What are animal rights? By definition, animal rights are rights believed to belong to animals to live free from use in medical research, hunting, and other services to humans. However, this is a very controversial topic if animals even deserve these rights. Animals have inherent worth; they are worthy in nature and form. They have a sense pain and suffering. Just because they do not speak, does not mean that they aren’t suffering from the pain that humans put them through with abuse. Or the feeling of being empty inside, from owners abandoning animals and leaving them nothing to eat. They feel the harsh chemicals on their bodies when they suffer from daily confinement and deprivation in laboratories. The inhumane activities towards animals needs to come to an end once and for all. Animals deserve rights, and these rights should annihilate the problems with animal abuse, abandonment, and experimentation.
Many believe animal rights is a hindrance. If we extend these rights to animals, it would give humans the restriction of eating meat, and not give scientists the ability to cure diseases. As the Nobel laureate Joseph Murray has observed, “Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacement, and all vaccinations”(Evans 7). Indeed, animal research and clinical study is paramount in the discovery of the causes, cures and treatments of countless diseases, including AIDS and cancer. It is understandable why the opposition argues that animals do not deserve rights because it has bettered medicine. Even though scientists have made a breakthrough with this method, it does not blur their morals and compassion. Scientists should know if it is too aggressive on an experiment to put an innocent animal through.
The most common, and worst crimes conceivable have to do with abusing humans. For the people who commit these crimes are sentenced harshly, most of the time life imprisonment. We indict people from these inhumane crimes because we know that the inborn urge we have to retain our health and freedom exists not just in ourselves, but in all humans; when these urges are violated, there is suffering. Accordingly, we strive to build a society to avoid these awful crimes. However, when it comes to animals, it becomes a controversy. Animals feel the excruciating pain humans put them through when they abuse them. The consequences for this crime is not the same as for a human. In the state of California, “These crimes may be charged as either a misdemeanor or felony, with punishment of a fine up to $20,000 and/or imprisonment up to 1 year” (Stray Pet Advocacy 3). The abuse of an animal can at most sentence one to a year of jail time, while abuse of a human could be life sentencing. Our society is making it okay to abuse animals due to the punishments being as lenient as they are. Animals are innocent and do not deserve the abuse they receive.
The question runs through our mind: How could anyone abandon an innocent animal? There are many answers to that question, however that does not make it an excuse. For instance, once pet owners realize that there is responsibility with having a pet, they abandon them. Leaving them completely helpless in the streets, tied up to a tree somewhere, or horrifically enough dumped into a trashcan. In the article “A Change of Heart about Animals”, Rifkin argues that, “They feel pain, suffer, and experience stress, affection, excitement and even love— and these are changing how we view animals” (Rifkin 2). They will never be ale to understand why they have been abandoned. Animal rights can help prevent all of these abandoned animals.
