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Can You Be Vegan and Pro-Natalist At The Same Time?
An ethical conundrum awaits many vegans attempting to follow the kinder path.
Introduction
“Being vegan means extending your circle of compassion to all beings, and that includes the unborn.”
This was the reply I banged out on my keyboard to a question, or rather, a statement someone had just made on the antinatalism subreddit on the popular microblogging site Reddit one weekday afternoon.
And that’s when it struck me!
How could one justify being pro-natalist when the very philosophy that they follow is vehementally against it?
Alas, a lot of vegans in their quest for animal liberation and the cultural adoption of plant-based food completely forget that humans are animals too. Pro-natalist vegans are more than happy to continue perpetuating the most exploitative, brutal, and unsustainable way of life on the planet; pro-natalism and the family way of life, a lifestyle dependent on the extraction and consumption of incrementally more resources every single year. While they don’t openly reject or bash anti-natalism, pro-natalist vegans nevertheless celebrate the birth of newborns within their vegan friend circles with great enthusiasm and don’t see the discrepancy between the Animal Rights philosophy they preach on the…
