Back in 2016, Jerry Kolb and Michael Dorff published
one of the most thought -provoking book in the
animal rights world. It is called Beating Hearts
and it attempts to resolve a challenging question.
How can you condemn hunting, animal farming and
animal experimentation while also favoring legal
abortion, which is the deliberate destruction
of a human fetus? If you are someone like me,
who thinks abortion should be legal, but goes
as far as not to even kill mosquitoes, then this
issue hits home. But more than that, this book
is the proof that the secular vegan philosophy
and intellectual tradition has enough depth to
tackle and appropriate itself some of the most
complex and sensitive moral hot button issues
of our time. To discuss the book, I have the
honor to welcome the author himself, Michael
Dorff, a Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at
Cornell University and long -time animal rights
activist. Check out the episode notes for more
details. And if you appreciate this conversation
and my independent reporting of the animal rights
world, then please share this episode with your
fellow vegans. asked me before we started recording
to talk a little bit about Sherry Kolb, who is
my co -author on this book and who passed away
in 2022. The book was published in 2016 and I
thought I'd say a little bit about Sherry's work
in animal rights. So first, both of us were trained
as lawyers. We were colleagues for many years.
and but also married. And we became vegans in
2006, but had been sort of moving in that direction
in the way that a lot of people do over the better
course of a decade in stages. Initially, we did
so as a kind of personal choice. And over time,
it became woven into our respective work. I would
say more initially for Sherry than for me. If
I think about the roots of Sherry's activism,
she always loved animals. We had dogs, and she
was very fond of animals as a kid. She actually
is, I think I can say this, she's responsible.
for a line in a Supreme Court case in 1993, long
before she became vegan. So when Sherry was a
law clerk for Justice Harry Blackmon on the U
.S. Supreme Court, there was a case before the
court called Church of Lakumi Babalu -I against
Aylia. And the case posed the question whether
a local law that forbade ritual animal slaughter
was targeted at practitioners of Santeria. whether
that law violated freedom of religion. And the
Supreme Court unanimously said, yes, the law
was unconstitutional because it singled out ritual
slaughter as opposed to being a kind of general
purpose anti -cruelty law. Justice Blackmun wrote
a concurrence saying that, well, it would be
a very different case if this were a law that
was going after slaughter more generally on the
grounds that it was inhumane. In that case, the
government would have much stronger interest.
He wrote that because Sherry pushed him to write
it. And it's, you know, it's one of the very
few expressions of what you might think of as
animal welfare in the US Supreme Court case law.
So I think Sherry was kind of a proto vegan.
already. But what sort of pushed her and therefore
me into veganism and then the animal rights movement
was that she was for many years colleagues with
Gary Francione at the Rutgers law school. And
Gary is of course a well -known author and animal
rights activist. He wasn't that, I would say,
much of an advocate with his colleagues, I think
because he didn't think there was much of a hope.
But Sherry was sympathetic to him from the beginning.
She started working there in 1995. And one way
you saw it was she would sometimes bake cookies
for the faculty. And because she wanted to include
Gary, she always made them vegan, too. And that,
I think, planted a seed. There was no exact turning
point for veganism, but we sort of, as I said,
gradually got there in 2006. And then after we
moved to Ithaca, we sort of joined the local
vegan community, which included a number of very
prominent people. So Colin Campbell, who's most
famous for the China study, lives in Ithaca.
There's a farm sanctuary is a 40 minute drive
away in Watkins Glen. The filmmakers, James Labeck
and Jenny Stein live here. A friend of ours,
Amy Hamlin, who runs something called the Coalition
for Healthy School Foods, which promotes plant
based foods in public schools. lives here. So
we became friends with all of these people. And
one of the things they encouraged us to do was
to go to something called Vegan Summerfest. At
the time, it was called Vegetarian Summerfest,
although it was purely vegan. And there, we were
exposed to just many more people in the movement.
And that led Sherry to decide she wanted to offer
a class in animal rights. A lot of law schools
offer classes in animal law. But Her view at
the time i think this was true for her throughout
her life was that the law was not a very powerful
instrument for bringing about change for animals
mostly because. It's very difficult to enforce
laws that go very far beyond where people are
in their own social attitudes and so she thought
that if you wanted to make real progress you
had to at least start with working on people's.
viewpoints. And so she taught this class in animal
rights for many, many years. She brought in guest
speakers, many of whom we met at Summerfest.
And, you know, they had a lot of various perspectives.
We met lots of interesting people in the movement.
And that led to Sherry's first book, which was
not her first book, but her first book on animal
rights, which was called Mind If I Order the
Cheeseburger. and other questions people ask
vegans and what that book does in uh 13 chapters
is it poses questions that people commonly ask
like you know where do you get your protein um
uh isn't it you know if other animals eat animals
why is it wrong for humans to eat animals these
sorts of things some of which are often posed
as gacha questions or not in good faith but the
point of her book was to take these questions
seriously to treat them, regardless of how they
might be asked any given person, as though they
were being asked in good faith, and then really
grapple with them. One of the questions that
was posed in that book is, are you pro -life?
Because that was a question we had encountered
from i think some people who were pro -choice
on abortion and wanted just sort of wanted to
know well is does your theory lead to this other
position and some who were in fact pro -life
on abortion uh but were part of the animal rights
movement so uh you can think of someone like
matthew scully i mean he wasn't the actual person
who posed that question to sherry but other people
did and um she has a kind of uh the kernel of
the argument that we would unpack at greater
length in Beating Hearts in that chapter of Mind
If I Order the Cheeseburger. In addition to the
chapters in Mind If I Order the Cheeseburger,
Sheri had all sorts of interesting ideas about
veganism and animal rights, which she wrote about
both in academic work that appears in scholarly
journals and in more popular work. She and I,
for many years, I still do this. publish a bi
-weekly columns first in something called Find
Law and for the last 15 years or so in a journal
called Verdict. And in addition to that, I have
a blog for which I write two or three times a
week, and Sherry used to write every other week.
So she would explore almost all sorts of things.
She had a number of interesting essays about
the relation between various religious practices
and veganism. She was quite interested in how
different movements responded and worked together.
So she would draw parallels between the LGBTQ
rights movement and animal rights. And so she,
you know, I think she sort of covered the waterfront
during the period in which she was actively thinking
and writing about animal rights. Admirable. Thank
you so much for sharing that about Sherry. And
I'm impatient to get into the topic of the book,
Beating Hearts. But first, I want to have maybe
your opinion as a lawyer and as a professor of
law about the expression, the term animal rights.
I'm meeting more and more activists in the animal
rights animal liberation space who are taking
their distance away from that expression and
who would rather prefer to use vegan or veganism
instead of talking about animal rights because
they feel you know it's a bit too much detached
from the reality of people and that maybe there's
Like you said, no future in advancing the animal
cause on the legal front. What do you make of
that and of the term animal rights? Yeah. So
I want to answer that question in a second, but
first I want to just clarify. I don't think there's
no future in advancing the cause of animals through
the law. I think that I would qualify that in
two ways. So the contention, which was Sherry's,
but I largely share this. is that it will be
difficult to make a whole lot of progress now
through laws that do what we really want them
to do, because to get those enacted, you would
need much more support than they currently have.
But I think there are at least two ways in which
law can be useful. One is we can think long term
that eventually, once people's hearts and minds
have been changed, it might be possible to enact
laws that do have serious teeth. And the second
is that, you know, I don't think of legal reform,
whether through legislation, referenda, or court
cases, as operating separate from social and
political activism, so that litigation or a campaign
for legal change can be a kind of social activism,
so that even if what you're seeking is relatively
modest, You know, getting rid of battery cages,
for example, or as in the case of litigate the
litigation, you're just trying to have this these
particular elephants moved to a sanctuary rather
than kept in a zoo or other form of captivity.
And even if you fail, the campaign itself can
move the needle by changing people's minds and
therefore Laying the foundation for further change
so I should say that about about the law coming
directly to your question I Don't have a strong
view about the nomenclature You know the Until
very recently I and and you know for a while
now I've heard people not want to use the word
vegan because they fear that it turns people
off I don't love the word the term plant -based
only because it's misleading. So my friend and
fellow activist, Victoria Moran, likes to use
the term plant -exclusive rather than plant -based
because it's more accurate. Because I've seen
products labeled plant -based that contain some
animal products. It's like, well, the base is
plants. It's then the additional thing. So I
think any term one uses, whether it's vegan,
animal rights, plant -based, or something else,
is going to potentially have two problems. One
is that it might not be exactly accurate in capturing
everything that the people who want to use it
want to project to the term. And the other is
words can take on a kind of guilt by association,
so that if there are negative attitudes towards
a term, even if it's inherently unproblematic,
there might be tactical or strategic reasons
to move away from it. You see this sometimes
moving outside of this particular realm. You
see this sometimes with the way in which the
preferred term for a group that suffers some
form of systemic discrimination or subordination
will want to change the name because A stigma
becomes associated with the term, even though
the term is not inherently offensive. It becomes
offensive because a lot of the people who are
using it at a particular time have discriminatory
attitudes about it. And so that might be some
of what's going on with animal rights versus
something else. My own preference would be to
use whatever term is going to be most effective
at building support for the shared goals of the
movement. Okay, let's get to the book now. I
before reading your book, I have to say I never
really thought a lot about abortion and the debate,
you know, pro choice, pro life. Um, I live in
Canada. I live in Quebec. Uh, this, this is not
part of the, uh, political culture here to, to
debate this. Um, uh, and so I never, this was
never top of mind, not like in America, but I
always got, you know, the impression that this
was very, um, um, you know, this rattles people
and, uh, you know, triggers lots of reactions.
So I guess my first question about the book is,
did you have conversations about maybe hesitations
about not publishing the book in fear of the
kind of reception you would get from publishing
this book touching to this turled rail issue?
And also, what kind of reception did you get
once you published the book? Yeah. So the short
answer is no, not really. I mean, we're both
academics and I think we we consider ourselves
activists, but we're careful in our scholarly
work to make claims that are backed by good arguments
and good citations and what have you, and that
sometimes will lead me, and this was true of
Sherry as well, to take positions that might
not be especially popular with our friends as
well as with people with whom we more often disagree.
So we didn't really worry too much about that.
I have also I had written about abortion in my
scholarly work as had Sherry and a lot of different
articles and so forth and I think that no one
who knew us would be surprised that this was
an issue we were discussing. We did have a worry
a little bit about whether it made sense as a
kind of uh... tactical matter if we're thinking
of ourselves as advocates for animals or advocates
for whatever position we're going to be proposing
on abortion to combine the two because you know
it's a little bit like uh... you know you take
a controversial subject and you what you normally
the way you wanna persuade somebody of your view
is to find an area of agreement and then show
how their agreement on Here, we're taking y and
saying, well, here's something else you don't
agree with us on, potentially. And so that seems
kind of backwards as an advocacy strategy. But
I have to say, we really didn't think about it
as advocacy. As far as the reception goes, I
think it was generally quite positive. I have
two caveats about that. One is we didn't think
about it We went back and forth with the publisher
over the cover illustration because the the cover
illustration includes a human baby not like a
fetus or an embryo and I think that led some
people who didn't read the book to think that
this was a sort of strongly anti -abortion book
which it is not and so I actually had one conversation
with somebody who was who had that view and i
tried to you know explain to her no no that's
not what's going on there and um but the the
the marketing people persuaded us that this was
better than any of the ideas we came up with
for cover illustrations um i would say that people
who are sort of uh whose first commitment is
to animals and like you you might have thought
about abortion issue might have some position
about it but it's not something that is sort
of an animating issue for them really like the
book they thought oh this is interesting you're
shedding interesting light back and forth for
people who um came to the book with um i think
strong views about abortion if they were pro
-choice i think they were initially a little
bit put off but then generally came around and
sort of liked our arguments. And I think the
opposite is true of people who are pro -life.
That is, I think people who are pro -life, there
were a few who I thought took, who said, and
I appreciated this, well, I don't agree with
you, but at least you're giving our argument,
you're taking our argument seriously and you're
not responding to a straw man version of it.
And, you know, that to me is about what I would
expect. So I didn't expect that we would persuade
anybody who was strongly opposed to abortion
to change their view about that from this book.
But it was our hope that we would sort of feel
the force of arguments on all sides of their
respective issues. I should say, all sides, I
actually don't think there are any very good
arguments against the animal rights position.
So I'm open to feeling the force of contrary
arguments. I just didn't see any here that I
don't find. I tend to find that people who are
opposed to the kind of, you know, sort of minimal
rights for animals are engaged in rationalization
rather than, you know, building serious arguments.
I agree with what that person said about the
straw man argument. I really feel like in your
book, you're making the best pro choice argument
because you are addressing the real arguments
coming from the pro -life people. You know, you
take them seriously, yes, but what's most important
is you represent their argument well. And I really
realized, you know, from reading the book that
I had been fed a caricature version of what was
a pro -life person. I really had, and that's
the best word for it, a caricature in my head
of, you know, who, like in the beginning of your
book, you talk about how most pro -life people
are pro -life for religious reason, and they
have nothing to do with, you know, they have
not thought about the question of sentience.
And that's what I had in my mind, you know, someone
like deeply religious or fanatic who hates women.
And that's what, you know, gets you to believe
that pro -life is a good stance. But yeah, you
really represented well. We should clarify. What
is your position on abortion? So The view that
Sherry and I defend in the book is that abortions
before fetal sentience which is that you can
There is a range of legitimate scientific argument
about when exactly fetus is attained sentience,
but it's it's certainly well past the point at
which about 90 % of abortions in North America
occur. But our view is that abortions before
fetal sentience do not raise serious moral questions.
Abortions after fetal sentience do raise serious
moral questions and that therefore someone deciding
whether to have an abortion of a sentient fetus
uh first of all has a kind of moral duty to try
to make that decision before fetal sentience
but you can't always sometimes there are circumstances
that arise late in pregnancy but that there is
a kind of personal moral duty to give serious
weight to the fetus's interest if one is going
to have an abortion after fetal sentience but
that still doesn't answer the question of what
position the law ought to take on abortion because
there are many things, there are many areas of
life where one has a moral duty to take seriously
some matter, but if one takes it seriously or
even if one doesn't take it seriously and makes
a kind of moral mistake, we don't necessarily
think that justifies the state in intervening.
So our view is that in general abortion up until
fairly late in pregnancy ought to be legal, but
that people ought to take seriously their moral
duties with respect to abortion of sentient fetuses.
So when you say sentience, what do you mean by
that? Yeah. So sentience is the ability to have
and the having of subjective experiences such
as pleasure, pain, excitement, thoughts, etc.
It's the difference between something and someone.
It's a sort of a first -person subjective consciousness.
It's a synonym for rough synonym for consciousness.
The reason I prefer the term sentience although
maybe I shouldn't because a lot of people who
aren't in the animal movement don't know the
word but the reason I prefer sentience is that
consciousness I think tends to signify more of
a kind of rational thought process and a being
need not be rational in the way that you know
we think of like a you know a philosophy professor
uh in order to be sentient so um it's basically
what distinguishes most animal life from you
know, just about all plants, as far as we're
aware, all plant life and inanimate objects.
Okay, so you mentioned how sentience is, yes,
a very well known popular word used in the animal
rights world. How did you tie this term of sentience
to? What is the link between that to, you know,
abortion, or since we're talking about abortion,
how did you tie that, you know, concept of sentience
to, you know, talking about the fetus to animals?
Sure. So the first thing to note right is that
this is the Using sentience as the basis for
rights is hardly something we came up with, right?
This is a common view among people who support
animal rights, and it goes back quite far. If
you think about Jeremy Bentham's famous line,
the question is not can they think, but can they
suffer? And it's a little weird to think about
animal rights and then talk about Bentham because
Bentham was a utilitarian who famously derided
the whole idea of rights as nonsense on stilts.
But nonetheless, Peter Singer is also a utilitarian
and he's associated with the animal rights movement
as well. And so the idea is that beings who are
capable of suffering should not be unnecessarily
made to suffer. That's the sort of, I think,
the core of the animal rights idea. It's also,
you can find it in many religions. It's most
clearly in the idea of Ahimsa and the Indian
religions. But it doesn't have to be a religious
idea. It could just simply be, if there's any
kind of moral principle, you shouldn't unnecessarily
inflict suffering on a being capable of suffering
and and this takes an additional logical step
which we can talk about later um likewise a being
capable of experiencing pleasure or pleasurable
experiences or or deriving something positive
out of its life shouldn't be deprived of its
life either and both of those principles i think
are in play not only with respect to the duties
we humans owe to animals but also with respect
to whatever duties we owe to human fetuses. After
all, a human fetus that is capable of experiencing
pain or is capable of having subjective experiences
more generally seems to have the same kinds of
interests in both avoiding the painful experience
and in continuing to exist as would a non -human
animal like a chicken or a pig or what have you.
So it seemed to us just quite logical that these
ought to be connected. And we also noticed that
a lot of the pro -life advocacy that aims at
people sort of in the middle, that is to say,
not people who have strong religious commitments
that they believe in the insolment of a zygote,
but people who, you know, just sort of don't
think about it much, that a lot of the the argument
aimed at them works in this register of avoiding
inflicting suffering. So one of the things that
we saw in the United States over the course of
several decades were campaigns to enact laws
and also to public information campaigns about
fetal pain. Right? So there was legislation in
various US states. There was a bill introduced
in the National Congress to ban, quote, pain
-capable abortions. That is to say, abortions
of fetuses capable of experiencing pain. And
I think that reflected a recognition that, at
least for a lot of the audience for the debate
about abortion, people cared about abortion or
didn't care about abortion, whether or not they
imagined the infliction of pain or other suffering
on a fetus, right? And so it does seem to us
that putting aside distinctly religious views,
the secular argument against abortion looks very
much like the argument for respecting animals.
If I had to summarize what you just said, um,
you looked at people who cared about, uh, you
know, fetus abortions, all of that, since we
are humans, uh, since, uh, they are Americans.
Um, and you explain why they care about it by
talking about sentience and then you tie it to
the animal rights movement for them. Is that
a good summary? Yeah. So I think that's right.
With the possible exception of that, I don't
know that that's why all of them care about it.
I'm sure that's not why all of them care about
it. As you were saying, you know, many people
might hold these these views simply because that's
what their religion tells them. But I think that
it's certainly true that some of them have a
this view for that reason and certainly you see
it in the kinds of arguments that they make and
so again much like you know sherry's book on
um you know mind if i were the cheeseburger right
the goal here is to take this seriously and respond
to what is sometimes called the steel man as
opposed to the straw man version of the argument
by the way i should say that here in quebec uh
abortion is legal up until nine months. So kind
of a strange situation. What do you make of those
people? And you touched on that in the book,
who believe that humans are special, their own,
our own kind, you know, it is, they justify it,
their views with religion. And so, yeah, humans
are special, they are unique, and we should not,
you know, mix that with the rest of the animal
kingdom. Basically going against what Darwin
was saying about humans and the rest of animals,
you know, there's a difference of degrees and
not of nature. Well, those people say there's
a difference of nature. What do you make of that?
Yeah, so I mean, I think that if somebody is
asserting that as a matter of religious doctrine,
there are really two kinds of responses one can
make. One is somebody who falls within the same
religious tradition, I think can usually point
to resources within that religious tradition
for why this is a mistake. So that in just about
every religious tradition, there are resources
for showing kindness to animals. It's very, very
clear in the Eastern religions, especially those
that believe in reincarnation and the possibility
that one's soul could have come from or end up
in a non -human animal. It's within the Christian
tradition. The current pope, Pope Francis, took
his name from Francis of Assisi, who is known
for his kindness to animals. In both Judaism
and Islam, the rules around slaughter of animals,
both permit slaughter of animals, but both kosher
laws and halal are thought to be partly about
reducing cruelty to animals. And so even if one
begins with a sort of strongly religious basis
for one's morality, that's not a reason to unnecessarily
harm animals. In fact, it's the opposite, right?
So that's one kind of an argument within that
area. And then one can say, look, we're not saying
that necessarily that non -human animals are
the same as humans in all respects, and maybe
not even in what you think of as the most important
respect, but just in one respect that you care
about. And so the same sort of compassionate
motives you might have for being against abortion
can apply to not participating in various forms
of animal exploitation. The other thing one can
do, and this, I think, is going to be more or
less effective, depending on one's audience,
is to say something like, well, look, we live
in a religiously diverse society in which people
come from a variety of faiths or no faith at
all. And so if we're going to have a public debate,
we have to restrict ourselves to what John Rawls
called public reason. And that means particularly
sectarian arguments are out of bounds, at least
as a basis for public regulation. Although, of
course, they could be a basis for particular
as individual moral choices. And so therefore,
let's bracket those. If I can, I want to make
one analogy, which is I think that some of what
you're talking about, the idea that it's almost
offensive from a religious person's perspective
to be talking about the rights of fetuses in
the same breath as the rights of chickens or
cows or pigs. I think that is a kind of reaction
that one sometimes sees in other forms of animal
advocacy that compare the treatment of non -human
animals to historic injustices against human
beings like slavery or the Holocaust or what
have you and I understand why as a tactical matter
therefore one should be very careful about drawing
such analogies but I think the people who are
taking offense are misunderstanding the way in
which the argument is being made right when if
somebody says that what's happening to animals
on farms and slaughterhouses is comparable to
slavery or the Holocaust. They're not trying
to minimize slavery or the Holocaust. They're
not trying to say that people who were enslaved
or people who were victims of genocide were as
worthless as animals. It's because the people
making this comparison think of non -human animals
as having great worth that we think of it as
comparable. So to my mind, there is at best a
tactical reason to avoid drawing these sorts
of analogies because it's not effective advocacy
to offend people, even if people ideally shouldn't
be offended by the argument you're making. I
agree that you don't want to start a conversation.
Well, it's difficult to have a conversation if
you start with something. Judge offensive, but
at the same time Don't you want to get personal
right away with people and you know Get at the
heart of it and and the best way to do it is
Really to touch on some issues such as abortion
I Guess my question is uh, if done in a thoughtful
manner, um, shouldn't more activists not shy
away from, um, addressing, you know, um, doing
your argument, the argument you're making in
the book and talking about abortion, um, or discussing,
um, you know, the Holocaust as it is done in,
um, the book, uh, an internal Treblinka, um,
because they would catch the attention of people
much more quickly and get them to think maybe
more profoundly on those issues. Or is it a miscalculation
on my part? Yeah. So I don't think there, you
know, there's a lot of research now being done
by people in the animal rights movement about
what kinds of advocacy are most effective. You
know, one thing we learned is that something
I wouldn't have thought turns out to be true,
which is that showing people really graphic imagery
of, you know, what happens in a slaughterhouse
is pretty effective, at least in the short run,
at sort of shocking people. And, you know, I
looked at that data and I, you know, I have to
confess I think it's right that that probably
does work. I don't know that there has been similar
research backing up the kinds of what people
think of as provocative analogies. There was
a case about a decade ago in Germany in which
the German branch of PETA had these billboards
that said Holocaust on your plate. And they were
actually prosecuted under, you know, because
Germany has very strict laws about Nazism and
so forth. And of course, it was a complete misunderstanding
of what PETA was trying to do. But it might not
have been very effective advocacy for PETA in
Germany then. So I don't think that there is
a Definite answer to your question at this point
I think some people are going to find that kind
of advocacy more effective or less effective
with particular audiences You know certainly
One wants to reach people at a personal level
and one way to do that is to find some personal
connection It could be through an issue that
your interlocutor cares about if that's abortion
for example but it could be through something
that you know some other shared view like you
know person who has a companion animal like a
dog or a cat and will almost invariably you know
sympathize and empathize with dogs and cats and
so that's often a gateway in Now, how far it
gets you is not entirely clear. But again, this
is an area that I haven't studied directly, but
I have seen some of the studies. And I think
they're somewhat inconclusive. But there's an
emerging picture. And I would urge any advocate
who's comfortable in adopting a variety of tactics
to look at the data we have and sort of see what
they think they can be most effective doing.
Yeah, I think that's what's lacking. the desire
to even explore that, because I guess even activists
putting themselves out there don't want to be
in that discomfort, this very, yeah, uncomfortable
situation of having to talk about abortion or,
you know, drawing parallels with the Holocaust.
Like, yeah, and I would understand that, you
know, the how this tasteful, it sounds for certain
activists or volunteers to organizations to to
go there. And right. No. So again, I mean, I'm
sometimes when I'm asked this kind of a question
and I've done presentations on effective advocacy,
which I sort of try to summarize what the latest
data say is I sometimes end by telling people
in the end, you don't really need to worry about
it too much because like any movement, the animal
rights, animal protection, animal welfare movement,
as a very wide array of people with both with
respect to what they think the goal is and with
respect to what they think the means of achieving
that goal are. And so it's not like there's some
central command that's now telling all the activists,
okay, this is the way we're going to make our
arguments. people will end up doing a variety
of things. I guess I don't know that drawing
these analogies is necessarily helpful, but if
someone's comfortable doing it and they think
it's going to be effective, that will be a reason
to go ahead. I should say that, again, we didn't
write that book because we thought that bringing
up abortion was an especially effective means
of advocating for the rights of animals. I think
we did have in mind that some people who had
an interest in the abortion issue would read
our book and they might or might not come away
convinced about anything we said about abortion,
but might in the process have learned something
about the treatment of animals and that might
affect how they thought and behaved with respect
to animals. But it was not primarily conceived
of as a way of leveraging the abortion issue
to Make a bunch of points about animals. Certainly
not. And, uh, yeah, I guess my point is, um,
it's in your arsenal, those, you know, beating
hearts exists, dominion exists. And you know,
there are, this is part of your arsenal as an
activist. Um, and you should be aware of them
because I have now mentioned your book to many
people. Thank you. Of course. Uh, and you know,
it surprises me how there are, you know, street
activists who have done this for the last 10
years who have not read beating hearts. And,
um, yeah, it's like, it's in your arsenal. You
should know the argument about abortions and,
and, you know, uh, yeah. Um, okay. Now you mentioned
that, um, uh, how, you know, the footage. of
animals being slaughtered was effective in getting
people interested in the cause and in becoming
vegan. Now, it is also a strategy used by pro
-life people. And this is my favorite part in
the book, how you draw those parallels between
pro -life activists and animal rights activists.
And I would love if you could... draw some more
of those parallels and talk about why is it important
to to explore that? Sure. So just for those for
people who haven't read the book, or aren't familiar
with it, it's divided into two parts, what I
would call sort of philosophy, which is the first
60 % of the book, and then some strategy, which
is the remaining 40 % or so of the book. And
so the philosophy part is all about, you know,
How do you reconcile various views about abortion
with various views about animal rights? What's
the relevance or irrelevance of belonging to
the human family as opposed to some other species?
But then we turn in the back half of the book
to noting ways in which there are similar advocacy
challenges for Both the pro -life and animal
rights movement and that's a that's a switch
because for the most part in the first part of
the book we are Although we analogize at first
the pro -life position to the animal rights position.
We end up ultimately inverting that and defending
a Pretty pretty conventional pro -choice view
and reconciling that with animal rights, but
but the the parallels in tactics do correspond
with pro -life movement and the animal rights
movement. And there are two main ones that I
would focus on, one of which is the one you mentioned,
which is it is notoriously true that the anti
-abortion movement will, in various circumstances,
either hold up or otherwise display or publicize
pictures of aborted fetuses. And these are meant
to be very disturbing images. And likewise, some
people in the animal rights movement will either
hold up pictures or try to get people to watch
videos of what happens to animals during slaughter
and other processes. A couple of things I'd say.
So first, you know one of the problematic aspects
of the way in which that is leveraged by the
anti -abortion movement is those are typically
pictures of late -term abortions but the movement
aims to ban abortion from the very beginning
of pregnancy and so there's a a bit of dishonesty
i think in that it's not you know i think those
images would be appropriate as a part of an argument
for addressing later term abortion, but less
so for the sort of broad ban on abortion. And
I don't think that's true of the footage with
respect to animals. Second thing I want to say
about images is there is, I think, a kind of
prima facie moral question, which is that people
are going about their business and they've got
you know everyone's got complicated lives they've
got their own challenges and then as an activist
you know you you confront them with something
extremely upsetting and you're doing harm when
you do that uh and so i think you have to have
a good reason to do that kind of harm um you
know in the same way that i think it's wrong
to unnecessarily harm non -human animals well
humans are animals too if i'm harming a human
by upsetting them then I need a good reason to
do that so the good reason has to be well they
are participating in a very harmful activity
themselves and I'm hoping that by doing them
this short -term harm I'm going to change their
mind and thus change their behavior so but there
is that kind of a sort of moral calculus there.
And I think that that's a, you know, something
that you have to take seriously. Again, the data
I know of about the efficacy of showing people
graphic imagery, post dates when we wrote that
book. So I think if I were to revisit that chapter
today, I would come down more firmly in favor
of saying, yeah, this is something that it's
fine to do, not because you're not doing harm
to people by upsetting them, but because it's
more justified because it's efficacious, right?
The fact that you have a noble cause isn't a
sufficient reason. It's got to be that you have
a noble cause and it's likely to have some sort
of an impact. So that's with respect to images.
I can stop there and ask if you have follow up
questions about that, or I can talk a little
bit about violence if you want. No, please go
ahead with violence. Okay. So the right. So the
other parallel is the question of what role,
if any violence plays in these respective movements.
Um, because, uh, critics of both the pro -life
movement and the animal rights movement, uh,
have argued, uh, with varying degrees of accuracy
that these are extremists who are, you know,
causing serious harm and so one of the things
we do purely for the sake of argument before
we get into that is to ask the question well
is violence morally justified uh that is to say
you know if currently someone were doing to humans
what happens routinely to non -human animals
you know throughout the world uh i think most
of us would say it is morally justified at the
very least to violate property rights and to
cause some you know property destruction to rescue
as many humans as one can from that kind of horrible
treatment and eventual death and so if you're
a serious you know animal activist why not do
that isn't it morally justified even if you don't
want to go to prison? And so you might not do
it for pragmatic reasons. And likewise, you could
ask the same thing about an anti -abortion activist
who believes abortion is morally equivalent to
murder. You would take many steps, including
physical intervention, to stop someone from committing
murder of a fully -born, living human being.
And so just as a logical matter, right, it does
seem like if one accepts the premises then violence
is morally justified even if it might not be
legally justified. We don't really engage with
that on the anti -abortion side because we don't
think that the we don't accept the the argument
and even with respect to sentient fetuses we
think that there are Various reasons why the
moral choice should rest with a pregnant person
rather than with some third party or the government
but we do wrestle with it for animal activists
and The conclusion we reach is that in order
to justify the use of physical force whether
it's to commit property damage or, even worse,
loss of human life, right? You need to not only
think that the moral wrong of what's being inflicted
on the animals is very, very serious, which we
do think it is, but you also need to think that
your act of violence is going to actually benefit
those animals. And we have two reasons for thinking
that's not true. One is that there are just so
many animals in this system. And if there is
one thing that sort of unites the general public
against the cause, it's acts of violence. Even
property damage is very bad publicity. And so
it's likely to be counterproductive to the movement.
Second reason is that there are so many things
one can do short of violence to rescue individual
animals that if your concern is, well, at least
I've saved that one animal, you can save that
one animal from using various other non -violent
methods. So at the end of the day, we come out
pretty strongly against it. We also entertain
the idea that you might associate with Gandhi
or Thoreau or Martin Luther King Jr. that violence
is never an appropriate means towards achieving
a peaceful goal. I'm generally sympathetic to
that view, but I don't think that that's the
core of our argument. That's really interesting.
have spoken many times with one of the officer
of the animal liberation front press office about,
you know, the actions of the animal liberation
front. And so I guess my question is, what do
you make of acts of violence, such as what they
did in Iceland where they are wrecked to whaling
ships and, you know, basically put a stop to
a very lucrative economic activity in Iceland.
Are there some exceptions to that? Some acts
of violence of property damage that could be,
you know, very impactful if enacted? Yeah, so
first I'd say that, you know, I think with a
few exceptions ALF and Sea Shepherd are less
what we had in mind we were we were more focused
on acts of violence with respect to domestic
farming but you know the argument I just laid
out right is ultimately depends on a kind of
predictive and empirical question. Whereas one
can save a cow without breaking into a farm,
harder to save the whales through some other
means. So I guess I understand how one could
reach a contrary conclusion with respect to free
living animals in the ocean. I had in mind, I
mean, you know, one of the things that I think
about sort of a group like Direct Action Everywhere
or DXE, and they are very much against doing
even property damage. I mean, the most kind of
property damage they might do is they might like,
you know, cut a wire or something that prevents
someone from getting to an animal, but they're
not doing any kind of serious economic damage.
And the defense is typically that the animals
that are rescuing had zero or even negative economic
value to the farmers. And so to my mind, the
question for them is the stakes are lower because
you're not causing serious property damage. You're
certainly not causing serious harm. There is,
of course, always a risk That there could be
violence more likely against members of your
own group if there happens to be a. Guard there
some or someone i you know this is not activity
in which i engage so i don't i don't know how
to weigh all of those factors. What you know
i i i i talk to wayne shung after he was in prison
when of course founder of the xe no longer with
the xe but you know so still. very much involved
in this sort of movement and you know he had
said before and after he went to prison that
he thought that his going to prison would be
good for the movement right so that um when we
say we're against violence we're not against
civil disobedience but it's civil disobedience
in the sort of throw gandhi king tradition in
which part of the dramatization of the seriousness
of your cause is your willingness to go to jail.
I do think it takes a lot of creativity to go
and try to see the parallels between pro -life
and the animal rights movement and try to learn
from other social movements that are not looked
upon as being adjacent to the animal rights movement.
I always hear activists talk about the animal
rights movement as a social justice movement
or something akin to that. But I really like
the idea of getting inspired or studying at least
other social movements and you know, learning
from from what they have accomplished. Now, we
should maybe touch briefly on on this topic.
But the pro -life movement has been successful
in the US in reaching their goals. What do you
make of that success? So I'm not sure they've
been successful. They've been successful in making
abortion illegal in about half the country. I
don't think they've been successful in reducing
the number of abortions. There's actually evidence
that the number of abortions has actually increased
in the now nearly three years since the Supreme
Court overruled a constitutional right to abortion.
Part of that is because of the availability of
abortion pills, whether legal availability or
illegal availability. Part of it is because of
pushback. And one of the things you've seen in
the US is, I think, a shift in public opinion,
so that as a consequence of their success in
the courts, their views have become less popular,
so that when abortion has been placed on the
ballot in states, even in most of the fairly
conservative states, it's generally lost. And
when it has won, like it did in a state like
Florida, it was only because the threshold was
a sort of super majority threshold. So I think
there's a question of how you measure success.
Having said that, yes, the campaign to change
the law was very effective, and I think that
was partly because they were able to rally their
voters around particular issues to the exclusion
of other issues. That is, there are a lot of
voters in the United States who might have a
whole variety of views on a great many uh issues
but will only vote uh for a candidate if they
are anti -abortion to a lesser extent that's
true of people who are pro -choice but but there's
some of that and so it's it um uh i think part
and the reason i'm focusing on voters even though
the big change took place in the supreme court
is because the way that you got a supreme court
that was going to overturn the abortion right,
was through presidential appointments, which
were based on campaigns which included abortion
as one of the central issues, despite all sorts
of other things going on. Now, I happen to think,
putting aside my animal activism hat, I happen
to think that's not healthy for a democracy to
have elections turn on you know this one issue
which you know to people on both sides is an
important moral issue but there are you know
literally hundreds of other uh also important
issues that get sort of submerged and sort of
washed out as a consequence um but i think that
one thing that we could learn from the that is
number one two things i'll say number one is
patience This was a campaign over the course
of about 50 years. And they were persistent.
And even though they had setbacks, they eventually
won, at least as measured by the legal change.
And the other thing, I guess, is the importance
of having a core of passionate supporters. So
there are. people who care passionately about
the animal issue. And then there's a lot of what
we might call diffuse support. So I think that
one of the things that could be really effective
is turning some of those diffuse supporters into
passionate supporters, the sorts of people who
would go out and sort of vote and make this a
campaign issue. It isn't there yet. So the highest
profile uh... vegan politician in the united
states uh... was in the news lately that's uh...
united states senator corey booker who just you
know spoke uh... continuously on the senate floor
for twenty five hours he is quite open about
the fact that he's a vegan and it's important
to him um... there's an hour now another vegan
in the u .s. senate adams chef and these are
the both important players in the democratic
party it's not as though there's a kind of vegan
lobby or, you know, that the vegans are a powerful
voice that politicians have to take seriously.
So, you know, that's something you can build
over time. Yes, I read Matthew Scully, and, you
know, he mentioned how he would never support
a political candidate who was not pro -choice,
pro -life rather. And yeah, I have seen that
how they are one issue voters, you know, the
pro -life people. And I've looked at it a bit
with envy, I have to say, you know, putting the
question of democracy aside, I wish that there
was more of that in the animal rights movement,
you know, people prioritizing animals over other
uh social issues um because if we don't do that
then who else is going to put them forward but
um so so you did cover that but i guess my my
other question regarding that is should we put
more the emphasis on uh politics instead of anything
else um in regard to you know advancing the animal
rights agenda. I often talk with Liz White, who
is the leader of the Animal Protection Party
of Canada. And every time she comes on the show,
she says, you know, everything is political,
politicians decide everything, you know, who
lives who dies. And how are things done in terms
of, you know, exploitation of animals. But we're
not, you know, I feel lots of animal rights activists
are not very political, are not inclined to make
their activism more political. Do you think we
should go more in that way, get inspired by the
pro -life crowd and get more political? Where
possible, sure. I think you can do that on issues
where you can build coalitions with people who
are not fully on board the animal rights movement.
So for example, there are a number of towns in
Massachusetts now that have banned the sale of
fur. was a ballot initiative in Denver to close
a lamb slaughterhouse, right? There are initiatives
involving the treatment of horses. You can do
things about companion animals. Given though
that somewhere between 95 and 98 % of The people
in our countries are. Eating and wearing animals
on a daily basis. Who let politics and the law
are not going to be a means of achieving very
dramatic changes in the short run right not a
reason not to do it right where you can not even
a reason not to swing for the fences even though
you know it's futile because you. who raise people's
awareness. But I don't think that can be certainly
the exclusive strategy. I sometimes hear people
both in the animal rights side and the environmental
justice movement or environmental movement say
things like, well, these are systemic problems.
They can only be addressed systemically by government
and so forth. And I agree they're systemic problems,
but systems are composed of individuals. And
so there's no reason why you can't attack a problem.
both at the systemic level, and at the individual
level. And in fact, those things will often work
complementarily. And I should differentiate the
political system in Canada versus America. In
Canada, we have the hope of a proportional democratic
system, where parties like the Animal Protection
Party can vote into, you know, MPs into the Parliament.
So that's something that Americans do not have.
We will never see an animal party in America
doing impactful work like we see being done in
the Netherlands or in New Zealand. Yeah, I think
that's right. And I mean, I would include the
Greens in in much of europe they're not explicitly
animal rights party but a lot of people who are
active in in green the green party have uh animal
rights commitments along with their environmental
and other commitments uh yeah it is a it is a
problem with um district by district elections
and you know no no no proportional representation
that you're not going to have representation
of that it's just a call to mind if i I don't
know if you're familiar with the Graham Greene
novel, The Comedians, which is a novel about
basically the horrors of the popadoc regime in
Haiti. But there's a character in the book who
is referred to as the presidential candidate.
And you learn that he ran for president of the
United States on the vegetarian party platform,
which, of course, is made up. And he's a somewhat
ridiculous character. But it was hopeful to me
that, oh, there was a vegetarian party, at least
in fiction once. Yeah. I mean, we're grasping.
Right. Yeah. I mean, again, going back to democracy,
Sure, America does not have the hope of a proportional
democratic system. But you have the First Amendment,
which is freedom of speech. And, you know, the
the ALF press office could not exist in Canada,
but it can exist in in the US. So that's something
beautiful and a big win for a great environment
for activists in the animal rights space. Yeah,
I think that's right, at least as their US citizens,
because increasingly people who are not citizens
are being punished for their freedom of expression.
So, you know, I hope that turns out to be a temporary
anomaly. You know, and there are there are other
ways in which people can be influential. in politics
right again um you can you can have these coalitions
with other other movements so just to give another
example so i'm i on most issues i find myself
on the other side of people who call themselves
libertarians but there is a libertarian organization
in the united states called white coat waste
which lobbies again very strongly against uh...
medical research and and and and experimental
uh... laboratory research on an on animals there's
a federal law that requires that all the drugs
be tested on animals and this libertarian organization
lobbies against it on the ground this is a waste
of money because the animal testing doesn't do
any good uh... and it turns out that some of
the people who are involved in it do actually
care about the animals to so there's an opportunity
to work with a potentially more powerful constituency.
So I'm all for building coalitions with groups
who might not share my views on any range of
issues. So long as we can make common cause on
this particular one, especially when it's one
of those animals. I guess to close this topic
of politics, and why do you think that Spartacus
Curry Booker is not more, you know, pro animal
more, you know, outspoken about his veganism.
I'm always, you know, I find myself asking this
question, because if I put myself in his place,
I feel like I would be the first, you know, most,
you know, driven on this issue and would put
all of my time. So yeah, why do you think people
like Cory Booker, you mentioned Adam Schiff,
I think Bill Clinton was vegan for a long time.
Not for the animals, though. For health reasons,
I suppose. Yes. Anyway, he was never fully vegan.
It was only for health reasons. Yeah, so why
are those people and I guess more liberal politicians,
because they must know vegans in their family,
in their circle of friends. Why don't we see
more of them being proactive in terms of, you
know, animal rights? Right. So I think it's simply
because we're a very small minority of the population,
right? It's not. And and we are not seen as oppressed.
We're seen as annoying. Right. Even though, of
course, we don't want to be He's seen as a press.
You want them to see the oppression of the animals.
Again, it's just a matter of what's politically
possible. So I think Cory Booker is actually
pretty good about speaking up compared to what
the possibilities are. You know, New Jersey,
which is the state he represents, includes a
lot of dairy farmers. So there are industries
that would oppose him if he made his Veganism
more of a voting issue. I think you notwithstanding
that he does typically come out What I regard
as the right way whenever one of these issues
comes up, but you're you're absolutely right.
He's not out They are pushing for you know a
ban on You know animal slaughter or dairy or
anything like that and I think that reflects
a kind of political Reality, I just don't think
it's realistic to expect somebody who has to
stand for reelection to be proposing laws that
are going to ensure that they don't get reelected.
So, you know, that's, again, it's, it's simply
a, to my mind, it's simply a numbers game. But
again, you can make progress on smaller issues
where you can form coalitions with people who
have much less ambitious goals. Yeah, an argument
for putting limits to mandates, political mandates.
Okay, I guess my last question for you, and thank
you so much for your time, we went over time.
It's okay. Is you finished the book by mentioning
a book I did not get to read yet called Zootopia.
And you describe what it would be like to have,
you know, more of an ideal world for animal and
human relationships. And I guess that's one of
the best if not the best description of a world
where the animal rights movement succeeds, that
I have read, you know, what it looks like if
we succeed. So I would love if you could maybe
as parting words to to talk about that about
a zoo utopia. Sure. So so that's a book by Will
Kimlicka and Sue Donaldson, and they're Canadians,
by the way. So I think they're at Queen's University
in Kingston, Ontario. And we actually presented
a version of that chapter there before we published
the book. After the book, there was a nice panel
on it that Peter Singer hosted at Princeton.
But that issue didn't come up. So giving credit
to will ensue, what they say in their book is
they imagine sort of three categories of animals,
what they call sort of sovereigns, and these
are free -living wild animals, and there the
idea is to just let them be. Denizens, who are
animals who live among us but are not Really
part of our society. So think about like rats
and pigeons and so forth and then citizens and
The idea that I think I find most intriguing
is their idea of citizens So these are you know,
these are basically the most domesticated animals
Think of dogs sheep, etc who With whom we have
we could they imagine have a kind of mutualist
relationship And I want to think that's possible.
And I think I live with three dogs. I think on
our good days, we have a mutualist relationship.
If I'm playing frisbee with one of my dogs, I
throw the frisbee. And he's clearly enjoying
going after it and occasionally catching it,
usually picking it up after it lands, and then
bouncing back to me with the frisbee. He's enjoying
it, and I'm enjoying it. And that is, I think,
characteristic of a good deal of our relationship.
You see anybody who lives with an affectionate
companion animal, they lie on their back to get
a belly rub or something like that. That's a
sort of mutually satisfactory relationship. I
think that's possible. But I also think it's
fraught. That is to say, even for our most beloved
animals, we are controlling their lives. in ways
that I think are suboptimal. I would be very
sad if that were to stop being the case. I don't
think there's any risk of it stopping. I mean,
I adopted all my dogs from shelters. I'd continue
to do that. But in an ideal world, people aren't
breeding these animals. What Will and Sue say
is, well, they would breed on their own and there'd
be these animals, you know, and they would come
in. And so, you know, maybe I think it might
look a little bit like the relationship between
humans and the first dogs, which were sort of
friendly wolves that came around the campfire
of their own accord. I do think, though, that
the kind of ideal future is also going to have
to include just a lot more wild spaces that humans
don't enter. Right. And so a An enormous reduction
in the consumption of animal products will facilitate
that because it will mean we just need much less
land to grow food. That is also facilitated by
the decline in human population, which is likely
to begin 20 years or so, right, that his birth
rates worldwide are declining almost everywhere.
We will eventually reach a point of population
decline and then presumably at some point stability
at a much lower level where it's possible for
there to be these wild spaces Assuming we get
there before you know, we the complete ecological
disaster And so I think the relationship that
the ideal relationship I'm imagining is one in
which you know for the most part we just leave
the animals alone But you know I would like to
think that there will be these citizens or perhaps
denizens with whom we have friendly relations.
But, you know, I doubt I'm going to see any of
that in my lifetime. So right now, my main goal
is just to sort of minimize the harm. Wonderful.
Mike, thank you so much. Thank you for your work.
I really consider your book as a classic of animal
rights. books and you know, it's really up there
in my list. So thank you for the book. Thank
you for your activism and your work in the space
of animal rights. And a big thank you for having
taken the time to answer my questions. It was
my pleasure. This was really a fun conversation.
Thank you everyone for listening. I kindly invite
you to share this podcast with the vegans you
know. Let's encourage more people to take action.
Again, thank you so much for caring and I will
see you next Tuesday for a new episode.