Many people around the world live under governments where they have practically no legal rights. Nevertheless, we generally consider that these people still have basic “human rights,” even though those rights are regularly violated. In this sense, when we refer to a person’s “rights,” we do not mean their legal rights. Instead, we mean the moral obligations that every government or person has toward them, whether or not those obligations are fulfilled.
People discuss animal rights in the same sense. In addition, the term “animal rights” emphasises the idea that our moral obligations toward animals go far beyond what traditional human societies recognise. Traditional societies condemn forms of cruelty that are already socially unacceptable, such as burning a cat. Animal-rights supporters go further and also condemn practices that remain legal, such as testing cosmetics on animals, killing animals for fur and slaughtering them for meat.
Continue with these questions:
- How can animals have rights?
- Where do rights come from?
- Why should we treat animals better than they treat one another?
- Why do we have moral obligations to animals that do not understand moral concepts?
- What do we gain by respecting other animals’ rights if they do not respect ours?
- Do you want to make eating meat illegal?