May 08, 2013
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Cattle are a rather dim cognitive candle, sustained by the incessant consumption and rumination of grass, with the occasional very brief break to mate or fight before returning to the turf for more. They give no evidence of thought about the future, nor much memory of the past beyond basic conditioning. They do not plan, scheme, dream, or desire for things outside of the moment in which they are living. The corollary of this, given that at some point they must die, is that it doesn”t really matter when they die. You cannot steal a calf’s future since it does not even possess a future in thought. This is why killing 35 million cattle a year as you do in the US, and three million as we do here in the UK”for no better reason than the flavor”is not even a venial sin.
On the other hand, to kill a fully developed person is to take a great deal. Every last thing that they hoped, wished, and desired for themselves and those they love is wiped out in a single moment of violence. The repercussions of the sin reverberate far beyond the mortal act itself.
However, the newborn infant brain, which has been extremely well studied, does little other than recognize colors and shapes for quite a while after birth, whatever its doting parents might tell you. Chilling as it sounds, the lights are barely on at that stage. They were not on at all for some time after conception. The damage to a woman’s future hopes, dreams, and desires by forcing her to carry a baby to term and raise it until it is truly “up and running” is, on the other hand, vast.
Most important of all to me as someone with strong libertarian instincts is that it certainly shouldn”t be the government saying yea or nay to any of it. Ironically, it is often the people who are most pro-firearms, pro-death penalty, and pro-war who then call themselves “pro-life” and speak of its absolute sanctity with a straight face.
I am not advocating a return to imperial Roman law, even though it is their belief in honor and cruelty, blood and iron, which gave us the plaza de toros from which I shall now very often be filing this column. However, what goes on the sand today is greatly more artful than bestiarii battling lions for a baying mob, just as the lot of the modern torero is far more noble than that of the gladiator, who could be ordered to kneel and die in silence on the Emperor’s whim.
The fact is that any civilized ethical system needs to balance brutal honesty with moral imperatives concerning protection of the weak, the voiceless, and those who lack full mental faculties. However, the irony still stands that the very reason we know that people begin as nothing more than a bundle of undifferentiated cells”a fact discovered by medical science”is also what tells us that that senseless matter is merely that, despite what others may be bellowing from their pulpits.
