Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights

263 Pages·2016·0.93 MB·English

by  Sherry F. Colb

A B O R T I O N A N D
A N I M A L R I G H T S
SHERRY F. COLB MICHAEL C. DORF
AND
B E AT I N G H E A RT S
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ANIMALS:
THEORY, CULTURE, SCIENCE, AND LAW
:
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ANIMALS
, , ,
THEORY CULTURE SCIENCE AND LAW
Series Editors: Gary L. Francione and Gary Steiner
The emerging interdisciplinary field of animal studies seeks to
shed light on the nature of animal experience and the moral
status of animals in ways that overcome the limitations of
traditional approaches. Recent work on animals has been
characterized by an increasing recognition of the importance
of crossing disciplinary boundaries and exploring the affini-
ties as well as the differences among the approaches of fields
such as philosophy, law, sociology, political theory, ethology,
and literary studies to questions pertaining to animals. This
recognition has brought with it an openness to rethinking the
very terms of critical inquiry and the traditional assumptions
about human being and its relationship to the animal world.
The books published in this series seek to contribute to con-
temporary reflections on the basic terms and methods of criti-
cal inquiry by focusing on fundamental questions arising out
of the relationships and confrontations between humans and
nonhuman animals, and ultimately to enrich our appreciation
of the nature and ethical significance of nonhuman animals
by providing a forum for the interdisciplinary exploration of
questions and problems that have traditionally been confined
within narrowly circumscribed disciplinary boundaries.
The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation?, Gary L.
Francione and Robert Garner
Animal Rights Without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human
Obligations, Alasdair Cochrane
Experiencing Animal Minds: An Anthology of Animal-Human
Encounters, edited by Julie A. Smith and Robert W. Mitchell
Animalia Americana: Animal Representations and Biopolitical
Subjectivity, Colleen Glenney Boggs
Animal Oppression and Human Violence: Domesecration, Capi-
talism, and Global Conflict, David A. Nibert
Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism, Gary Steiner
Being Animal: Beasts and Boundaries in Nature Ethics, Anna L.
Peterson
Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction, Thom van
Dooren
B E AT I N G H E A R T S

ABORTION AND ANIMAL RIGHTS
Sherry F. Colb and Michael C. Dorf
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2016 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Colb, Sherry F., 1966– author.
Beating hearts : abortion and animal rights / Sherry F. Cobb and
Michael C. Dorf.
pages cm. — (Critical perspectives on animals : theory,
culture, science, and law)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-17514-2 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-231-54095-7 (ebook)
1. Law—Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Animal welfare—Law
and legislation. 3. Animal rights movement. 4. Abortion—Law
and legislation. 5. Pro-choice movement. I. Dorf, Michael C.,
author. II. Title.
K247.6.C65 2016
179'.3—dc23 2015026814
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
This book is printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover design: Mary Ann Smith
References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of
writing. Neither the authors nor Columbia University Press is
responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since
the manuscript was prepared.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Two Movements, One Set of Issues 1
PART I: ETHICS
1. Sentience or Species? 13
2. The Necessity Defense 45
3. Reproductive Servitude 76
4. Death Versus Suffering 96
PART II: MOVEMENTS
5. Strategy 120
6. Graphic Images 149
7. Violence 165
Conclusion 183
Notes 193
Index 237

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A great many people played important roles in our thinking
about the issues addressed in this book. Gary Francione’s influ-
ence on our views about nonhuman animals and on our lives has
been enormous. As Sherry’s colleague at Rutgers School of Law–
Newark for thirteen years, he was a shining example of how we
could live according to our values. We regret that it took us as long
as it did to follow his example, but that was our failing, not his. In
addition, he and Gary Steiner were extremely generous in urging
us to submit our book for publication in their wonderful series.
We are honored to be included.
Each of us has been thinking and writing about reproductive
rights questions for a long time, at least since law school in the late
1980s. Our respective mentors—especially Nomi Stolzenberg and
Laurence Tribe—helped us develop our views on these questions
and offered us scholarly opportunities for which we will always
be grateful. More recently, a teaching and scholarly collaboration
between Michael and Sidney Tarrow gave us a grounding in the
dynamics of social movements, discussed in part 2.
viii Acknowledgments
We transitioned from vegetarian to vegan in 2006, and we soon
discovered an incredibly supportive community. Much of what we
know and think about animal rights comes from extended conversa-
tions with our friends in and around the movement, including (in
addition to those already mentioned) Jonathan Balcombe, Carol
Barnett, Ted Barnett, Harold Brown, Taimie Bryant, Neil Buchanan,
T. Colin Campbell, Jim Corcoran, Anne Dinshah, George Eisman,
JoAnn Farb, Joe Farb, Lewis Freedman, Amber Gilewski, Stephen
Glass, Ariel Gold, Amie Hamlin, Lara Heimann, Mark Heimann,
Julie Hilden, Robert Hockett, Keith Langer-Liblick, Stephanie Langer-
Liblick, James LaVeck, Bob Linden, Eric Lindstrom, Jen Majka,
Jeffrey Moussaief Masson, Milton Mills, Victoria Moran, Ducson
Nguyen, Alan Scheller-Wolf, Terri Scheller-Wolf, Mary Schuelke,
Harold Schultz, Linnaea Scott, Paul Scott, Rae Sikora, Jasmin Singer,
Jenny Stein, Mariann Sullivan, Evan Tasch, and Priscilla Timberlake.
We are also very grateful to Cornell Law School for supporting
our work and for providing vegan options at just about every event
at which food is served. For most of our time at Cornell thus far,
Stewart Schwab was the dean, and we very much appreciate his
leadership in this and so many other respects. Eduardo Peñalver,
our new dean, has also been enormously supportive. Speaking of
Cornell, we would also like to thank the students and the guest
speakers in Sherry’s animal rights seminars, whose challenges and
insights are reflected in these pages. Special thanks to our tireless and
thorough research assistants, Jesse London, Justin Mungai Ndichu,
Geoffrey Parker, and Matthew Tymann, to Ernestine Da Silva and
Gina Jackson for their help in formatting the manuscript, and to
Estalita Slivosky for preparing the index.
Eduardo Peñalver, Sidney Tarrow, Manès Weisskircher, Alan
Scheller-Wolf, and two reviewers for Columbia University Press
read all or substantial parts of the manuscript and gave us extremely
helpful feedback. We are also grateful to participants in workshops
and conferences at Cornell University, Princeton University, Rut-
gers School of Law–Newark, UCLA School of Law, and the annual
Vegetarian Summerfest at University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.
Finally, we extend special thanks also to our wonderful vegan
daughters, Amelia Colbdorf and Meena Colbdorf, for making our
values their values; we do not take that for granted.
B E AT I N G H E A RT S