Pro Choice or Pro Life?

The question whether a person is pro choice or pro life is raised almost regularly during election season, and this is a topic of hot debate during the presidential elections. The candidates' positions on such issues are seemingly very important to the general public in making their voting decision.

However, I want to give this a broader scope. Generally, the question of being pro choice or pro life is raised only in regards to the central issue of abortion. Let us broaden the approach and then try and see if we can understand what we mean by pro choice or pro life.

Not all of us are vegetarians in this world. Many of us consume meat in some form or other. Even the vegetarians don't seem to push the non-vegetarians to stop eating meat, nor do they resort to legal means to do so. There are no laws that prevent killing of animals for the purpose of human consumption. Also, there are laws that allow human beings to hunt down and kill animals for their pleasure, albeit in a restricted time of the year and a restricted area. All these things show that we human beings believe that we are the most advanced species on the planet and that the sanctity of human life is far more important than the sanctity of animal life.

The problem I have with all this is that the people who say that they are pro life and take out rallies and processions to express their feelings vehemently, are the same people who would hunt down animals and fish for their pleasure and food. This is a sort of unequal and unethical treatment that should also be illegal. Such dual standards should be opposed. There is no way that we can't allow a woman to abort a baby when we can allow the ruthless killing of countless cattle every single day. It has been already argued that there is a loss of life in both cases. There is no proof that a cow's life is less important than a baby's. Surprisingly, the same people who clim to be advocates of the pro life policy, have no problem in giving death penalty to prisoners. The logic of such an approach baffles me.

Who are we to decide if one life is more valuable than another? In such a situation, it seems only prudent to treat all life as equally valuable and give each an equal chance of growth. Alternately, we can treat each case on its own merit. Either way, we have to do away with the current system of double standards and come up with an ethically and morally sound system.