Friendly Terms
The Christians are approaching *us* for our views on abortion.
Why would they do that if they think we're a "cult" or "of the devil", etc.?
Srila Prabhupada said abortion and war are the karma for killing animals.
So no devotee would get involved with the peace and pro-life movements
without promoting animal rights.
No devotee can take a stand against the killing of the unborn without taking
a stand against the killing of animals.
It would be like trying to prevent lung cancer while ignoring smoking.
The Christians are asking *us* for our views on abortion.
When we patiently explain to them that abortion and war are the karma for
killing animals...
...they become angry!
It's like a chain-smoker suffering from lung cancer approaching a doctor and
becoming angry when told stop smoking!
In his 1987 Pulitzer Prize nominated Diet for a New America, vegan author
John Robbins' concluding chapter on the environmental devastation caused by
raising animals for food, the waste of energy, grain, and other resources
that could feed the hungry, etc. begins with a quote from (reincarnationist)
Christian mystic Edgar Cayce about karma.
John Robbins quotes a government official admitting halting soil erosion
would be prohibitively expensive. John Robbins comments that as long as
there's a demand for meat, we'll be overgrazing livestock, which directly
causes soil erosion. We're engaged in the very activity causing soil erosion
while trying to halt it!
Similarly, meat-eating Christians, meat-eating pro-lifers can publicly
cradle all the children they want, but they haven't grasped that through
their killing of animals, *they're* the ones sentencing these children to
die!
They don't have to "convert" to our religion. I've shown that all the
world's great religions support the vegetarian way of life. They
can learn from the long history of animal advocacy, concern for animals, and
vegetarianism in Christianity. They can follow Christian animal activists
and Christian vegans today. Or they can join a SECULAR animal rights
organization like PETA.
You'd think the unborn-right-to-lifers would immediately understand the
animal-right-to-lifers!
But *they're* approaching *us* for our views on abortion, and I'm merely
trying to be on friendly terms with them and give them friendly advice.
At a Seamless Garment conference at the University of San Francisco in
September 1997, Reverend Heng Sure, an American Buddhist monk, told
progressive Catholics that as long as people are eating meat there will be
abortions.
Go on to: From Disgrace to Honor
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