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mean defending the rights of the fetus. Being pro-life includes every life, he
argues, including those of animals. Perhaps even easier to defend, in fact,
are animals livesabortion and all its circumstances brings wide swathes of
grey area, but Scully argues that animal suffering is in every case avoidable.
The disdain he perceives is levelled toward animal rights activists is
unwarrantedits not like caring any more about animals will make one care
less about humans, and if its so trivial, then why cant we just legislate to
stop cruelty and move on to more pressing issues? Scully draws heavily
from Catholic moral thought: at least the three most recent Popes of the
church have not seen animal rights as so trivialthey urge members of the
church to live in the example of St Francis of Assisi (whose feast day is
today), the patron saint of animals and the environment, and the churchs
Catechism recognizes animal cruelty as sinful. In fact, Scully extrapolates,
kindness toward animals (defenceless, like children) can keep us humble.
Scully conflates abortion and animal abuse into a single culture of cruelty,
and says that society at large does not wish to ameliorate this cruelty
because sometimes we just cant afford to be humane just do what has to
be done (p 5). Much like abortion, factory farmings injustices are largely out
of sight and thus out of mind for the majority of Americans. How can we
organize against cruelty if we do not know what is happening, or to what
extent? Scully blames the industrys image on a cover-up taken part in by
not just the farmers or Big Ag, but agricultural scientists and veterinarians as
well. He also lifts the pro-choice movements usage of the word choice to
again mean a negative thing. Arguing that we choose to, but do not need to
eat meat, Scully holds up travelling celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain as the
prime example of human selfishness because Bourdain has said that meat
is important in our diets to bring deliciousness, pleasure, and enjoyment. Not
necessarily an essential nutritional contribution, but rather a fun one, meat
is not an integral part of our diet. We consume it because we see animals as
our resources, harvested just like lumber or coal for our consumption. But
the lighter side of choice is the relative significance of choosing to be a
vegetarian or vegan. It is usually the sign of sincere moral effort, Scully
says, that it requires doing the harder thing regardless of the cynics and
moral sloths always ready to tell us we dont even need to try (p 11). Similar
to Carol Adams view in the preface to The Sexual Politics of Meat, Scully
sees the uphill battle as the righteous one: going against the tide to get to a
moral high ground is the best choice one can possibly make.
Further, Scully draws comparisons to how agriscience and pro-choicers refer
to animals and fetuses, respectively. They lack self-awareness or the ability
to feel pain, and thus we can be cruel to them. They do not deserve the
same rights as you or I, and thus we can be cruel to them. Scully, on the
other hand, sees both as powerless fellow creatures, formed of the same
dust, to whom human beings have obligations of both charity and justice (p
13). He sees a similarity in the way fetuses and animals are treated in
legislation: they are divided into subcategories. Household pets like dogs or
cats are protected from abuse while farm animals are set aside in their own
clause as being exempt from protection. Foetuses prior to 20 weeks may be
legally aborted, but afterward deserve protection under law. Scully calls this
hypocriticalwhat is the difference? To what point is cruelty permissible and
by what standards do we define that point?
An interesting undertone of Scullys work is a rejection of laissez-faire
capitalist tenets like economic efficiency without regard to rightness or
wrongness. While conservatives are, in general, proponents of a very lightly
regulated free market, any economic efficiency found in factory farming
practices are outweighed by the fact that the products of cruelty are bereft
of any moral legitimacy (p 17). This sentiment seems to break from
mainstream conservative thoughtbut it makes sense. If one is pro-life, one
is pro-animal. But are they not also pro-welfare, because welfare saves lives?
Anti-capital punishment, because it takes them? Scully has written speeches
for such red-meat conservatives (even the political phrase for these people
and their ideologies is tinged with the power trip of meat-eating) as Sarah
Palin, Dick Cheney, and George W Bushall of whom are not only meateaters, but hunters (to use the term very looselythe later two are perhaps
best known for their mishaps, Cheney having accidentally shot a man in the
face and Bush having accidentally shot a killdeer on the gubernatorial
campaign trail). They may be pro-lifeand Scully appears to give a great
deal of credit to Palin solely for the fact that she did not abort her child with
Down syndromebut they certainly dont have the record on animal rights
that Scully lauds in others. He even details on page 22 of the article his
complete dismissal by Karl Rove, who belittled Scullys animal rights
argument with a simple hey, man, at least youre thinking outside the box!
He does not seem to see a problem with this, nor does he allege that not
being pro-animal makes these people any less pro-lifeas he blatantly does
with Iowa senator Steve King, who he calls a little tyrant. Its a wilful turning
of a blind eye to those he has worked for that must be addressed in criticism
of this essay.
Scully ends his piece with a call to action to unite pro-lifers and animal rights
activists in a common cause for lifeby acting in solidarity with the
defenceless and forgotten, [these movements] represent two of the great
moral causes of our day, and among the greatest opportunities to do good in
this world (p 23). But even as he draws the straight line between the rights
of the animal and those of the unborn, he acknowledges outright that the
two groups are alienated from one another, with many animal rights
advocates falling under a more liberal political classification than their
conservative counterparts, and each eager to lash out at the other on
unrelated issues. Its a wishful proposalnot altogether impossible, but just
improbable enough when Scully holds up self-professed gun-totin moosehuntin frontierswoman Sarah Palin as the darling of the pro-life movement.
How can these two groups reconcile with one another? Perhaps they can rely
on a basis in faith alone.