Lorenzo Del Chicca
Mrs. Bridget Greff
12/09/21
English 11
Animals and the Right to Life
In the last decades, thanks to the progress made by the society, many movements were created in
order to give more rights to a certain group of people. For instance, Feminism is an ideology that
wants to establish the economic and political parity of males and females. One of the most famous
social movement is the Animal Rights Movement, which pursues a moral and legal equality
between animals and humans, including the right to life, the belief that “Every identity has the
inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his
life” (Article 6, “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”). Personally, I am against
this view: Although I believe that every individual should treat animals respectfully, I think that it
would be impossible because of some human’s habits and the various differences between the two.
First of all, it is undeniable that the human is superior to every single animal. According to
Giacomo Samek (Philosophy teacher at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart), even though
animals “dominate humans in some activities”, (for example, cheetahs are faster, and birds are able
to fly unlike us), “the human is able to do logical and wilful things which are unreachable for
animals, such as thinking and inventing”. Indeed, it has been proven that, while animals have a
pragmatic-utilitarian knowledge, man’s knowledge is pragmatic-utilitarian and theoretical. For
instance, every animal reacts with a stimulus-response to anything, while the mankind is able to
placate stimuli and choose what to do. What is more, “humans have always tried to grow a
religiosity”, unlike animals, which “are stopped at the perceivable apprehension” (Giacomo Samek
Lodovici, “Animal Rights”). Lastly, when in pain, the man tries to understand why he is feeling pain
and give meaning to it.
In addition, giving animal the right to life would be impracticable: firstly, “the exclusionary nature
of single capacity criteria for ethical consideration creates a paradox”. The belief that animal should
have the same rights as humans would lead to the creation of a “working definition of animals” that
is either “so ambiguous that it includes everything from viruses to giraffes, without accounting for
the differences between them, or it uses the differences between them to continue excluding and
exploiting most. Therefore, “the premise of animal rights discourse that all animals are equal is
flawed” (Kartik Chugh, “The Case against Animal Rights”).
Furthermore, giving animals right to life would lead to numerous problems. Feminist studies have
problematized the ‘meaning of consent’ and ‘speaking for others’, issues which become even more
apparent in case of animals. Indeed, “Feminists have also argued that speaking for others can be a
way of silencing them” (Kartik Chugh, “The Case against Animal Rights”). Not only that: how
would rights between predators and preys work? If the government gave rights only to animals like
zebras and gazelles, lions would supposedly break the law, because those animals are what they eat.
Let’s say you tried to make lions change their diet: as they will not be able to change the habits that
they have had for 2 million years, this would cause a mass extinction of the whole species. While if
you gave rights to every single animal, lions would have to delete the habit of attacking themselves,
which, for the same reason as before, is impossible.
On the other hand, animals should deserve the right to life because humans treat animals unethically
in many different occasions. For example, scientific testing makes animals experience high levels of
both psychological and physical pain. According to PETA, “The only U.S. law that governs the use
of animals in laboratories- the Animal Welfare Act- allows animals to be burned, shocked,
poisoned, isolated, starved, forcibly restrained, addicted to drugs, and brain damaged”. Moreover,
most of the times this cruelty is not justified: “Most animal experiments are not relevant to human
health, they do not contribute to meaningfully to medical advances and many are undertaken simply
out of curiosity and do not even pretend to hold promise for curing illnesses” declared PETA
(Current Controversies, “Animal Rights”, pp 23, 31-34). However, Nicole Garbarini, writer and
former editor for Disease Models & Mechanism explains that “nonhuman primate research is very
important in diverse areas, including addiction, behavioural research, spinal research, and
reproductive research- all areas in which primates’ close connection to human behaviour and
biology is invaluable”, which makes scientific testing necessary because it allows to investigate
problems such as “the true risk of alcoholic drinking and drinking during pregnancy” (Current
Controversies, “Animal Rights”, pp 50-57).
I personally think that humans have some duties to animals. “the man must not hurt animals as he
must not hurt his own kind”, says Samek. “First off, inflicting pain goes against human dignity
itself. Then, each being has a value and has to be treated conformably. However, the existence of
these duties does not delete the qualitative superiority of humans”. Many animal-rights activists
claim animals will we able to overcome this “superiority” thanks to evolution, but the truth is that
every animal species has acted in the same way since they appeared on the Earth.
In conclusion, animals should not have the right to life, which is only possessed by the man: not
only it would be impossible and impracticable to implement, its premise itself is also flawed.
However, people should treat every being respectfully, and not go against human dignity.
Works Cited
“International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.” OHCHR, 1996,
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CCPR.aspx.
Samek Lodovici, Giacomo. “Animal Rights” 3 Oct. 2019, pp. 1-6.
Chugh, Kartik. “The Case against Animal Rights.”, 5 Nov. 2021,
https://cuesonline.org/2020/06/12/the-case-against-animal-rights/.
Current Controversies, Animal Rights, GALE RESEARCH INC, 2018, pp. 23–24, 31-34, 50-57.