Slaves, Fetuses, and Animals

Race and Ethical Rhetoric

Bibliographic Data

ID14760341
AuthorsWilliam David Hart
Year2014
Volume42
Issue4
Pages661-690
Publication date2014-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Religious Ethics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0384-9694 • E-ISSN: 1467-9795
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/jore.12077
OpenAlexW2138715725
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited25

This essay is an exploration in ethical rhetoric, specifically, the ethics of comparing the status of fetuses and animals to enslaved Africans. On the view of those who make such comparisons, the fetus is treated as a slave through abortion, reproductive technologies, and stem cell research, while animals are enslaved through factory farming, experimentation, and as laborers, circus performers, and the like. I explore how the apotheosis of the fetus and the humanization of animals represent the flipside of the subjugation and animalization of black people. At their ethical best, those who compare aborted fetuses and abused animals with enslaved black people have laudable ethical goals. The anti‐abortion right and the animal rights left, respectively, wish to abolish abortion (and associated reproductive technologies that harm prenatal life) and the unethical treatment of animals. They seek, respectively, to reimagine the ethical‐political status of the fetus and to criticize the animalization of animals, the practice of constructing them as beasts. While sympathetic to these goals, I worry about the comparative diminution of the historical, literal enslavement of black people. To what extent, I ask, does the comparative ethical rhetoric of fetal slaves and animal slaves affect historical constructions of black people as beastly and disposable

Abortion · Animal ethics · Animal rights · Animal welfare · Apotheosis · Biology · Criminology · Environmental ethics · Harm · Political science · Pregnancy · Reproductive technology · Rhetoric · Sociology · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Law · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Race, History, and American Society

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