What Anti Abortion Christians and Some Hindus Share

In India there is tension between Hindus and Christians and atheists who eat beef. Many Hindus revere the cow and consider it sacred. A comment following the link asks, "What kind of a ridiculous religion would consider a cow to be sacred?" 

It turns out many religions at one time or another has considered the cattle to be a sacred beings. I've read leather goods produced in some countries must be certified to have come from male cattle and not cows. Probably cows are revered because they keep very poor people alive and have come to seem "god like."

I've read that in Native American religions animals used for food and clothing are considered sacred in some way. While they are killed and used, butchering is done with the appropriate ceremony. Kosher meat requires a ceremony.

It is common for religions to assign some kind of mythical quality to objects that appear, to the outsider, as having no significance at all. A mental agility is required that others do not possess. Anti abortion is another example.

I remember a faculty colleague decades ago who was not a Catholic carrying on against abortion in the faculty break room. Someone asked him how he came to believe a fetus is a human being. His answer was that he asked a priest friend if the fetus has a soul and the priest said absolutely yes it does. He repeated that conversation the rest of his life. 

The fetus is a part of the mother's body. If it can be assigned a soul than a soul can be assigned to most anything. In Hinduism it is assigned to a cow. In Native American religion to an otter. To those with no religion there is no soul anywhere within anything or anyone.

There are branches of Hinduism that do not believe in the sacred cow. There are branches of Christianity that do not believe fetuses are human beings. In both places such people are regarded with hostility by believers. Today in the campaign season I read articles castigating candidate Biden for personally being opposed to abortion but not believing his views should be forced on others. 

His position applies well to the U.S. just as it should to sacred cows in India.