Vegan = murder

In the news I see a story regarding a pair of vegan parents who have been sentenced to life in prison for murdering their infant child. They were convicted on charges of: felony murder, malice murder, involuntary manslaughter, and cruelty to children.

When their baby died, it weighed 3.5 lbs (that’s 1.59 kilos for my European reader). That’s about five pounds less than I weighed the day I was born. The jury deliberated for a grand total of seven hours (which is not a lot) before coming back with guilty verdicts. Some excerpts from the article (with Ahab-comments) follow.

Defense lawyers said the first-time parents did the best they could while adhering to the lifestyle of vegans, who typically use no animal products. They said Sanders and Thomas did not realize the baby, who was born at home, was in danger until minutes before he died.

What? YOUR BABY WEIGHED 3.5 POUNDS. How in the name of The Duke did you miss that little detail? I could offer some intellectual commentary, but I’m too gobsmacked by the utter vapidity of the parents in this case. But wait, there’s more.

…their malnourished 6-week-old baby boy, who was fed a diet largely consisting of soy milk and apple juice.

Soy milk and apple juice. Now, I understand that crazies vegans don’t believe in using any animal products, but I wasn’t aware that breast milk counted as an animal product. All this mother had to do was pop a boob out there, and she didn’t. Instead, she let her child die because of her personal beliefs.

I’m pleased by this verdict, for a lot of reasons. Despite my personal feelings about vegans being hypocritical and foolish, I honestly don’t care what you eat or don’t eat, it’s your life do what you want. I do have a problem that when people force their belief system on someone who can’t give consent – under any circumstances. By trying to raise their child as a “vegan”, these parents denied it the essential nutrients that the baby needed to live. Whether that was because of cruelty or ignorance doesn’t actually matter.

That’s the problem with radical beliefs of any type. When take something too far, innocent lives get damaged. This baby could defend himself, he didn’t have a voice to say “feed me some fucking milk, lady”. I guess you could call him the first victim of radical vegetarianism.

Parents have a right to raise their child as they wish. What that means is that my parents can raise me Christian, or vegetarian, or however they please. What they don’t have a right to do is endanger my life because of something they believe in. There was one person at the trial that understood exactly what was going on, however.

“No matter how many times they want to say, ‘We’re vegans, we’re vegetarians,’ that’s not the issue in this case,” said prosecutor Chuck Boring. “The child died because he was not fed. Period.”

And that’s all she wrote.

Update: Eric at Classical Values has more.

Update Part Two: Electric Boogaloo – Ambulance Driver informs me that I don’t do metric conversions very well, in the comments section. Silly me and getting my pounds to kilos conversion bassackwards.