Abortion - a vegan response.

It is not unvegan to support a woman's right to choose.

If you believe that your compassion for other people should extend to other animals then you might be able to forgive the action of a woman who finds the prospect of her pregnancy unbearable. Not least because you don't despise your own human fallability either. If you have replaced your compassion for human beings with your compassion for other life-forms then this woman is a killer first and foremost and the suffering which may have brought her into her situation, or may arise from it, will appear negligible or non-existent. The second position, as an expression of psychosis, should never be confused with the reality of veganism in my opinion.

Truly, the meaning of non-violence is simple. It's applying principles to the messy complexity of reality which is the challenge...a challenge that being 'anti-abortion' singularly fails to rise to...I'm anti- cold Monday mornings - so what? Any fundamentalism is attractively straightforward because it shuns reality and that's why it cannot be taken seriously.

I'd merely suggest a 'deep reverence for life' should also enable a flawed human being to kill part of herself in order to survive mentally of physically in a deeply flawed world. I wish many opponents of abortion would focus their considerable angst on mitigating the conditions which lead to unwanted pregnancies rather than betraying their infantile morality by victimising one of the victims (the mother). When we have re-created the garden of Eden maybe we can sit down and agree that abortion is plain wrong.

Whose rights matter?

If they're honest, I think a fair number of vegans are indifferent to, or even despise, humanity. Hardly surprising given the treatment handed out by most of the human race to fellow animals.

I think there are certain problems with this position, though. All animals, all of nature, is contingent upon human activity. Taking human beings out of the ethical equation is, therefore, futile. In other words, if we are serious about animal rights we'd better prioritise the enlightenment of our fellow human beings.This enlightenment is merely postponed by some of the clumsy statements about fellow human beings that appear in vegan dialogue.

Non-violence isn't a kind of moral pick 'n' mix. Animals are easy to love. I think the sentimentality attached to the aborted foetus over the plight of the mother is a similarly facile basis for an opinion.

If you can't forgive flawed human beings don't shout about it. One day your conditions may change and you may do stupid stuff too.