Who out there is both vegetarian and Pro-Life?

Question

I believe these issues should go hand in hand as if you believe it is wrong to kill an animal surely you should believe it wrong to kill a human child. I am curious how many vegetarians out there see this connection and how many don't and why.

'nuff said?, I agree with execution of mass murders as society needs to protect itself from those who commit extreme crimes. It seems we agree on the subject of children as well. One of the few exceptions would be ectopic pregnancy. As for the fish and chicken, well at least you are limiting you meat intake. I encourge you to see when you might be ready to move to the next level. Usually it is a process from cutting out certain meats, to no meats, to no dairy, finally to raw foods. I haven't completely made the transition yet to raw foods but I'm working on it.

viewable m, generalize much? It's not like a zygote stays a zygote forever and nine months later *poof* it's suddenly a full grown child. It is a constant development in which sooner than you are imaging it has form and a heartbeat. The heat beings to beat between day 17-21. I bet you did not know that. As for only people brainwashed by their pastors being pro-life. I am prolife and I do not go to church. I am about as liberal spiritually as one can get. Finally I am also vegan for many reasons, among those ethics. You claim that those who are vegetarians are usually intelligent. Do I not fall under this category. And if so maybe you should reconsider your views. You may have been influenced by a sub-culture yourself. Investigate and come to a sincere conclusion. First you need all the facts. I bet you were not born being a vegetarian. You had to learn about it to know what was what, and why you believed in it.

Check this site out which combines the two issues.

http://www.prolifecommunity.net/animalrights.htm

Kyle Key, you are too intelligent to believe what you do on abortion. I encourage you to study more arguments from the side you currently oppose. Start with the link I gave you. There are also many other articles on that site and links to other sites which will at least give you the information to make an informed decision. And by the way the youngest child to survive out of the womb is 21 week, less than the time you claimed a child to have developed a nervous system. Again study the issue and get back with me then. Type in fetal development and you will get oddles of information about the subject.

Katz, I assume you would want animal testing to be against the law. Did you know there are more regulations for such practices than there are for abortion? You should know that complicity does not absolve your moral responsibilities. I believe many people in the vegetarian movement are influenced by their sub-culture which for some strange reason excludes being pro-life in general. I encourage those within the movement to sincerely study this issue with an open mind as there is a sincere link. Try the link I provided and see how many have made this correlation

Kyle Key, if I threw you butt naked out into the wilds of Alaska how long do you think you would last? We are all depend on each other for food, clothing, housing, socialization, etc. The self-sufficiency argument just does not cut it. A post born child is dependent on its parents. By your logic they should be able to kill their child until it can fend for itself. It sickens me to know how close vegetarians are to having the right ethical values, yet so many miss the boat completely on this issue.

I find this statement particularly absurd. You are giving greater rights to animals than to humans. Though many humans think it a stretch to give animals equality, I actually give it some credence. However this statement goes beyond the bounds of reasons. "This is what makes human abortion permissible, but non-human animal abortion inexcusable".

Kyle Key, Pro-Lifers are anti some choices not all choices. You have a right to do with you penis what you like but you do not have the right to rape with it. In essence our rights to choice should stop legally where anothers begins. The fact of the matter when it comes to abortion is that more than one individual is involved. We may disagree about when a human is a human, but that does not change reality. You could be a solipsist and therefore rape whom you please because after all only the self exists, but this would not change the fact you have constructed a belief system based off of convenience. You do not like it when meat eaters rationalize, therefore don't be a hyppocrite

Kyle Key, as for my view on raw foods it is only a belief that it is optimum not necessary. There may be times we have to compromise for reasons of necessity, or chose to compromise for reasons of pleasure, and that is ok by me. But I still do not believe it unreasonable to say in general eating raw foods are a healthier lifestyle. I must admit in the winter time it may be even a good thing to incorporate some hot dishes as it could put undue stress on your body to eat only cool foods. However raw does not alaws mean cold. It can be heated up to 119 degrees. Past this point many helpful enzymes are broken down.

Kyle Key, I believe my analogy to be very apt. Even if I actively throw you in the wilds or Alaska it equates to ripping a child out of the womb. Yes, both are murder, but only one is kidnapping. But what I think you really need to sincerely ask yourself without simply reacting from habit is this idea about convenience. You know all too well that people rationalized their behavior with all kinds of philosophical posturings. How do you know you are not doing the same? And furthermore if pre-born children are really alive and human shouldn't it be your moral duty in investigate all the facts? If you are indeed wrong you are contributing to the suffering of over 50 millions souls killed yearly around the world. Hitler didn't have anything to our postmodern dilemma. And that is putting it politely.

"The fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks. This is probably a conservatively late estimate, but it is scientifically solid. Elements of the pain-conveying system (spino-thalamic system) begin to be assembled at 7 weeks; enough development has occurred by 12-14 weeks that some pain perception is likely, and continues to build through the second trimester. By 20 weeks, the spino- thalamic system is fully established and connected.

There are three different indicators providing evidence that the fetus feels pain.

Anatomical
- pain receptors spread over the body in stages: 8-16 weeks
- pain impulse connections in the spinal cord link up and reach the thalamus (the brain's reception center): 7-20 weeks (summarized by Anand, K.J.S., Atlanta)"

http://www.gargaro.com/fetalpain.html

Physiological/Hormonal
- fetuses withdraw from painful stimulation
- two types of stress hormones, normally released by adults subjected to pain, are released by adults subjected to pain, are releases in massive amounts by the fetus subjected to a needle puncture to draw a blood sample:
(a) from 19 weeks onward (N. Fisk; London, England)
(b) from 16 weeks onward (J. Partch; Kiel, Germany)

Behavioral
- withdraw from pain
- change in vital signs
A 20-30 week old fetus actually will feel more pain than an adult. 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.

moviegirl, I don't think most people would term you as pro-life with the philosophy you hold. Most people are not pro-abortion in that they encourage people to do so. Many people give the response that they would never have an abortion but they also would not legislate barring others from being able to do so. You squarely fall into the camp of what I euphemistically call "Pro-Choice." I will leave you with this thought. I bet you would be for laws against putting down an animal for being inconvenient. If this is so you should be against over 90 percent of abortions.

myheartisjames, I appreciate your spirit yet so many people think abortion involves a clump of cells. The truth of the matter is pre-born children grow very rapidly. In fact they will not do a surgical abortion until it developmentally looks like a human. The logic is that it has to grow to a certain size so that they will not miss aborting the child or worse just parts of it. And this has happened more than once. i encourage everyone to search fetal deveolpment. You can see the stages in pictures of preborns. Too many people try to talk about this issue without really seeing the reality. A picture says a thousand words and it takes a very hard heart to see pictures of an abortion, even early stages of abortion, and still be "Pro-Choice"

Here is a website that will show you the deveopment of the fetus. Before any more posts please look at these pictures and examine your heart. If you can say you are still "Pro-Choice" all I can say is you need to be out at sea a little longer.

http://www.epigee.org/fetal1.html

Answer 1

i believe in veganism and in pro-life.....
i could never kill a child no matter how few cells it might be made of at the time......

Answer 2

I am both a vegan and pro-life. It's all about choice. I wouldn't force people to give up eating animals when I know it's wrong, just like I think it's wrong to use a woman just like a farm animal and ask her to carry and bear a baby she doesn't want. I don't agree with abortion and I wouldn't have one, but that doesn't mean that it's not the right choice for another. I don't go around telling my family or friends that they are enslaving animals so that they can have their mcdonald's burger (even if that's what I believe) because it's their choice. Telling a woman that she must be pregnant and endanger her own health so that she can bear a baby that may never be wanted by anyone is inhumane.

Answer 3

Vegetarians are usually intelligent people who care for life itself. Pro-lifers are usually for whatever their pastor or politician tells them.

They rally to protect the fertilized egg that really has no "life" but when the child is born they look the other way while it is neglected or abused into prisons where they are mad to send it to its death.

I'm a vegetarian for choice.

Answer 4

I'm 95% vegetarian, and 95% pro-life.

I don't have a problem with eating fish or chicken. God made us omnivores for a reason. There is no equation between human children and fishes and chicken.

I don't have a problem with killing evil people. Keeping them locked up and caring for them is illogical. I don't think we should kill children under any circumstances.

'nuff said?

Answer 5

I am vegan and in favour of not deciding for everyone else whether they should have the choice to abortion or not.

Inflicting unnecessary pain on any being that can have a subjective experience of that pain, be it human or non-human, torture or death, is ethically unacceptable. However, don't distort the issue by calling a growing embryo a "human child." The nervous system does not develop until the 23rd to 26th week of pregnancy. If it can't live outside of the womb by itself, you aren't killing anything; life is required for death to occur. Human "life" does not begin at conception; the progression of a group of cells to a state wherein they no longer require nutrient deposits from the human umbilical cord and nourishment from the "host body" is what begins at conception. I say "host body" as not everyone who has a child is technically a "parent"--they could be volunteering to have the baby as a favour to an infertile couple. As humans are the only animals capable of realising this, we are the only animals capable of voicing our desire to stop this progression. This is what makes human abortion permissible, but non-human animal abortion inexcusable--as it is impossible for us to know their desires (if any) on the issue, we cannot assume anything, making it a forced abortion. There's nothing confusing about it.

It should be clear to everyone, whether or not they agree with you, that your ethics are not yet developed enough to support your conclusions.

As an aside, I find it interesting (in an exceedingly annoying way) that people who proclaim themselves to be "pro-life" don't realise the irony of squaring off against people who call themselves "pro-choice," leading to the conclusion that "pro-life" people are "anti-choice." If you are against abortion, you would do more to further your cause by supporting a "pro-choice" stance, because if no one gets to choose for themselves (as you obviously prefer, otherwise, why are you attempting to say that abortion is "wrong"), then you do not get to choose either. "Pro-choice" supports the choices of EVERYONE, including people against abortion! Haha, understand yet? In your attempt to restrict the choices of people with views you don't hold, you inadvertently cancel out your own position. It's wonderful, I don't even really have to try.

Finally, your assertion that "raw food" is the ultimate level of being vegan only serves to draw people away from the movement. Here's a great article about why a raw food diet is not necessarily better or worse than a vegan diet, but rather, works for some people. http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/cooking
It is not something that everyone needs to aspire to.

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EDIT:
Your point about the 21st week does not dissolve any of my points:
http://www.muhc.ca/media/ensemble/2002june/premature/
"'Babies born earlier than 22 weeks may have a heartbeat or pulse, but do not survive and gestation periods that end before 20 weeks result in a 'miscarriage.'

Barrington says that in recent years survival rates for premature babies have increased due to the medical technology now available. At 28 weeks more than 96 percent of babies survive; at 24 weeks the rate is 50 percent; and at 22 weeks, two percent. At the MUHC the majority of parents of 24 week-old babies will opt for intensive care. The baby's condition is then reassessed on a daily basis to see if it is still appropriate to proceed. Barrington says most of the babies who are not going to survive die within the first 24 to 72 hours of being born. "

Even at 28 weeks, these children would not survive without the immediate, intensive, artificially life-sustaining machines they're put on. Having a team of doctors try every possible solution with the HOPE that the babies will still be alive is a weak argument against what I said about being able to live independent of direct nourishment, at best.

"Kyle Key, if I threw you butt naked out into the wilds of Alaska how long do you think you would last?"
The problem with your statement is that the primary issue here is the responsibility that falls upon the people committing the act, not the sustainability of the "person" having the act committed on them--that's more of a direct side effect...important to mention, but ethically irrelevant in this case. Of course I would die in that scenario, and of course a baby would die without the help of its parents. In the first scenario, you would be guilty of kidnapping and murder (depending on the district), and the parents would be guilty of child abuse/neglect so well as murder. This is because myself and the baby in question shared a common attribute: physically maturing to a state wherein we were capable of living outside of the womb AND being able to feel pain. The scenarios I've already spoken of, however, do not meet these circumstances. In short, you have used a false analogy.

Answer 6

I'm vegetarian and pro-choice. Pro-choice does not mean Pro abortion however.

Answer 7

well i'm more vegetarian than pro-life.