Alexander Lopez
ENGL 110
For thousands of years we humans have been hunting animals for food and using their fur as clothing. This was perfectly fine but as humans evolved so has their cognitive abilities, and found other ways to gather food and other ways to make pieces of clothing. But now in today’s time hunting animals still continues to happen and some people do it as a sport, and due to this action many animals are at risk for extinction; hunting is not the only source of animals being hurt, deforestation, the loss of their habitat also kills them . So seeing these factors animals should have the basic rights to ensure ethical and fair treatment, because even though animals don’t speak they still can feel pain, experience suffering, and to feel joy. These animals should be able to live freely in the wild without abuse or cruelty.
Do animals need rights? Or the better question to ask should be: Do animals have rights?
The reason for this question being asked is because any being or any certain type of being has a certain right, that right is to have respectful treatment, therefore that right overrules the interest of any other beings no matter how big those interests are, to prove this point in the article called “Do animal need rights?” by William A. Edmundson it states “And it is also assumed that if a being or kind of being has any rights at all, they are generally the same assortment of rights that humans have.” This evidence talks about how even non human beings, if they’re alive, deserve and have the basic rights that a human would have. Pointing this out does not show that advocating for animals rights is not impossible or unlikely, but it does show that speaking in terms of animal rights is not inescapable but possible. Although animal rights are important, some people worry that if animal rights are admitted and processed, it could change the way we view our own “human” rights. The reason for this worry is because if all animals were to have the same rights or not the same rights as us humans, it would still be very similar to human rights.
Well there are two types of concerns; the first reason is that this animal rights would demand too much of humans, that our capacity to help other humans or to live freely with our own lives could be diminished. The second reason could be that our knowledge of what humans owe each other would get leveled down to what we owe animals. But there is one reason why most theorists don’t agree with animal rights, and that is because animals can do no wrong since they don’t owe us anything. What is meant by that is that yes animals sometimes do harm us or harm each other but is not the same as wronging.
What Rights do? Debate about animal rights is not of this nature, because animals can do no wrong. Animals can have no duties, they don’t require what John Rawls termed “enabling rights” to allow them to perform what their duties require. If animals can “do no right” then they don’t need authorization rights since they are incapable of consenting to anything, they don’t require transaction-facilitating rights. But, even so, because animals have interest that can potentially be harmed, they could use, and they do need, rights that serve yet another purpose: one that is straight to the point which is a protective function. At this point multiple animal theorists will interject many conceptual misgivings. A protective function is equally well served by being able to confine claims made on behalf of animals to the language of what is rightful and wrongful of humans to do to animals, leaving alone any assertions about animals rights? Before continuing, it should be pointed out that rights also serve functions other than just the one mentioned. For example, rights not only indicate the existence of a set of protective duties, they also serve as cues that we should consider.
While cruelty to animals is a response from Bergh, the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) and new state legislation, nevertheless remains in its treatment of animal protection a sense of novelty. Criticizing animal rights during the nineteenth-century became easy due to it being part of a long history of challenges associated with the animal rights frame. Since its establishment during the 1970s, the animal rights movement has built an identity by differentiating from the longstanding and more moderate animal welfare movement, some critics may argue that it is composed of halfway measures and compromises that do more to enable the ongoing abuse of animals than they do protecting them. In recent analysis of the animal protection movement in the United States during this period has shown the movement was infused by concept rights, through advocates emphasis on animal sentience and intelligence as grounds for re-evaluating their status and treatment. In the article “Imagining Animals Rights in Nineteenth-century New York; Satire and Strategy in the animal protection movement” by Darcy Ingram, the president of the ASPCA said, “My theory is that all animals all over the country, and all over the world indeed, HAVE A CLEAR RIGHT TO KINDNESS at the hands of man whom they serve, and whom they feed, and on whom man is dependent for the work of the world which is done, and but for whom the progress of the world would in a measurable stop.” To the best of my knowledge what this is trying to say is that animals do need to deserve the right to have our kindness, because we humans depend on animals to survive, and if they stopped existing, we sure would not exist either.
The next paragraphs will explain why animals should have rights. Using animals in research and to test the safety of a product has been a heated topic. Animal Experimentation, sixty percent of all animals used in testing have been used in biomedical research and product safety testing. Many people have different opinions/feelings for animals; many look upon animals as companions while others view them as a means to advance medical techniques or furthering experimental research. However people view animals, the truth should still be held that animals are being exploited, used by researched facilities across the country and all around the world. Although yes, we can benefit from successful animal research, this still doesn’t change the fact that animals suffer, experience pain, and die from the testings used on them.
Animals rights are violated when they are used in research in the article “Save the animals: Stop animal testing” states, “Tom Regan, a philosophy professor at North Carolina State University states, ‘Animals have a basic moral right to respectful treatment… This inherent value is not respected when animals are reduced to being mere tools in a scientific experiment.” Basically what this is trying to say is that every animal is born with the right to be treated with respect and once we use an animal for a scientific experiment we break that right of that animal because we are not treating it with respect. In many ways animals are just like humans; they both feel pain, think, behave, and experience pain. Thus, animals should be treated with the same respect as a human being. But yet animal rights are being violated when they are used in research since they are not given a choice. Animals are subjected to tests that are often many times painful or that can cause permanent damage or death, and they are not given the option of not participating in the experiment.
Animals are sentient beings that are here on this planet with us, not for us. Who would we be if we abused those weaker than ourselves just because we could. For animals having rights would be everything to them. With rights, they would not be trapped, beaten, caged, artificially inseminated, mutilated, drugged, traded, transported, harmed, and killed just because someone else can make a living or profit from it. Theoretically by granting animals rights, the sum of suffering in the world would reduce quite a significant amount. A few ways we violate animal rights is when we breed animals so we can take their babies and use them for consumption, also we deliberately impregnate animals so we can use their milk as well for consumption. But this isn’t the only way we violate animal rights not by testing them or consuming them is when we use them for our entertainment. When we use animals by forcing them into the circus ring or into a cage at a zoo, or by beating them to make them do what we want. A simple way to put it is how this article describes it, called “What are animal rights & why should animals have rights” states, “Simply, it is the right thing to do. Animals are not ours to harm and abuse just because we can. They are not our playthings, but sentient beings in their own right.” This sums up everything in simple terms anyone can understand.
The National Primate Research Centers Imprison Monkeys In Barren Cages for Decades At a Time
This video is basically showing that even though these monkeys are being exploited for scientific research they are still being treated badly. If the fact that they are already being used for research is not enough they are still suffering because they are locked in a small cage with little to no space which would be enough to make even a human go crazy.
Bibliography
- Ingram, Darcy. “Imagining Animal Rights in Nineteenth‐century New York: Satire and Strategy in the Animal Protection Movement.” Journal of Historical Sociology, vol. 32, no. 2, 2019, pp. 244–57, https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12221.
- Edmundson, William A. “Do Animals Need Rights?” The Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 23, no. 3, 2015, pp. 345–60, https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12042.
- “Save the Animals: Stop Animal Testing |.” Lone Star College, https://www.lonestar.edu/stopanimaltesting.htm. Accessed 23 April 2023.
- What Are Animal Rights & Why Should Animals Have Rights?, 4 February 2021, https://genv.org/animal-rights/. Accessed 23 April 2023.
- “Home.” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04m8Idrh45Q&t=2s. Accessed 23 April 2023.
