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97 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 1 (2017)

handle is hein.journals/bulron97 and id is 1 raw text is: SITUATIONAL ETHICS AND VEGANISM NEIL H. BUCHANAN* Sherry Colb and Michael Dorf's Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights is an essential work, exploring an unexpected overlap between two seemingly unrelated areas of ethics and the law. They make strong affirmative cases for the pro-choice and animal rights sides of those two respective debates, showing why it is possible-indeed, morally required-to believe simultaneously that abortion should not be banned and that consuming animal products is immoral. Although their arguments are important on their own merits, it is useful to emphasize that this book is in a very real sense a riposte, an answer to an accusation that goes like this: Vegans cannot truly believe in their stated reason for refusing to participate in animal cruelty. If they did, they would also be anti- choice, because the same moral imperative that supposedly motivates vegans- revulsion at the thought of inflicting pain and death on beings that have feelings and that have the right to live their lives-would require vegans to reject abortion as well. The Colb-Dorf book responds to that accusation masterfully, by centering their embrace of animal rights on the sentience of the beings at issue, a quality not shared by the vast majority of fetuses subject to abortion. I should also note that the argument to which they are responding amounts to a dare. We dare you, say those who attack vegans, to face up to the consequences of your moral claims. Disavow your arguments for veganism, or admit that you are hypocrites. The versions of this attack that I have seen invariably boil down to a person saying, I think you really care more about being pro-choice, so stop pretending that you're so high and mighty with your animal rights nonsense! Interestingly, there is a distinct asymmetry to the argument. A person is supposedly required to accept the claim that bans on abortion are an inexorable result of animal rights arguments, but anti-choice people are somehow not expected to become vegans. That is why the accusation so frequently comes across as a debate maneuver rather than a sincere argument. But the argument also amounts to a dare because it carries with it an insinuation that animals are so obviously unimportant that liberals will admit to being insincere about their commitment to animal rights if they are forced to realize that the cost of a sincere commitment to animals is to reject reproductive rights for women. As an interesting (and equally illogical) corollary, a person who is pro-choice might try to use the argument as an excuse not to become a vegan. * Professor of Law, The George Washington University School of Law. 1

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