Quote:
Originally Posted by Jozrael
[...] However, no, I don't believe they quite understand what it is to live. They have survival instincts...but they don't have a part of them going 'I'm going to die'.
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Neither does a fetus. But I disagree with you, anyway. I think the terror response in animals (especially the more intelligent ones) is similar to that of humans. I'm not saying they have concepts of an afterlife or moral virtue, but they do have a sense of life and death. They
really want to live. They
really don't want to die, and they fear situations where they think that might happen.
Terror can't be that much more or less "instinctual," "automatic," or otherwise "programmed" in other animals than it is in humans.
Regardless, I don't see an aborted fetus suffering anything like what a pig or cow goes through when it's being "prepared for market." It's not murder, technically. They aren't classified under law that way. But I can't see how it isn't a problem. If I were against abortion for the reason of it being murder, it would logically follow for me to adopt a strict vegetarian diet. Otherwise, I'd feel it would be an inconsistency to want to defend something like a fetus from going through that sort of procedure, all the while the meat I would be eating would be coming from animals that suffered a much more horrific fate.
I guess I'd be a Seventh-Day Adventist or a Buddhist or something.