What's the deal with pro-choice vegans?

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So it's fine to abort a forming human life because you may not have been conducting yourself responsibly and then BAM conception. But killing animals for food is absolutely immoral. It's like they value human life less than animal life and that's just something I cannot understand.

I've noticed a couple of people like this who are quite vocal about not killing and eating animals, but will cheer for and champion the legalization/decriminalization of abortion. I understand that an animal is a fully formed being whilst a fetus is not, but I still can't help but feel that this is a clear example of self-serving cognitive dissonance.

I myself am pro-choice (but not as a substitute for protection) and an omnivore, but I would have to think that if I valued life that much that I took a stand against animal agriculture and the meat industry, that that concern for life would extend beyond animals to unborn humans too. Maybe I'm missing something but honestly I just find the two concepts of strong value for animal life and the lack of value for the lives of unborn infants to be irreconcilable.

Speaking only with anecdotal evidence, I don't think the vast majority of vegans are vegans on principle. It's more fashion than anything else.

Perhaps they're well-educated enough in biology to differentiate between a baby and a zygote.

What about those "Pro-Life" folks who are so concerned with the sanctity of a zygote's hypothetical "right to life", but fetishize firearms, bloodthirstily cheer warfare and execution, are completely inured to the privation and suffering of others, and celebrate every time an abortion clinic gets bombed or shot up?

Because a zygote has no past or present sentience, and I do not believe in souls. As a vegan, I do not think it is unethical to abort a zygote.

This belief holds no contradiction with my present moral system.

Who knows, I'm a pro life vegetarian

I am not a vegan, but I am a vegetarian, and staunchly pro-choice, and a mild animal rights activist.

I don't care about an animal's species. I care about its ability to suffer, and be aware of that suffering. I think there is good evidence that chickens have significantly more capacity to suffer than zygotes, embryos, or foetuses. Cows and sheep, more so. And pigs? Those are intelligent animals.

I'd like us as a species to move away from slaughtering large mammals, particularly pigs, and towards chickens and insects.

As for "where do you draw the line" - I think birth is a convenient place. It's early enough to ensure that there are no "people" before it, and it also gets around questions like bodily autonomy and social acceptability. It's not perfect but it will do.

Walrus has odd views on this. As I recall, he said killing a newborn is roughly equivalent in his worldview to killing a pig, while also believing that human life begins at conception. Also, he wouldn't kill pigs to eat them as a moral vegetarian, but is staunchly pro-abortion. A position so out there, it's difficult to know where to start. We didn't get a chance to delve deeper.