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It isn't necessary to eat cows to keep their numbers in check. Their reproduction is pretty much controlled by ranchers. And I think, at this point, it's all done through artificial insemination, though I'll have to look into that.

I'm vegan and pro-life and I find it hard to understand how people can be vegan or vegetarian and pro-choice. confused I was a vegan before I had any real developed opinion on abortion and I just assumed that any compassionate person would oppose the killing of unborn children. For a few years I have known that I don't want to have any children but were I to end up pregnant (for whatever reason) I would never, ever have an abortion. Animals who suffer at the hands of humans, for example in a factory farm or vivisection laboratory, are helpless and at our mercy - they can't speak up for themselves so animal rights campaigners speak up for their interests. It seems to me to be the same situation with unborn children that pro-life campaigners speak up for their interests as they cannot.

When I was at a friend and fellow vegan's house and something came up on the news about abortion I was really, really, shocked when she launched into a speech about 'fetus parasites' and how abortion was such a great thing. gonk We ended up having a huge row about it and I lost a lot of respect for her.

I stopped eating meat at 13 and a few years later stopped eating dairy and eggs because I objected to the way animals are treated and killed in factory farms. When dairy cows get too worn out to produce enough milk they are slaughtered and used in cheep meat products - sometimes when they are pregnant with the next calf that would have been needed for them to continue producing milk.

I don't really believe in the concept of animal 'rights' in the strictest sense because I find it hard to define what those 'rights' should be (right to life? right to freedom?), which animals they should apply to, and what would happen if one animal 'infringed' upon another animal's 'rights' eg. a tiger killing a deer. I prefer to think of human 'responsibility' to be as compassionate as possible and live life without causing unnecessary suffering to any animal, including humans, and causing as little destruction as possible to the environment. So, since I can live healthily as a vegan I should do so and not support the enslavement of animals for meat, dairy or eggs.

The concept of human rights is actually a little confusing for me too, because there seem to be so many exceptions and grey areas. >.<

It's legal here in the UK to experiment on animals.
I'm pretty sure it goes on in the US too...
A definition of vivisection from an online dictionary:
"the cutting up or other use of living animals in tests which are intended to increase human knowledge of human diseases and the effects of using particular drugs"

I'm not vegan or vegetarian so I don't really know myself, but from what I've gathered from my sister she simply likes non human animals more than humans.

I can see her point there, I've never met a cat I didn't like. xd

The other day, I was posting in the ED in one of the hundred vegan threads and wondering the same thing. It really does kind of amaze me. How can someone believe that an anima's rights to go on living are more important than the natural order in which omnivores and carnivores are are designed (by creation or evolution, whatever your belief) to eat meat. They hold these cows and chickens (who wouldn't actually be here if people weren't breeding them to eat) precious. Some of them won't even eat eggs which could grow to be chickens. But when it comes to abotion they just disregard the life of a human baby.

I honestly just think that many people don't think things through very much. The majority of people I know tend to just go along with the belief set that sounds good at the time, and the arguments that they hear most often rather than really thinking things through on a fundamental, ethical basis.

No one who is for embryonic stem cell research is against adult stem cell research. However, there seems to be a limit to how far adult stem cell research can go, but there is a potential to treat hundreds of more illnesses with embryonic stem cells, if the research is funded and allowed.

There is a group of scientists working on a way to (I think) create embryonic stem cells that wouldn't develop into a human, ever, to try to get around the limitations.

I don't feel that any stem cell research is unethical, but this is really a topic for another thread - if you want to continue it.