Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Animal Rights Strategy Fails – Focus on Rights Undermines Success of Movements
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Animal Rights Strategy Fails – Focus on Rights Undermines Success of MovementsTHE EXTENSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS TO ANIMALS IS INEFFECTIVE AND LEAVES ETHICAL DOUBT, DOOMING THEIR PROJECT Kathy Rudy, Associate Professor of Ethics and Women's Studies at Duke University, currently working on ethical issues in speciism and human-animal relationships, “ETHICS IN AMERICA: The Question of Animals”, Summer 2005, www.mals.duke.edu/Courses_Summer_2005.pdf This course reviews the many ways that ethical theory has been used to advocate a better world for animals. In the world named but not captured by the term “animal rights,” ethical and legal theories once sanctioned for use only in relation to humans are now applied to animals, with a varying array of outcomes and conclusions. This section will compare and contrast traditional formulations of rights with new models of utility. We will also examine the strategies of animal protection as a form property law, animal welfare, and environmentalist approaches to animals. The extension of human rights to animals, while in some senses strategically useful to the well being of animals, may leave some of us wanting a more seamless approach to ethics and law regarding animals.
Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 91-2 Probably the most common criticism leveled by activists pointed to the continued association between animal rights and extremism. Despite the popularity of rights in general and the increasing acceptance of the term animal rights, activists suggested that, in the minds of many, animal rights remains a radical concept. According to one activist, the language “really alienates a lot of people. I think they think that’s too radical…Animal rights is a kind of buzzword.” A second activist suggested that speaking of animal rights “sets a lot of people off.” Likewise, a third noted that “it almost seems to be a red flag to some people. When you think of rights it brings up very strong emotions in people.” “ANIMAL RIGHTS” LABEL TURNS PEOPLE OFF—ASSOCIATED WITH EXTREMISM Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 92 Many animal rights organizations continue deploying rights in spite of, and sometimes because of, its connections to radicalism. Moreover, while many express wariness regarding the radical connotations of animal rights, they also note that this connection is not peculiar to animal rights or to rights language alone. Earlier rights movements were similarly associated with extremism. One activist made this point in the following manner: “It’s like people who say I’m not a feminist, but I’m in favor of equal pay for equal work…People are ready to concede they agree with you on lots things, but they’re not ready to make that jump with you on lots of things, but they’re not ready to make that jump and label it that thing they’ve heard has been so fringey for so long.” AN ABSOLUTE STANCE ON RIGHTS DISCOURAGES ANIMAL WELFARE PROGRESS LAURA IRELAND MOORE, executive director of the National Center for Animal Law, 2005 Animal Law (A REVIEW OF ANIMAL RIGHTS: CURRENT DEBATES AND NEW DIRECTIONS) 2005 (lexis) 31 Francione's argument leaves no room for the progress of animal welfare, incremental changes that reinforce the property status of animals, or balancing interests from a solely human perspective. He notes that if humans are to truly prohibit the unnecessary suffering of animals, we cannot use them for our own purposes. n55 Animal Rights Strategy Fails – Will Never Gain Acceptance by Public or LeadersLIGHT YEARS AWAY FROM CULTURAL ACCEPTANCE OF RESPECT FOR ALL ANIMAL RIGHTS Tom Regan, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, North Carolina State University, 2004, The Case for Animal Rights, p. xliv Adoption of animal rights is another matter. Tragically, we find the same injustices today as were present in 1983. Billions of animals are slaughtered for their flesh. Baby seals bludgeoned to death on the ice. Greyhounds kept in crates for twenty-three hours a day even as greyhound racing flourishes. Wild animals deprived of their very being as they are taught to perform tricks in circuses and at marine parks. So many wrongs remain to be righted. Realistically, we are light-years away from creating a culture in which the rights of animals are respected. Nevertheless, signs of positive change give hope for a better future.
Richard Posner, Federal Circuit Judge, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 71-2 No doubt we should want to do more than merely avoid gratuitous cruelty to animals. One of the horrors in Wise’s anecdotes about the treatment of chimpanzees is that the chimps in question had been befriended by humans—had even been used to humans’ profits as experimental animals—only to be abandoned to cruel treatment by other humans. Consideration of reliance and gratitude would move most people to share Wise’s passionate condemnation of such conduct. More broadly, neglect and cruelty are linked, neglect can be cruel. But neither philosophical reflection, nor a vocabulary of rights is likely to add anything to the sympathetic emotions that narratives of the mistreatment of animals can engender in most of us. ABSTRACT NATURE OF RIGHTS UNDERMINES ITS EFFECTIVENESS AS A STRATEGY FOR ANIMAL LIBERATION Daniel A. Dombrowski, 1997, Babies and Beasts: the argument from marginal cases, p. 154-5 Benton’s view is that the moral status of animals is a function not so much of the kinds of beings they are as of the relations in which they stand to human moral agents and their social practices: “It seems on the face of it unlikely that the single philosophical strategy of assigning universal rights of a very abstract kind to them would be a sufficient response. Is, for example, the moral status of a farm animal or a domestic pet, or a ‘wild’ animal to be conceptualized in identical terms?” In one sense yes. All these animals deserve equal moral consideration of their interests , at least if marginal cases do; in that they have gratiutiously. The question as to whether we also have a duty to prevent other animals from killing wild rabbits, say, is a complicated one that I have briefly treated before. The point to notice here is that wild rabbits are equally deserving to have their interest considered and equally worthy of immunity from torture and death at the hands of human beings, at the very least. In contrast, Benton wants us to believe that pets, farm animals, and wild animals each have a different moral status because of their different relations with human beings; likewise, the moral status of these animals is different from that of young children or mentally enfeebled adults, again because of the relations these marginal cases have to normal human beings: “All human adult moral agents have been young children, and will have some memory of that state…In the case of mentally disabled human adults there are, again, generally sufficiently powerful subject-to-subject affective bonds to give grounds for thinking that those who campaign on behalf of the mentally handicapped would themselves campaign for if they were able to do so.” If I understand Benton correctly, he is saying that if mentally enfeebled human beings were rational, they would want to be treated fairly, which is true. But the same sort of conditional claim could be made on behalf of animals.
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