Brahmin Bull
The Liberal Case Against Abortion
by Vasu Murti
R.A.G.E. Media, 2006
(84 pages, $9.95, paperback)
reviewed by Anne Barbeau Gardiner
A descendant of South Indian Brahmins, who holds degrees in physics and applied mathematics, and is a member of the ACLU, Feminists for Life, Amnesty International, and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), Vasu Murti claims to show from a purely “rational, secular” viewpoint, “apart from religion,” that human life begins at conception, a point he illustrates with photos.
Well and good, but there is more to the book than that, and that more undermines his argument. The author puts various civil rights on a par with the right to life, and then raises the “right” of animals not to be eaten by humans above the right of children in the womb not to be aborted. Also destructive of the argument for life is the “rational” argument he makes against traditional sexual morality.
The Born Animal
“ While there may be religious reasons to oppose contraception, divorce, fornication, homosexuality, masturbation, oral sex, etc.,” he writes, “there are no rational, secular arguments against such practices.” Thus defending sexual immorality as “rational,” apparently assuming that moral teaching is “religious” and therefore not rational, he denies that Natural Law is written on the hearts of men, and further, he abandons common sense, since sexual immorality is clearly the cause of so many abortions.
Similarly, he argues that recognizing the rights of unborn children just like “the rights of blacks, women, lesbians and gays, children, animals, and the environment” would be a sign of “secular social progress.” Here he puts the right to life of unborn children, foundational to every other right, on a par with civil rights and the imaginary right of a farm animal not to be killed for food.
In a chapter titled, “Vegetarianism: It’s Pro-Life,” Murti cites with approval Tom Regan, who argues that, as “those humans who were slaves were not recognized as legal persons in pre-Civil War America,” so also farm animals—which, he claims, have “beliefs and desires” and a “psychophysical identity over time”—are viewed nowadays as “legal property” when they should instead be viewed as “legal persons.” Murti himself calls animals “disenfranchised” and approves comparing “the mass killing of animals” for our food with the Holocaust.
The effect of his argument is to put animal rights on a par with those of young children, that is, above those of the unborn, whose right to life he thinks secondary. “Animals are sentient beings possessing many mental capacities comparable to those of young human children. If we fail to see them as part of our moral community, how will we ever embrace humans in their most primitive stage of development?”
In other words, if we do not treat animals as equivalent to young children and stop eating them, how will we ever be sensitive enough to care for children at the “most primitive stage” in the womb? To make the defense of the unborn dependent upon vegetarianism and the belief that animals possess similar rights does not help the unborn.
Exalted Beasts
Anne Barbeau Gardiner is Professor Emerita of English at John Jay College of the City University of New York. She has published on Dryden, Milton, and Swift, as well as on Catholics of the 17th century.
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