This whole thing about life beginning at conception is a recent invention. In biblical times babies (post birth, real babies) were killed if unwanted. The whole pro-life thing is entirely to control women.

@Theresa_N That's a side effect which was not unwelcome to them, but not the primary point. The main thing was combining politics and religion in what I might call an unholy alliance, if I thought things were holy.

The "pro-life" movement (technically "anti-abortion", but they chose "pro-life" because, guess what, that makes your opponents "anti-life" ) didn't exist as such until 1976-ish, when the Republican party and far-right evangelicals banded together to try and take back power from the horrible, awful, immoral, very bad Democrats, and their vicious thug of a leader, James Earl Carter, Jr., that Sunday-school-teaching bastard. The "Christian" Coalition had nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with politics; abortion was the wedge issue that they decided they could use to drive traditionally Democrat constituencies into their camp, and rile up inactive voters to go to the polls.

Before 1980, believe it or not, the Southern Baptist Convention officially advocated for loosening restrictions on abortion. Now, the "pro-life" Republicans in Texas and Ohio are trying to pass bills imposing the death penalty on women who have abortions. I guess the logic here is, "We have to stop these women before they kill again"- like they're deliberately going out to get pregnant for the thrill of having an abortion afterwards. Because we all know what fun it is to have surgical instruments run up inside you. I know I've enjoyed my colonoscopies no end. (Unintentional pun....) And the demonstrators outside the clinics just add flavor to the whole experience, don't they?

The late great Joseph Campbell said (not a direct quote, but this is pretty close); "All life lives on death. For one thing to live, something else has to die and be eaten. This is the central truth of life. Vegetarianism is an attempt to turn away from this truth; actually, a vegetarian is just eating something that can't run away."

@Paul4747 the eggs humans eat are unfertilised, so he was totally uninformed. It was late by that stage, but I was blown away by how superior he was acting, whilst being so ignorant! I was veggie for 9 years, each to their own. But he was trying to be offensive

@girlwithsmiles To each their own indeed. And hope I didn't insult your vegetarianism with that observation.

I admit I've had moments of deliberately being offensive, but only in retaliation. At grad school, I was proselytized by a particular individual for a month or so every time I saw him; he kept trying to get me to try out his church, talk about God, etc, after I had made very clear that I was not religious.

So, one day in the dining hall, sitting down with my tray of fried chicken breast, I suppressed a shudder as he came to sit down across from me yet again. He sat down and bowed his head over his tray. I decided to bow my head over mine. He looked up after a minute and said, "I'm surprised to see you saying Grace!" I replied, "I wasn't. I was thanking the chicken. It gave its life, that I might live."

He never tried to sit with me after that. For some reason.

@Paul4747 good stuff nice outcome too.

The whole vegan business has its heart in the right place. ( Heart metaphoically. ) But its head in a lot of bad propaganda and disinformation.

One who posted on here, said that one reason for not eating honey, was that. When queen bees are artificially inseminated, the male bees are killed by squeazing their insides out.

Which ignores two things. Firstly that, very few queen bees are artificially inseminated, and most back yard beekeepers don't do it. And secondly that, Ripping the males insides out, so that they die, is exactly what a queen bee does, when they mate naturally. And there were dozens of such examples in the post, which was obviously copied from a website.

technically, the eggs are never aborted, they were laid naturally.

@Larimar also eggs are held up to the light and any that have foetuses in, or double yolks for that matter, are discarded. Or that’s how they used to do it, they may have better tech these days. Certainly no abortions or foetuses

@Fernapple yes agreed. But coming from a farming family I have a lot of respect from people that look after their animals well. I’ve never had an issue with honey, bee keepers are fascinating and I’ve never met one that didn’t respect their bees.
Most people never both look into the process of the honey making, which is probably good as bee vomit isn’t a great sales pitch : [livescience.com]

@girlwithsmiles Thank goodness my preferred brand doesn't bother discarding double yolks, I get them often! But I tend to buy jumbo.