Life or Something Like It
Katie McDonough writes on Salon.com:
"...the Republican gubernatorial candidate also believes that it is
'amazing' that God has not punished America for having laws that women can
access abortion.
"'Really, given that God does judge nations, it’s amazing that abortion has
run as far and foully as it has, without what I would consider to be a
greater imposition of judgment on this country,' Ken Cuccinelli remarked
last year at the Christian Life Summit. 'Who knows what the future holds?'"
Has it ever occur to anti-abortion Republicans that abortion and war are
God's punishment for killing His animals?
The fate of the animals and the fate of man are interconnected.
(Ecclesiastes 3:19)
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada said in 1974:
"We simply request, 'Don't kill. Don't maintain slaughterhouses.' That is
very sinful. It brings a very awkward karmic reaction upon society. Stop
these slaughterhouses. We don't say, 'Stop eating meat.' You can eat meat,
but don't take it from the slaughterhouse, by killing. Simply wait (until
the animal dies of natural causes) and you'll get the carcasses.
"You are killing innocent cows and other animals--nature will take revenge.
Just wait. As soon as the time is right, nature will gather all these
rascals and slaughter them. Finished. They'll fight among
themselves--Protestants and Catholics, Russia and America, this one and that
one. It is going on. Why? This is nature's law. Tit for tat. 'You have
killed. Now you kill yourselves.'
"They are sending animals to the slaughterhouse, and now they'll create
their own slaughterhouse. You see? Just take Belfast. The Roman Catholics
are killing the Protestants, and the Protestants are killing the Catholics.
This is nature's law.
"It is not necessary that you be sent to the ordinary slaughterhouse. You'll
make a slaughterhouse at home. You'll kill your own child--abortion. This
is nature's law.
"Who are these children being killed? They are these meat-eaters. They
enjoyed themselves when so many animals were killed and now they're being
killed by their own mothers. People do not know how nature is working. If
you kill you must be killed. If you kill the cow, who is your mother, then
in some future lifetime your mother will kill you. Yes. The mother becomes
the child, and the child becomes the mother.
"We don't want to stop trade, or the production of grains and vegetables and
fruit. But we want to stop these killing houses. It is very, very sinful.
That is why all over the world they have so many wars. Every ten or fifteen
years there is a big war--a wholesale slaughterhouse for humankind. But
these rascals--they do not see it, that by the law of karma, every action
must have its reaction."
In a 1979 essay entitled "Abortion and the Language of Unconsciousness,"
contemporary Hindu spiritual master Ravindra-svarupa dasa (Dr. William
Deadwyler) explains Srila Prabhupada's words in terms of a secular slippery
slope argument, familiar to pro-lifers:
"A (spiritually) conscious person will not kill even animals (much less very
young humans) for his pleasure or convenience. Certainly the unconsciousness
and brutality that allows us to erect factories of death for animals lay the
groundwork for our treating humans in the same way."
In the March 1982 issue of Back to Godhead, another contemporary Hindu
spiritual master, Srila Hridayananda dasa Goswami (Dr. Howard Resnick),
comments on this shortcoming of the anti-abortion movement:
"Insisting that human life begins at conception, the anti-abortion movement
seeks to shock us into the awareness that abortion means killing--killing a
human being rather than an animal, a bird, an insect, or a fish.
"Thus although the movement calls itself 'pro-life,' it is really
'pro-human-life.' Its fudging with the terms 'life' and 'human life' reveals
a disturbing assumption: that nonhuman life is somehow not actually life at
all, or, if it is, then it is somehow not as 'sacred' as human life and
therefore not worth protecting....
"If the pro-life movement can become part of a broader struggle to recognize
the sacredness of all life...then undoubtedly it will attain great success."
In the April 1995 issue of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a peace and
justice periodical on the religious left, Catholic civil rights activist
Bernard Broussard concludes:
"...our definition of war is much too limited and narrow. Wars and conflicts
in the human kingdom will never be abolished or diminished until, as a pure
matter of logic, it includes the cessation of war between the human and
animal kingdoms.
"For, if we be eaters of flesh, or wearers of fur, or participants in
hunting animals, or in any way use our might against weakness, we are
promoting, in no matter how seemingly insignificant a fashion, the spirit of
war."
Abortion and war are the collective karma for killing animals. The peace and
pro-life movements will never succeed until the slaughterhouses are shut
down.
Through killing animals, peace and pro-life activists are only thwarting
their own respective causes.
"Share a right to life
"Save from the butcher's knife
"Save from the experiments
"Don't be part of it
"Don't be part of the killing
"Save from the furriers' trap
"Save from extinction
"As long as there are the slaughterhouses
"There will be battlefields
"As long as animals die in testing
"We won't find humanity
"Save from the factory farms
"Save from the cruelty..."
--Howard Jones, "Don't Be Part of It" (1991), from PETA's Tame Yourself
album
I wrote to pro-life activist Julianne Wiley along these lines, telling her,
"I'm trying to help (assist) the pro-life movement. And instead of treating
me like a friend, they treat me as an enemy.
"And Jesus said, 'Love your enemies...' (Matthew 5:43-45; Luke 16:27-38)"
The hostility toward vegetarians, vegan, and animal activists in general
from meat-eating pro-lifers merely proves Pythagoras' own words: "Those who
kill animals for food will be more prone than vegetarians to torture and
kill their fellow men."
Democrats For Life of America, 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, South Building,
Suite 900, Washington, DC 20004 (202) 220-3066
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