Can you be a vegetarian for ethical reasons, and then be fine with getting an abortion?
I’m not against pro-choice. As a libertarian I endorse it. But after you’ve chosen, why is there often also hypocrisy?
Does being pro-life really exclude being pro-choice? After all, I can be against smoking being illegal, but that doesn’t mean I want people to start smoking!
As a vegetarian, I admire my fellow vegetarians for aligning food with ethics. There is a great need for this sort of approach to the way we live.
I approached vegetarianism as a pacifist, I value all form of life and want to cause as little destruction to the world as possible.
So, there are many vegetarians who refuse to eat meat because they object to killing animals, which is a perfectly viable stance to have.
Yet, these same vegetarians, in their politics, are liberals, who don’t mind, or even object to abortion. Can you truly despise eating pork chops, but see nothing wrong with destroying human life, in the place where it is supposed to be the safest – the human womb?
This is high hypocrisy, to be an ethical, human-rights vegetarian, and then see nothing wrong with killing a prenatal child.
After all, if you are a vegetarian because of a desire to preserve life and consciousness, then wouldn’t you want to defend the life of one of the most conscious animals alive – the human being?
If you are a pacifist vegetarian who wishes to stop violence, then wouldn’t you be averse to the killing or destruction of life in all forms, a fetus included?
A true pacifist seeks to end a problem using solutions that are alternatives to violence. Thus, wouldn’t you seek to end the systemic reasons behind abortion, such as poverty, as opposed to participating in the violence, by not objecting to it?
I acknowledge that someone could be a vegetarian for other reasons (having a more efficient food supply, health reasons, to name a few).
But then that person can’t really claim that his/her vegetarianism is rooted in some moral ground – if they see the prenatal child as of no value, while in the womb.
Could it be that for most vegetarians, who cling to liberal politics, their show of ethical food consumption is nothing other than virtue signalling, to win cultural and peer approval?
Should ethics touch all of one’s life, and guide all actions?