1ANIMAL RIGHTS AND ABORTION
Question 1
Animal rights activism and movements have gained impetus throughout the twentieth and
the twenty-first century. The most remarkable outcome of animal rights movement till date is the
activism against slaughter of animals and the vogue of “veganism”. However, the vegan or the
strict vegetarian animal right activists have been observed sometimes to be having advocating for
rights to abortion. According to the animal rights scholars and activists, animals and fetuses, both
are sentient beings, therefore, both deserve as well as have the rights to live and breathe.
However, in certain cases of extremity, emergency and sensitivity, questions might arise in case
of “morally permissible killings” of animals as well as the fetuses. According to the article of
Abbate, an act of abortion, according to the pro-abortion activists is morally permissible in
certain sensitive cases where the health of the woman (the mother) is at the risk or in cases where
the mothers might lose their life by keeping and giving birth to the baby. The fetuses, in the
respective case, is often considered to be an “innocent threat”, a living being who does not create
anything wrong but can possess threat because of its existence, in certain sensitive biological
cases for which neither the fetus nor the mother is responsible or accountable (Boyle, Minzee
and Longhofer). The vegan animal rights activists believe in the morally permissible killings of
the animals in certain cases, such as the act of self protection and self defense. For instance, if a
dog loses its sanity after a few years of domestication, it is kept in confinement or rather killed in
order to save the people from its disturbances. Just as the vegan animal rights activists believe in
the morally permissible killings of animals in cases of self-defense and self-protection, similarly,
their ethical consistency also harmonizes with the fact of “morally permissible killings” of the
fetuses, rather, morally permissible abortions in certain cases where the woman’s life is at stake
due to unnatural complications of pregnancy (Abbate). The philosophy of morally permissible

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