system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is it a contradiction to be a pro-choice vegan?

I became a vegan because I realized I couldn't justify causing unnecessary suffering for sentient beings, or those beings likely or possibly sentient but without clear evidence for being so (benefit of the doubt, as it were).

However, in the case of pro-life vs pro-choice, I sense a certain amount of cognitive dissonance in myself.  If I'm giving the benefit of the doubt regarding sentience to animals like chickens and fish, what's to say that an unborn fetus doesn't at some level achieve similar levels of sentience?  And, with a lack of understanding of fetal neural development and inability to draw a line, the pro-life position seems to be the least at odds with the reasoning that led me to veganism.

It's especially concerning to me, since I used to justify being pro-choice with exactly the same logic: that a fetus likely has less or equal sentience/awareness than animals we eat for food, and eating animals for food is ethical, therefor abortion is ethical.  I now reject the second premise.

EDIT: I should add that I'm vegan in the sense of The Vegan Society's definition:

>Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.
gpt
Jeremy Bentham wrote in the 18th Century:

>A full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old.

There are perfectly rational reasons to put the interests of many animals above that of a human fetus. There are also much more serious consequences to bringing an unwanted child into the world relative to the consequences of not eating animals (in fact not eating animals has even more positive consequences). 

There is plenty of room to be pro-choice and vegan. The only hypocrites are the people who claim to be pro-life without being vegan.