Pro-lifers who eat meat are hurting their own cause. They might as well contribute to NARAL or Planned Parenthood if they insist on eating meat. The fate of the animals and the fate of man are interconnected. (Ecclesiastes 3:19) A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, worshipped by millions of Vaishnavaite Hindus worldwide as a shaktya-avesha-avatar or empowered representative of God, said in 1974:

"We simply request, 'Don't kill. Don't maintain slaughterhouses.' That is very sinful. It brings a very awkward karmic reaction upon society. Stop these slaughterhouses. We don't say, 'Stop eating meat.' You can eat meat, but don't take it from the slaughterhouse, by killing. Simply wait (until the animal dies of natural causes) and you'll get the carcasses.

"You are killing innocent cows and other animals--nature will take revenge. Just wait. As soon as the time is right, nature will gather all these rascals and slaughter them. Finished. They'll fight among themselves--Protestants and Catholics, Russia and America, this one and that one. It is going on. Why? This is nature's law. Tit for tat. 'You have killed. Now you kill yourselves.'

"They are sending animals to the slaughterhouse, and now they'll create their own slaughterhouse. You see? Just take Belfast. The Roman Catholics are killing the Protestants, and the Protestants are killing the Catholics. This is nature's law. It is not necessary that you be sent to the ordinary slaughterhouse. You'll make a slaughterhouse at home. You'll kill your own child--abortion. This is nature's law.

"Who are these children being killed? They are these meat-eaters. They enjoyed themselves when so many animals were killed and now they're being killed by their own mothers. People do not know how nature is working. If you kill you must be killed. If you kill the cow, who is your mother, then in some future lifetime your mother will kill you. Yes. The mother becomes the child, and the child becomes the mother.

"We don't want to stop trade, or the production of grains and vegetables and fruit. But we want to stop these killing houses. It is very, very sinful. That is why all over the world they have so many wars. Every ten or fifteen years there is a big war--a wholesale slaughterhouse for humankind. But these rascals--they do not see it, that by the law of karma, every action must have its reaction."

Similarly, in his purport to the Srimad Bhagavatam 6.10.9, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami writes: "One cannot continue killing animals and at the same time be a religious man. That is the greatest hypocrisy. Jesus Christ said, 'Do not kill,' but hypocrites nevertheless maintain thousands of slaughterhouses while posing as Christians. Such hypocrisy is condemned..."

And:

"If one kills many thousands of animals in a professional way so that other people can purchase the meat to eat, one must be ready to be killed in a similar way in his next life and in life after life. There are many rascals who violate their own religious principles. According to Judeo-Christian scriptures, it is clearly said, 'Thou shalt not kill.' Nonetheless, giving all kinds of excuses, even the heads of religions indulge in killing animals while trying to pass as saintly persons. This mockery and hypocrisy in human society brings about unlimited calamities; therefore occasionally there are great wars. Masses of such people go out onto battlefields and kill themselves. Presently, they have discovered the atomic bomb, which is simply waiting to be used for wholesale destruction."

(Chaitanya Charitamrita, Madhya 24.251, purport)

Where does the "slippery slope" begin? Pro-lifers look in horror as an entire class of humans are systematically stripped of their rights, executed, and even used as tools for medical research. But this is what we humans have been doing TO ANIMALS for millennia.

I believe abortion is the karmic reaction for killing animals. And therefore, pro-lifers should learn that it's in their best interest to include the animals in their ethics.

I'm not singling out pro-lifers for special criticism here, either. War, like abortion, is also the karmic reaction for killing animals. Many in the peace movement are unaware of this. In the April 1995 issue of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a "consistent-ethic" periodical on the religious Left, Catholic civil rights activist Bernard Broussard concludes:

"...our definition of war is much too limited and narrow. Wars and conflicts in the human kingdom will never be abolished or diminished until, as a pure matter of logic, it includes the cessation of war between the human and animal kingdoms. For, if we be eaters of flesh, or wearers of fur, or participants in hunting animals, or in any way use our might against weakness, we are promoting, in no matter how seemingly insignificant a fashion, the spirit of war. All are manifestations of a 'survival of the fittest philosophy.'"

According to the editors of World Watch, July/August 2004:

"The human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future: deforestization, topsoil erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities and the spread of disease."

The threat of "overpopulation" is frequently used to justify abortion as birth control. On a vegetarian diet, however, the world could easily support a population several times its present size. The world's cattle alone consume enough to feed 8.7 billion humans.

America's largest animal rights organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), over 1.6 million strong, is challenging those who think they can still be "meat-eating environmentalists" to go veg, if they really care about the planet. If it could be shown that meat-eating leads to abortion and war, would this be enough to cause our friends in the pro-life and peace movements to go veg as well?

Becoming a vegetarian or a vegan is not merely helping the pro-life movement, it is literally pro-life!