Vegan views on Abortion
Abortion is a contentious issue, not only in the United States but much of the Western world, and while much discourse is political in nature and entails much rhetoric and frankly ignorance, it's still a huge topic for those educated in ethics.
Note that there isn't a "vegan" position on abortion, just like there aren't vegan positions on anything that isn't related to animal ethics (and even within animal ethics there is still disagreement). Asking what the Vegan position on abortion is just as incongruous as asking what the Biologist position is on relativity. You will find vegans of all types with differing views on the matter, each with different motivations and reasoning; Many vegans who have a basic grasp of ethics, who used their understanding to arrive to their position on meat consumption will also use it to come to a position on abortion, and this varies amongst the different ethical schools (consequentialism, deontology), and even then, within these ethical schools there are various schisms abound on the topic, just as there is for every Vegan issue.
Given that most vegans are generally speaking more left leaning than average, they are accordingly usually pro-abortion, though this isn't necessarily a position arrived at via a logical process through ethics. Vegans sensible enough understand there to be a moral gradience, and less developed beings don't have the same moral weight as more developed ones. What's developed is somewhat ambiguous, but the difference between a pig and an ant is pretty apparent.
Consequentialism
Through a consequentialist standpoint that considers the preferences of sentient beings, while the fetus may have a small level of sentience and therefore some degree of preferences, the preferences of the mother carry far more weight due to her higher levels of sentience. Since morality is based on preferences, and (crudely) higher levels of sentience leads to higher ability to weigh preferences, what the mother prefers takes precedent over what the fetus prefers (if it even prefers anything). No matter how you look at it, fetuses are near the bottom on the sentience totem-pole.
However, given that they may have some tiny amount of sentience, this is a reason why the "My body, my choice" defense made by Pro-choicers is rather ignorant of the actual arguments against abortion; Pro-lifers don't accept this claim, because as far as they're concerned, a pregnant woman has a living being inside of her that is deserving of moral consideration. Of course, Pro-lifers ake fallacious arguments too, failing to establish a moral and cognition gradient and automatically assigning moral value to the fetus just because it's alive. That's sort of the mistake that some of the less rational Vegans make, thinking all animal abuse is equally bad, equating killing an ant to the killing of a pig.
Pro-lifers also have to contend with the hypocrisy of supposedly valuing life, yet continuing to eat meat. If you place so much value on a fetus, why don't you place it on the animals that are raised for food? If you're going to cry about the millions of abortions per year, why aren't you freaking out over the billions of animals being killed per year, animals that are far more sentient than a fetus? They're God's creation too, aren't they?
Anyway, a fairly common reason why women get abortions is due to some serious problem with the fetus, such as it having fetal alcohol syndrome or Down's syndrome, neither of which are pleasant or beneficial to a person. Sure, there's a chance that the child will be a savant, but overwhelmingly, the child will have a much harder time living in society. This may sound unconscionable to some, but knowingly giving birth to a child who was shown to have serious problems that would hinder his or her life is by any reasonable defintion unethical. It's the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them done unto you. Would you be fine being born into a world while having significant physical and mental disabilities that makes life much, much harder? Anyone who answers yes to that is either full of shit or doesn't really grasp how troubling such a thing would be for a person.
However, we should clarify that, strictly speaking, abortions are, often, still technically wrong. Now before you get all fire and brimstone or call us hypocrites, please carefully read the next paragraph.
Altruism is the consideration of the interests of others. When you violate the interests of others, regardless of their sentience level you are acting unethically, though there are times when this is incredibly benign. For instance, stepping on an ant for no reason is kind of a dick move, but for a being with that little level of sentience, is it really anything to get all upset about? And with abortion, once the fetus gains sentience at about 27 weeks in, that's when it starts becoming an ethical dilemma (If you get an abortion before the 27 weeks then you aren't acting unethically, consdering that the fetus was about as sentient as a rock). As far as we can tell, fetuses do not feel pain before the third trimester, and it's possible that it wasn't even sentient before that point either. The overwhelming majority of ethical choices are going to result in some sort of harm; Having an abortion is in a way wrong, but not wrong enough to make a fuss about considering the low sentience level of the fetus. And since there are many, many times where the preferences of the mother (and often the father) have significant weight to them (preferences related to finances, mental health, physical health), it's in the interests of all parties to have the abortion. Bringing unwanted children into the world is usually even more unethical.
Anti-abortion Laws
Banning legal abortions doesn't reduce it all that much, since the vast majority of women who want abortions will just get one from a less than reputable source. You aren't getting rid of abortions when you outlaw them, you're getting rid of safe abortions, and are endangering the life of the mother, a being with a VERY high level of sentience. The old jokes about a coat hanger in an alleyway exist for a reason, folks. Therefore even if it were unethical to get an abortion, outlawing them not only does not solve the problem, it just makes matters even worse and causes more suffering. If you're really gung ho about getting rid of abortions, the best treatment is often preventative. Encouraging safe sex practices and birth control as well as spreading sex education would go much further in making sure that women don't need to get abortions.
Also, banning abortions doesn't address underlying problems. We need to ask, why are all these women getting abortions? The most common motivation is financial, and women in poverty are more likely to have unintended pregnancies, so therefore, it makes more sense to fight poverty than fight abortion if you really want to reduce them, not to mention it would go pretty far in helping stop other problems caused by poverty.
Look at the War on Drugs. As a wise school counselor once said, "Drugs are bad, mkay?" and no reasonable person argues the sheer harm they cause. However, the way the government went about fighting the problem was not only costly and unethical, but incredibly counterproductive. Billions have been spent on it, not to mention the huge number of innocent people thrown in jail, the decrease in treatment for addiction due to fear of being prosecuted, and the amount of violence that it caused between warring drug cartels. If all of that money and all of those resources instead went towards rehabilitation programs and education, that would go much further in reducing drug use than criminalization ever did.
Another common reason for abortions is that the mother (and also usually the father) are not prepared to have a child, possibly due to psychological stress, which would be a common symptom amongst younger women (most abortions are received by women under the age of 30). If parents are not prepared, emotionally or financially, to have a child, bringing the child into the world is not doing it any favors.
