In her continual display of not getting it, “Jacquefromtexas” offers another bit of inspired reasoning: because you can’t kill your dog, abortions must be illegal. 

Every once in a while, I’ll have a random thought that inspires anger in me. Yesterday, when feeding my dog a treat, I had such a thought.

Daisy is the sweetest dog in all Dogdom, the epitome of all cuteness. . . .
Daisy is dependant on me. Daisy requires me to give her food and water, to keep her warm, to keep her clean and healthy. She requires me to give her love and protection from those big, scary thunderstorms.

[M]ay I use forceps to twist off her body parts? May I stick scissors at the base of her skull and suck out her brain? May I immerse her in a saline bath to burn her to death both inside and out? How about dismembering her with a suction aspirator?

How about just not giving her food and water? . . .

Bottom line is this: There is such a thing as moral responsibility towards the weak and vulnerable- especially one’s very own children. That is why child abuse and neglect is criminal, as is animal cruelty and neglect.  

[emphasis, and spelling errors, original]

Good thinking.

So, every dog that follows you home you are required to keep, no matter how great the burden on you. In addition, these particular dogs carry with them a small chance of causing your death, which is actually significantly greater than your chance of dying by not keeping the dog – in some cases, keeping the dog carries a very high risk of death; you are prohibited from doing anything to get rid of the dog in either case. Also, these particular dogs “adopt” you by sinking their teeth into your body for nine months, causing persistent discomfort often requiring quitting work or school for extended bedrest; you are not permitted to detach the dog from your body whether or not you invited it there. After the dog comes home with you, you will also have to spend several months to a year or more taking care of it full-time, during which time you will not be paid and may lose your job; you are not permitted to do otherwise. Occasionally, someone may beat you, rape you, and then leave you with a dog, which you are also required nurture on your body for 9 months, care for full-time for up to a year, and then keep at home forever; the rapist may then sue you for the right to come visit and play with the dog. After you get the dog, you are prohibited from leaving it alone for any period of time whatsoever, whether or not your family circumstances, job, or education permit it – dog-walking fees for someone to take care of your dog while you are at work may cost more than you make in salary – the total cost of food, vet’s bills, and puppy-training over your dog’s lifetime may exceed $1 half a million dollars; you have no alternative but to pay for all of this. Dogs are a common cause of marital stress and in some cases may lead your significant other to beat you; you are not permitted to avoid dogs merely to keep from being beaten or killed. Having a dog in the house may also reduce the resources you have to spend on your other dogs, leading to their malnutrition, lack of healthcare, or lack of appropriate harnesses, puppy-training, or chew-toys; you are not permitted to choose between the dogs you actually chose to raise and one that was forced on you, or to set limits on how many dogs you will have or when. Having a dog without being married makes you a slut, but you are required to do so anyway if a dog shows up. Having too many dogs also makes you a slut, but you are not permitted to avoid having any dogs. Not having dogs, or choosing when to have dogs, makes you “anti-life” and a murderer – also a slut. Installing a fence around your house to keep out unwanted dogs makes you a slut. Not having a fence makes you a slut. Having a low fence makes you a slut. Having a high fence makes you a slut. Mistakenly leaving the gate in your fence open makes you a slut. Opening the gate in your fence and having a dog rush through makes you a slut. Having a hole in your fence makes you a slut. Feeling resentful that you need a fence when it would be just as easy to turn the damn dogs out makes you a slut.

Oh, and by the way – all these rules were made up by a lot of angry, vengeful people who never have dogs and never will, but who have a whole lot to say about those who do.

OK, enough of that. Responding seriously to the nonsense that provoked all this (actually, what provoked it is the fact that Jacque spews this silliness daily on her blog but blocks comments from any but her approved list, which appears to consist of no one), I’m moved to ask why it is that anti-choicers simply cannot seem to find any living thing they think is morally (or even physiologically) different from a zygote. It’s commonplace to assert that zygotes are the moral equivalent of full-grown persons, obliviously to any actual differences between them; now she’s branching out to other avenues of the animal kingdom.

One problem with the weird rant above is that Jacque seems to think that a fetus’s being “dependent” is a reason in favor of having an abortion. It could hardly be that. To the extent it matters, dependency is usually a fact in support of the conclusion that the fetus is not independent and thus its moral rights cannot stand in isolation from those of the pregnant woman. It’s part of an argument that the woman’s rights take precedence. But whatever the merits of that argument, the question of the “dependency” of a fetus on its gestational mother has nothing to do with the dependency of a dog on its owner. It’s not the same type of dependency. (If the dog were living inside Jacque’s body against her will, then she can talk – and I can just imagine what she’d have to say in that instance.)

But more importantly even than that, there is the question why we are not entitled to harm or kill dogs. Jacque never seems to ask herself this question. It’s a simple question, and it has a simple answer: because doing so hurts them (insofar as dogs can be hurt). That’s hardly controversial. But admitting that there is a logical reason based upon facts about the subject that determines what we may do to them, unfortunately, requires us to ask the same question about the fetus: is it harmed by abortion in the way a dog is harmed by mistreatment? And that question also has a simple and non-controversial answer: No. A fetus does not suffer from its treatment, it does not experience what happens to it, it does not feel pain for at least most of its gestation. Going to the capacities that make humans really morally interesting – capacities beyond those of a dog – a fetus has no self-awareness, it has no desires or goals to be frustrated, it has no interests, it is not a person. And so we may do to a fetus what we may not do to a (non-fetal) dog, because a grown dog is neurologically more developed than a fetus, and also (skipping the dog bit) a fetus at whatever stage of its development stands far bereft of what gives developed humans their actual moral status.

All this results from asking “why is it wrong to kill dogs?” – a question Jacque does not ask. Instead, her argument seems to take the form: “Dogs are dependent and it’s wrong to kill dogs, therefore it’s wrong to kill things that are dependent; fetuses are dependent therefore it’s wrong to kill fetuses” – an argument that suffers from a fairly obvious false correlation in the first step. And that false correlation arises from a – too-familiar – simple inability to see a difference between things that feel and emote, and things that . . . well, don’t.

UPDATE: Fixed a few typos, added the link, and scaled back my estimate of the cost of raising a dog.