What's the deal with pro-choice vegans?

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So it's fine to abort a forming human life because you may not have been conducting yourself responsibly and then BAM conception. But killing animals for food is absolutely immoral. It's like they value human life less than animal life and that's just something I cannot understand.

I've noticed a couple of people like this who are quite vocal about not killing and eating animals, but will cheer for and champion the legalization/decriminalization of abortion. I understand that an animal is a fully formed being whilst a fetus is not, but I still can't help but feel that this is a clear example of self-serving cognitive dissonance.

I myself am pro-choice (but not as a substitute for protection) and an omnivore, but I would have to think that if I valued life that much that I took a stand against animal agriculture and the meat industry, that that concern for life would extend beyond animals to unborn humans too. Maybe I'm missing something but honestly I just find the two concepts of strong value for animal life and the lack of value for the lives of unborn infants to be irreconcilable.

Speaking only with anecdotal evidence, I don't think the vast majority of vegans are vegans on principle. It's more fashion than anything else.

Perhaps they're well-educated enough in biology to differentiate between a baby and a zygote.

What about those "Pro-Life" folks who are so concerned with the sanctity of a zygote's hypothetical "right to life", but fetishize firearms, bloodthirstily cheer warfare and execution, are completely inured to the privation and suffering of others, and celebrate every time an abortion clinic gets bombed or shot up?

Perhaps so, but the couple of people I'm referring to who are vegan and pro-choice routinely post on Facebook about how murdering animals for food is immoral, being vegan is on the right side of history, animal agriculture is a lot less kosher than we're lead to believe, cows are 'raped' for their milk, etc.

Could all just be virtue signaling but I know for a fact that one of them is a full-on activist, attending animal rights rallies and even locking herself in a piggery with other activists at 5 in the morning to take photos of the conditions.

I'm suggesting that is fashionable opinion too, rather than a thought out position.

Those people, as far as I'm concerned, would be the right-wing equivalent of the people I described in this post.

Well the individual i referred to as an activist, 75 percent of her Facebook posts are about animals, veganism, etc, and the fact that she's going into piggeries and other places, photographing the conditions, and that her Facebook bio is literally "always a voice for the animals", leads me to believe that this is more than just a trend for her.

You can construct silly sentences like this for the other side too. Against the death penalty because you might execute an innocent? But how many innocents die on the roads each year just so you can drive to work in comfort? The counter is obvious - death itself is less important than why or how people die.

Well, for the sake of argument, let's assume it's true. I think there is something to the notion that some people, particularly in Western societies, care more for certain animals than humans. Why? Perhaps the concept of innocence? Because animals have no higher intellectual capabilities, they cannot comprehend Right or Wrong, as such they are totally innocent from a human frame of reference, objects rather than actors. It's obvious to me that the unborn are as innocent as humans can be, but this holds no water with the pro-abortion crowd. Perhaps they have absorbed some version of Christian original sin, where man is not of nature, but an interloper who ruins it. It certainly tracks with some other popular, fashionable opinions.

Because a zygote has no past or present sentience, and I do not believe in souls. As a vegan, I do not think it is unethical to abort a zygote.

This belief holds no contradiction with my present moral system.

Where do you draw the line on abortion then?

Who knows, I'm a pro life vegetarian

Whilst I'm basically the opposite of that, i can commend you for at least having congruent views.

I am not a vegan, but I am a vegetarian, and staunchly pro-choice, and a mild animal rights activist.

I don't care about an animal's species. I care about its ability to suffer, and be aware of that suffering. I think there is good evidence that chickens have significantly more capacity to suffer than zygotes, embryos, or foetuses. Cows and sheep, more so. And pigs? Those are intelligent animals.

I'd like us as a species to move away from slaughtering large mammals, particularly pigs, and towards chickens and insects.

As for "where do you draw the line" - I think birth is a convenient place. It's early enough to ensure that there are no "people" before it, and it also gets around questions like bodily autonomy and social acceptability. It's not perfect but it will do.

I think that is a ridiculous place to draw the line. It's basically a fully-formed baby just seconds before birth. And as for bodily autonomy, so long as there was no kind of sexual assault or coercion involved in the sex act, you were exercising your own free will and bodily autonomy to put yourself in the position that made you pregnant in the first place. If you dont want to end up pregnant, there are plenty of ways to prevent it before the fact. Abstinence, pills and condoms just to name a few. I also dont think there's any sound reason to leave getting an abortion up right to when the baby is born, unless its birth poses a risk to your own life or something of the like.

Abortion is not interchangeable with birth control.

Walrus has odd views on this. As I recall, he said killing a newborn is roughly equivalent in his worldview to killing a pig, while also believing that human life begins at conception. Also, he wouldn't kill pigs to eat them as a moral vegetarian, but is staunchly pro-abortion. A position so out there, it's difficult to know where to start. We didn't get a chance to delve deeper.