If we are pro-life, must we also oppose killing animals and eating meat?
A viewer notes that pro-abortion people argue Catholics are inconsistent, and asks whether being pro-life would also require being against killing animals and eating meat.
Answer
You have to make a distinction between human life and animal life. Animal life does not have a soul that goes on into eternity; human life does, and that is why it is protected. That is why God told Peter in Acts chapter 10, when he let down the blanket filled with all kinds of animals unclean from the Old Testament perspective, kill and eat. That is good enough for me; you cannot be much more specific than that. They can complain that we are inconsistent all they want, and the reason they do is that they probably do not think humans have souls: if they think the meeting of sperm and egg is just tissue, then they do not think we have an eternal soul either, so they cannot make the distinction between humans with a soul and animals without one.