Why Total Liberation Requires Being Pro-Life

Total Liberation is the idea of taking a stand against all forms of oppression and pointing out the interconnectedness of them (such as sexism, racism, queerphobia, ableism, classism and capitalism, ageism, and speciesism). Based on anarchism, it is sometimes called veganarchism or collective liberation. Some of its goals are to fight all oppression, tackle climate change and heal ecosystems, and help intersectional people include nonhuman animals in their circle of compassion and realize the hypocrisy of being against all other forms of oppression but not speciesism.

But there is one form of oppression that some total liberation activists leave out: preborn oppression. Abortion is a particularly violent form of oppression against preborn humans (and nonhuman animals.) In order to actually have a consistent ethos of tackling all oppression, we have to take a stand against abortion. You can’t have total liberation without preborn liberation. Otherwise, it’s not total liberation, it’s just hypocrisy.

Total liberationists care about groups that are being harmed. We care about the environment, women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ folks, the poor and working class, those with disabilities, nonhuman animals, and any other disenfranchised group. As a whole, leftist values are all about supporting those who are being oppressed by people or systems of power. Total liberation is an ideology that brings together every form of liberation of oppressed groups under one umbrella. How then can we look to the most oppressed humans, preborn human beings, and further their oppression and dehumanization? It's inconsistent. 

Oppression includes dehumanization. Oppressed groups are often labeled as sub-human, savages, parasites, non-persons, property, objects, thing, it, and other such terms. We see this in every oppressed group from women, to LGBTQIA+ people, to Jewish people, to indigenous groups, to black people, to those with disabilities, to children and the elderly and so on and so forth. Why then would we continue this dehumanization by claiming that the youngest human beings are somehow not humans, not persons, just parasites, only potential children, just clumps of cells or blobs of tissue etc.?

The type of biology that deals with embryonic and fetal development is called embryology. We know from this section of science that we are distinct living human beings at fertilization, and nonhuman animals are individual beings of their species at fertilization too. We also know that our bodies are very developed in the first trimester. The brain is the first organ to appear at 2 and a half weeks, the heart starts beating at 3, limb buds form at 3-4, cerebral hemispheres and cerebellum are there and begin rapid growth by 4 and a half, eyes are there at 4 and a half, movements start by 5 and a half, brain waves are detectable to us by 6, the face withdraws from light touch around the mouth by 6 and complex responses to touch happen by 8, ovaries and testes are there by 7, the earliest we begin to feel pain in any capacity is by 8 and the neurons synapse in the cerebral cortex by 8 and a half.

Total liberationists know that denying science is wrong in every other way (such as denying that the earth is round or that climate change is real.) We know that denying the humanity of any other group is wrong. So why then would we continue to deny or ignore the form of biology that informs us on embryonic and fetal development? Why claim that we are clumps of cells until however long each individual pro-choicer wants to claim we are finally humans when that’s factually not true because we not only are individual human beings the whole time but have various body parts and processes before abortions can even happen?

When it comes to the vegan aspect of total liberation, I imagine even pro-choice people at least have some empathy for preborn nonhuman animals, who get killed in slaughterhouses, or in spays, or when people eat balut. So we already have a basis for respecting the lives of the preborn. What's the difference between caring about a preborn cow who gets killed along with their mother in a slaughterhouse, and caring about a preborn human being who gets killed in an abortion clinic because the doctors want to turn a profit off of their death? There is none. It's just hypocrisy to only care about one but not the other.

Mothers are also harmed in abortion. Both human animals and nonhuman animals grieve for their children who were aborted. Cats who have kittens who were aborted during spays try to adopt other kittens or even hold tight onto stuffed animals because they have replacement baby syndrome just like human mothers and people with uteri who have lost their children through abortion or miscarriage. In addition, no one goes skipping down to the clinic happy to do it. They do it when they have been told they cannot be mothers in the situations they are in, or when they have been gaslit into believing that the children moving around inside of them are somehow just random clumps of cells. Why then should those who care about feminism and care about grieving cows who have their babies taken away, turn the other way to the oppression that pregnant humans face at the hands of the patriarchal abortion industrial complex? Both animal agriculture and abortion rely on exploiting women, those who are pregnant, and the female reproductive system.

The abortion industrial complex is a huge power structure and form of capitalism that exists purely to turn a profit. It’s a multi billion dollar a year industry that preys on vulnerable pregnant people by telling them they can’t have careers and be parents at the same time or that they can’t be parents if they are poor so the right thing to do is abort, so that the capitalists in this industry can continue to turn a profit. As Guttmacher, the pro-choice research institute that sprouted off of Planned Parenthood, has shown, three quarters of abortions happen because pregnant people were made to feel like they couldn’t afford a child and that having a child would interfere with their work. Without classism and capitalism, the numbers of abortions would reduce dramatically.

Poor people are made to feel by society that they would be bad parents and it would be irresponsible for them to have kids while being poor. This happens because the wealthy elite looks down on the poor and sees us as lesser than them and by extension, not able to be as good of parents as them. In addition, employers don’t want their employees to take off any time for family leave, or to have accommodations for pregnancy. We see this in Hollywood especially. So many Hollywood stars have gotten abortions because they were told that they would never be able to make it in the industry with a child. When doing speeches at awards shows or events, they often attribute their careers and success to their abortions, because that’s what the capitalists who own these movie and TV studios told them. So how can total liberation, an anti-capitalist movement that supports the poor, not take a stand against such a huge form of diabolical capitalism?

The answer to all of these questions is that there really is no moral difference between oppressing preborn humans and the pregnant people who create them, and oppressing any other group. It is hypocritical to care about the oppression of all other groups to the point where you want to point out the inconsistencies of others, while still oppressing the most vulnerable and defenseless human beings and supporting the extreme violence that destroys their bodies and kills them by the millions each year.

If we can understand that oppression is interconnected, then we can understand that abortion and preborn oppression = sexism = racism = homophobia and transphobia = classism = ableism etc. So let’s be consistent. Let’s actually fight against all forms of oppression. Let’s be totally for liberation. For more information on the similarities between veganism and pro-lifeism, please refer to our article Parallels of veganism and pro-lifeism