Animal Rights & Abortion Dilemmas
Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com 

"Compassion is the basis of morality." Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

I have been taken to task of late for supporting abortion rights. Since Thanksgiving, I've received dozens of angry letters challenging me to explore the horror of aborting unborn humans. My first response was, "Why am I being picked on?" I do not recall taking such a controversial position. The angry letters have continued, and they contain ugly undertones. They include terms such as "liberal Jew" and "liberal Northeast Democrat." I have been called a hypocrite, and told that I will soon burn in hell. I do not know why these letters have started. I wish that they would stop.

Many animal activists have spent days or months or years in jail after passionately defending the rights of defenseless animals who have no voice. Many of those same liberal individuals misplace their compassion when it comes to defenseless unborn humans. Is there a contradiction at work?

I fit the mold of one who would support abortion rights. I am a liberal New York democratic Jew. Do I pass or fail your litmus test on this issue? This past month, I've received over one dozen inquiries from persons assuming that they know how I stand. Although I've written about my personal philosophy in the past, I find now an appropriate time to re-state my abortion philosophy.

Each year, one thousand or more animal rights supporters gather near Washington, D.C. for their annual convention. The majority of these activists are women. As a matter of fact, there would be no animal rights movement without the gentler sex, who seem to possess a spirituality and wisdom that their male counterparts lack.

Animal rights activists protest pain to laboratory rats, but support a woman's right to an abortion. Some demand that meat eaters acknowledge the horrors of slaughterhouse films, or vivisection, or bullfighting. Yet, they turn a deaf ear and firmly shut a blind eye to the conscious being who grows within the human mother.

Most of these passionate women also support the rights of women. That's a natural. More than one female author has paralleled the abuse and struggles of animals to the sexual politics and multiple indignities suffered by women at the hands of a male-oriented society.

Is abortion murder? Of course it is. It is more than just murder. It is death without compassion, for the living creature, not yet named, possesses pain receptors and is aware of his or her own suffering.

In defense of their ignorance, some animal rights activists argue that the fetus feels no pain, much the same way that animal abusers use the very same argument to defend vivisection, sport, or the consumption of sentient farm animals.

As an animal rights activist, I am faced with an enormous dilemma. Do I call abortion anything else than murder? I cannot rationalize murder, for that is exactly what it is. Murder, without regard for the human who will die in great pain. Abortion is murder.

I cry for the cow and the calf, and the bull in the bullring, and the dog who is euthanized, and the rat who is burned in the name of science, and the squirrel shot by the young boy in the name of sport, and the coyote who is anally electrocuted so that her fur can adorn a parka.

Many people do not recognize the unborn child as possessing the same rights as the rest of us, yet, a study published in the May, 2003 issue of Psychological Science (2003;14:220-224) reveals that a fetal infant is able to recognize the voice of her own mother.

Scientific studies have demonstrated that the growing human fetus feels pain and learns about the external environment while within. The fetus recognizes songs and voices. The brain works, the heart beats, pain receptors feel. How much compassion do animal rights activists emote for sentient human infants, not yet born?

Supporting animal research is a transgression of the laws of nature and an insult to the respect of life. This is why Animal Rights activists are so right in the things they protest. Supporting abortion for just one of the 4,700 species of mammals is a contradiction in terms against all of the good.

There are anti-abortion people who show no compassion to other living things. They eat animals and wear furs and hunt and support animal research. There are also pro-abortion people who are vegans and protest animal research and animal abuse of any sort. One must be true to a universal truth. Abuse of any living creature is a crime against what I could call Universal Wisdom.

One cannot act passionately against one form of abuse while supporting another and defend that action by rationalizing with an excuse of personal convenience.