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Dear Auntie Pinko,
Do animals have rights? Are they the same rights people have? If so, which animals have them? Monkeys, dogs, parrots, koi, earthworms, parameciums, bats, black widow spiders, cockroaches, or what? Is it legitimate to distinguish between which animals have rights based on how easily we can anthropomorphize them? Do animals have the right to turf us out of our homes if we suddenly discover that some rare species will only flourish in our subdivision? Do they have the right to “peacefully co-exist” with us even if they carry diseases? Am I denying the pigeons their rights to live on the hospital gutters and downspouts when I chase them away because they carry histoplasmosis and people with compromised immune systems (like the ones in our hospital) are vulnerable?
What about the rights of animals to be animals? Do I have the right to stop my cat from killing mice because the mice have a right to live, too? If we’re all becoming vegetarians, should I try to make my cat a vegetarian, too? Because I’m pretty sure that other animals (who also have rights, right?) were killed to produce the protein in my cat’s cat food.
And what about mosquitoes?
Steve K.
Williston, ND
Dear Steve,
Congratulations on having grasped the concept of “reductio ad absurdum.” But be careful— applying it thoughtlessly can result in a fallacious “straw man” argument that is easily refuted. If you have a serious point to make, it’s often best to present it without sarcasm, at least to open the discussion.
The relations between people and other species are a contentious issue in America today, an issue that stirs a great deal of highly emotional debate. Unfortunately, all that emotion often prevents us from discussing vexing questions thoroughly, and arriving at the compromises and incremental steps of lasting reform.
“Rights” are often presumed to derive from some inherent quality, but in fact they must be derived from some form of authority— in the case of legal or political rights, they derive from a Constitution or body of law that reflects the will of the body politic; in the case of “natural rights” they are often regarded as endowed by Divine fiat. Those who advocate for specific policies in regard to how humans interact with animals have advanced both sources: Laws should (or do) require, and/or creatures have some inherent quality that requires us to interact with them in a certain way.
As you point out, sometimes advocates seem to find that quality or value in some forms of life but not others.
I think there is still a large gray area to be carefully explored here. My opinions are not (and shouldn’t be) particularly weighty in the discussion, but they’re all I really have to bring to the table.
I am sharply aware that all life lives at the expense of other life. Life by its nature consumes and grows upon life. This is true without exception. Plants require micro-organic life in soil and water to complete their life cycles and perpetuate their species, and soil itself is produced through the death and destruction of life. Life differs in quality but its essence remains constant. An amoeba is alive just as surely as a whale or a human. The cycle of inception, consumption, and discorporation is essential to perpetuate more life.
All of this is to say that I don’t feel compelled to apologize for eating a carrot, a spore organism that creates the blue veining in my cheese, or a cow’s muscle tissue. I am alive; I stay that way by consuming other life, as do we all. And if there is a commonality among all the wildly differing guises life wears, it is the essential drive to stay alive and create more of our own type of life. But what I eat is my decision, and I am comfortable with it. I am equally comfortable with the decisions others have made to exclude certain types of life from their diet.
I can’t speak to the specifics of rights for any particular type of life, at least in terms of how humans should interact with that type of life. What I can speak to is how, and more importantly, why, our government should frame laws regulating those interactions. There are both pragmatic and ethical issues of great importance at stake in this discussion.
From a pragmatic standpoint, there are many reasons why we should limit human activities that threaten the survival of other species, and why we should ensure that creatures we live with (and on) should receive humane care. Our understanding of the very complex interrelationships between all forms of life is still very poor, but we are beginning to be aware of just how dependent we are on other life. Compromising the survival of other species, or the health and well-being of the individual creatures we live with, could damage our own ability to survive in ways we don’t know about yet.
From an ethical standpoint, we owe it to our own human dignity and self-worth to ensure that we are respectful of life, that we do not squander it needlessly, and that we do not abuse our power. To do so, harms and degrades us as individuals and as a species. The appalling conditions under which the animals we depend on for life live out their short and miserable days are as much a crime against humanity as against the creatures we are unthinkingly torturing for cheap food.
There are a few critical forms of medical research that legitimately require animals to sacrifice comfort and life to save human lives. I value my own species more highly than other species, just as I value my own family more highly than strangers. If testing medications that will cure diabetes or AIDS on animals is truly the only alternative in a promising line of research that has already been validated by careful peer review, such testing must be done, with the minimum possible suffering for the animals involved. If the only way to be sure that a new lipstick won’t make some women’s lips swell up with pus-filled blisters is to test it on animals, well… we don’t really need yet another new lipstick. That is an important distinction for us to legislate.
We survive by eating other life, but making that life available to eat should require us to minimize the suffering and harm (as we are currently capable of understanding it) we cause to what we are going to eat. This applies just as surely to the degradation and destruction of the soil that nourishes our potatoes and peas as it does to the conditions under which we harvest fish or nurture chickens. For our own moral and physical health, we need standards that will establish limits and promote positive practices among our food producers.
All life matters, all life has value. Living is a process of making trade-offs and constantly establishing and re-establishing particular values for the individual lives we encounter. We are not nearly as conscious as we should be of this process, not nearly as thoughtful as we must be for our own good. Thoughtful discussions, whether couched as “animal rights” or “humane treatment” or “environmental stewardship,” can be valuable if we keep our emotions under control and refrain from pouring scorn on those whose ideas differ from our own, closing off avenues for building consensus.
I hope this helps you think constructively about “animal rights,” Steve, and thanks for asking Auntie Pinko!
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