Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.
Marla Rose,
The
Vegan Street Blog
July 2017
If I were able to make a decision on behalf of a cow who would suffer if a fetus came to term, I would fight to protect her best interests over those of the potential life inside her. It is the same for females of the human race. To me, a woman’s right to pursue her best interests eclipses that of a potential life.
Is this harsh? It doesn’t feel that way to me. I am guessing that if men got pregnant instead of women, this wouldn’t be a conversation at all.
Over the years, I’ve gotten occasional questions about how I reconcile
being a vegan and being someone who is pro-choice. After all, isn’t veganism
about protecting innocent and vulnerable lives? To me, there is no
reconciliation needed because I don’t feel my passionately pro-choice
position contradicts my vegan values in the slightest.
Here is how I look at it from a vegan perspective: Let’s take the example of
a pregnant cow and her fetus. To have this conversation, we need to agree on
the single basic premise that animals other than humans have the drive to
act in and protect their own best interests. I’m not even saying that they
have right for it, though I certainly believe that they do and for much
more: I am saying simply the drive. Again, for the sake of this
conversation, we need to simply agree that animals have the drive to act in
and protect their own best interests.
With me so far?
Given society’s hierarchies, a cow on her own cannot protect her interests
because she has the legal status of property; she is chattel.
[Etymologically, from Old French chatel, meaning cattle, derived from catel,
meaning property.] Those who “own” her make decisions about her body,
including her reproduction, based primarily on financial considerations.
Her right to act in accordance with her best interests is observably
demonstrable by her capacity to not flourish if this right were withdrawn.
The calf inside her, though, is a potential life. The cow is here. She is
physically present and, though people may agree or disagree on the
conclusions, we can observe that the pregnant cow can both thrive and
suffer, to the best that we understand it, in different circumstances. The
sentience of the fetus, however, is far murkier and less verifiable.
Even given that there is an area of dispute about when in development
sentience in a fetus can be observed and what degree of feeling may be
available via that putative sentience, it’s still highly speculative. There
is much we don’t know and I will admit that this works either way. The fact
is, though, that we do know that the pregnant cow can suffer and does have
sentience. There is nothing speculative about that. Given that, I stand for
the rights of the mother cow, whose capacity to suffer and thrive are
recognizable given our measures of observation and understanding.
If I were able to make a decision on behalf of a cow who would suffer if a
fetus came to term, I would fight to protect her best interests over those
of the potential life inside her. It is the same for females of the human
race. To me, a woman’s right to pursue her best interests eclipses that of a
potential life.
Female humans have empirical needs for their best interests – for wellness,
safety, self-agency – and I will fight for those rights. When denied her
right to her best interests, she will suffer. Fetuses, however, do not
thrive or suffer in provable ways that are equivalent to autonomous people.
To our understanding, a fetus is without experiences, aspirations and a
provable capacity to suffer, thus a fetus does not deserve an equivalent
consideration of the female who may be carrying the fetus. This is a
longwinded way to say that you don’t need to prove to me that people here on
earth can thrive and suffer because we know that to be a fact; because we
cannot say the same about fetuses, I conclude that they don’t get the same
consideration.
Is this harsh? It doesn’t feel that way to me. I am guessing that if men got
pregnant instead of women, this wouldn’t be a conversation at all.
Is it possible to be a pro-choice vegan? I am living proof that it is and I
have zero inner-conflict about it.
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