The Abortion Dilemma for Vegans/Vegetarians
Animals: Tradition - Philosophy - Religion

FROM Frank Lane - The Vegan Pope
May 2021

It was to this awakening that led me to honor the sacredness of life and a non-violent plantbased diet. That same awakening from ego, selfishness, lack, and fear turned my heart to the sanctity of the unborn.

To kill or not to kill? That is the fundamental question we have to ask our moral ethic to determine who we are. Not just at one point in time, but throughout our lives, and in many different circumstances.

Wisdom says, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die.” Is there a time for abortion or killing life? For a vegan, one that does not use any animal products, believes in animal rights, this creates a dilemma, especially in the taking of any life.

I have been an ethical vegan for most of my life. My passionate conviction came from the wonderment and honoring of the natural world, and natures thirst for existence and evolution. Especially the miracle and majesty of the unborn, animals, and trees.

I became a registered conscientious objector to war and refused to kill when asked by my country. I did this to support my friends that were coming back from Viet Nam in parts, mentally deranged and in body bags.

I am not afraid to fight or die for our great country, but our country was taken-over by a greedy war economy. War continues to trade bodies for billions of dollars in the disguise of patriotism. I am a black belt in martial arts, where I learned how to severely protect in unmitigated circumstances. I has enough sense to understand that the taking of life cannot be based on economics and politics. Corporations are always going to want resources and profits at any cost.

A soldier will give his/her life or take life, for the greater good based on principle. It is our principles that determine our ethics. When we are fighting for greater good with our ethics, we the individual arises to greatness. But when life becomes a commodity instead of sacred, self-righteous indignation sets in and we have mass tragedy for the ultimate value of life.

At 16, after deep conversation with my priest and parents, I broke away from the whole of the war machine and became part of the whole of the peace movement. I became an individual part for bringing peace to a warring world. This is when my principles started to fall into place, especially the first time I was told, “Meat is Murder.” I was stunned by the inference that one could be thought of as a murderer for killing animals, until I realized I was referring to myself, because I am a human animal. God did not make any animal to be enslave, tortured and mutilated for food, right?

I had to ask myself, “Am I an animal, eating animals?” At first I was in complete denial that I was an animal and those “other animals” were somehow related to me. I was shocked to realize that most humans are Animal Cannibals! This contemplation of taking life led me to the understanding “All Life is Sacred”.

In my mind this principle for the sanctity of life was awakening. To realize I was complicit in the abuse and taking of other animal’s life was profound. One must consider deeply how our acts of contributing to the slaughter of millions of animals a day, affects peace on the planet and in our soul.

This realization turned my world upside down, because these words, Meat is Murder, pandemically rang true to my soul, rather it be the killing of any babies, veal calves, or the Holocaust of Jews, Catholics, Armenians or the disabled.

For example, when we lose our sanity for the sacredness of life, we break the link with the Holiness of Life. By honoring the sacredness of life makes us a spiritual being, taking life makes us complicit with murder.

To this point, in a public demonstration, activists gathered a mountain of thousands of baby dolls, ripping them apart and painted them with dripping red blood to mimic an aborted baby and then threw thousands of these babies like garbage on the lawn of the White House to depict only one hour of aborted babies.

To add insult to injury, the activists demanded the abortion process and use the aborted materials for medical purposes! Similarly, to using the body parts of Holocaust victims for utility means, such as their bones for bone China or needles for sewing.

It is a matter of consciousness, not utility, or convenience that we may have a level of awareness and compassion for the blood bath horrors, torture, agony, and suffering of animals, a baby in the womb, or those in concentration camps. Our participation, however removed from these acts of abject torment, makes us a cog in the machine of mass murder.

There is an arch of rationality from the sanctity to murder of life. For example, the vegetarian Jain religion has regard for all life’s existence and some carry whisk brooms to remove bugs from their path. The Christian Seventh Day Adventist believe it is immoral to take an animals life for food. And at the opposite end of this arch are cannibals that eat people. This arch of life and death starts with the environment, factory farmed animals, to the unborn, to the elderly, and to the disabled. Yet if we are spiritual beings, we have some demarcation for the respect for life on this planet.

One’s respect for the value of Creation; all life and its creatures on this planet varies with each individual. Making the value of life the ultimate demarcation of spirituality, where nothing surpasses the value of life, as the pinnacle honoring of existence. This is why murder is a capital punishment with the penalty of death.

It is our Speciesism that believes some species have more right to exist than others and have less value than others, thus allowing for genocides. I found solace in the notion “All Life is Sacred,” bringing me to peace with a respect for all life. So, when I was asked to take another person’s life by my country, I knew this was the most significant demand ever placed on me. My answers come from the highest respect for life, “Thy Shall Not Kill.”

So, with that notion in mind, I took a college ecology class to learn how to save the world. I was shocked when the professor told us to go out and kill an overpopulated species to balance out the “ecology.”

This is where science without morals is a threat to a civil humanity. Where was the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm? Here I became aware of a new definition for the greater good. This is where I learned what could be right for the environment, or self-interest, may not be congruent with my moral beliefs. My convictions made me think about how they may be influenced by our personal circumstances.

Here was the hard and determining test for abortion; when the life of the mother was at peril and an abortion became a medical necessity. This gives perspective to decide on the issue of taking life for greater good.

The underlying guiding morality became clear, all life is sacred, and worthy of respect, even when killing was required. The American Indians honored the animals they killed for survival with great reverence. The word “survival” is the operative word that we must consider in these moral decisions.

We must ask, does our existence depend on the killing and the suffering of animals?
A soldier, doctor, politician, and butcher, all kill with a level of discernment. There are rules and regulations to our moral ethics of killing that appease our consciousness.

The religious belief of Ahimsa, “Do No Harm” is a base principle of world religions. This usually becomes clear when one sees the horrific terror animals go through in a slaughterhouse and unspeakable horror. Babies are stolen from their mothers, raped to become pregnant, shaking with fear from the smell of blood and by hearing the cry of other animals and their family. There is nothing more frightening then this holocaust of torture, pain and suffering. If this living hell had glass walls, it would never exist.

Abortion has become as common and acceptable as destroying the environment for hamburgers. Abortion is the original “Inconvenient Truth.” Without compassion for all life, we limit our spiritual compulsion. Just as all things are connected, so is our compassion to every creation of life.

Your level of awareness will dictate your behavior. Your spiritual awareness will dictate your spirituality. It was to this awakening that led me to honor the sacredness of life and a non-violent plantbased diet. That same awakening from ego, selfishness, lack, and fear turned my heart to the sanctity of the unborn.

Yes, the slaughter of animals and aborted babies have become almost invisible to our ethics and so sublimated, most don’t have a concern over the mass of death or respect of a sentient beings life. There is a time to let live and a time to kill. There is no greater ethical decision, for euthanasia, mercy killing, animal slaughter, war or abortion. This ethic has a rippling effect upon our society and its quality of life. As an ethical vegan and person of faith, the sacredness of all life is paramount. This awareness of the sanctity of life trumps all other conditions, leading my soul to seek a congruency for the honoring of creation.

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