--if, that is, different things are at stake for you and your cat because you (ordinarily) stand to lose much more from death. Although providing a fully coherent justification for this claim of non-compatibiliity is very difficult, here I simply note that many defenders of animals accept it. Thus, one possible source of importance for personhood is this: personhood is necessary and sufficient for life-interests of full strength.

DeGrazia then goes on to claim that some exceptional animals that he discussed earlier in the essay clearly qualify for personhood on the grounds that they present all the same mental capacities as a human child. He continues:
[but] What about borderline persons? I believe we should regard human and nonhuman borderline persons as having rights to life like ours, though I cannot defend this claim here.

(Here, it should be noted that DeGrazia is using the notion of a right-to-life, a term that I personally prefer not to use in terms of general moral considerations for reasons noted earlier, but which has rhetorical value in terms of our contemporary legal system and conventional thinking.)

Going with the above notion of a 'life-interest,' a human fetus can be said to have limited-to-no life-interests outside of its mother's and father's personal interests. As such, if its life can be terminated without inducing suffering, then it is not clear that that course of action would be morally wrong.

Of course, third-trimester abortions would seem to necessarily involve suffering and so could be argued to be morally wrong. At that point I feel it becomes a moral question for the mother, as the fetus is still internal to and (iirc) dependent upon the mother.

An argument could be made for a fetus' potential interest as a normal human being, but I find this argument specious because of its apparent assumption that all potential human life is worth protecting and propagating. Also, if we follow the 'potential' argument to its foreseeable conclusion, we could end up with a moral prescription similar to the Roman Catholic concept of the moral obligation of married couples to reproduce as much as they are able, or a moral prescription against birth control. We have global population issues, so I don't think we need to be traveling down that particular path.

[forthebirds]

Pre 12 weeks (which is the level at which most UK medicos agree it is better not to do abortions past, although legally speaking they can be done later) over a quarter of pregnancies fail anyway.

This means that at least 25% of these pregnancies are non-viable anyway.

Abortions after 20 weeks - is this even allowed anywhere, except for lifesaving purposes?

Exactly! I love how the reality of when almost all abortions take place is overlooked and the focus is on the tiny percentage that go past 12 weeks. And that so many pregnancies naturally end in miscarriages anyway. We don't issue death certificates for miscarriages at 12 weeks for a reason - it is not yet a fully developed entity. Nor do we issue birth certificates at conception.

I'll never understand the comparison between humans deliberately forcing animals to breed to bring offspring into existence only to be tortured, killed and eaten to a woman choosing to abort a fetus. What does one have to do with the other? If anything, vegans should be more sensitive to the connection between over population and the resulting assault on the animals and the planet that results in trying to sustain us all.

So I say HALLELULAH that some women have the common sense to choose abortion to avoid bringing more unwanted humans into the world, whatever their reasons! Having a child you won't be responsible for, without considering what it takes to sustain a child in this world, while so many existing children, grown up children (adults) and animals are already suffering from the affects of human atrocities, is simply selfish and self serving.

Vegan compassion should be for the already sentient beings that have been brought to conscious existence without any choice in the matter - and that includes compassion for women who, by nature's design, are forced into making these difficult decisions. An undeveloped fetus isn't aware of your support for its future, but a woman certainly can appreciate it.

Overall, I simply cannot understand any vegan who is not 'zero population growth' oriented and supports any means to reduce the production of more humans. Where do you think all these precious human lives you sentimentalize (is that a word;) ) about are going to reside once there is no longer an Earth to sustain them?