James McWilliams: Pro-choice and Ethical Veganism

[Spencer Lo]

Is there a tension between pro-choice and ethical veganism? McWilliams thinks there might be.

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Here’s a possible conundrum for ethical vegans, one that I’ve been resisting for a while and am only now starting to engage:  how do we oppose the unnecessary killing of all animal life while at the same supporting a pro-choice stance on the question of abortion? I know this problem is frequently highlighted, and that a great deal has been written on the subject. I admit to having read very little of it. Nonetheless, I want to sketch out how I’m at least starting to think about this issue, one that I think ethical vegans must, at some point, confront with some serious reflection.

I should start by saying that I’m pro-choice. While I do not want to be presumptuous, I’m going to guess that most ethical vegans are pro-choice as well. Perhaps I’m not alone in fearing that, as I make my case for treating animals with moral consideration (a consideration that requires at the least respecting their right to live), someone will demand that I declare my stance on abortion, ready to pounce on my supposed hypocrisy when I admit that I am, indeed, pro-choice. I guess if I were on the other side of the vegan issue, I’d do precisely that. And I’d feel as if I had a pretty good case.

There’s a striking similarity between ethical veganism and the pro-life position. Ethical vegans accept a certain amount of necessary ambiguity when it comes to the question of when sentient life begins. An oyster? A clam? A sardine? The fact is, we don’t know, and most likely never will know, where to make the cut, choosing instead to do as Tom Regan suggests–draw the line in pencil and erase it when new information emerges. As we undertake this process , we accept and act upon a critical premise: because we don’t know, we err on the side of caution and choose not to eat any animal products at all. That’s our moral default. And it’s a wise one.

Similarly, on the abortion question, because we don’t know at what point between conception and birth human life begins (which is different than a faith-based understanding of when life begins), pro-lifers err on the side of life and oppose abortion on the grounds that abortion may very well be taking an innocent human life unnecessarily (assuming the mother’s life isn’t at risk). It is upon realizing this similarity that I’ve become less enraged when I pass the abortion clinic down the street from my house and witness Bible waving protesters.

This similarly poses a problem for the pro-choice vegan. Most notably, it demands a justification for accepting the possibility of taking a human life unnecessarily while, at the same time, consistently opposing the taking of animal life for human convenience. As I see it, the only way this can be done is to identify a right that supersedes a fetus’s right to human life. And that superseding right, sacred an inalienable, is a woman’s right to her body. To be both an ethical vegan and pro-choice thus demands accepting the possibility of killing a human life in order to protect a more sacred right: a mother’s right to choose what to do with her own body.

I suppose I can live with this. As always, I look forward to thoughts, clarifications, objections, adulations, vituperations, condemnations, and exaltations. It is your right, after all, to respond.

http://james-mcwilliams.com/?p=2236