by Gavin Plumton

Created on: May 02, 2010

Animal Rights is a topic that often comes up in the news and gets argued over, but just what rights do animals actually have? Animals never had a Magna Carter, they didn’t have any revolutions, and animals never had any monarchs to revolt against. Can we really say that animals have any rights?

Animals do clearly have rights though. You only need to torture a cat and let PETA catch you to quickly find out in court just many rights animals have and just how much those rights can cost you. The catch to this though, is that animals only have rights that humans give to them. Animals don’t have natural rights, they don’t get free speech or the right of assembly. They only get what humans, as the dominant species on Earth, give to them. It might sound cold and uncaring, but if you think about it, it makes a great deal of sense.

Humans agreed a while ago that every single person has a certain set of rights that every single person is born with, and then each government also gives their citizens a set of rights. Despite this though, governments often don’t give their citizens either set of rights, so you could say that humans don’t have any natural rights, only the ones that governments or the people in power over them give to them. Basically, might makes right. In this context, where even humans don’t have natural rights that can’t simply be taken from them, animals certainly don’t have any kind of rights without humans giving the rights to the animals.

Despite the bestowed nature of the rights of animals, that does not make them any less strong or defendable than any other rights. PETA is a great example of this as they actively prosecute anyone who violates the rights of animals, despite PETA’s slightly tarnished reputation lately. If the rights were truly ignorable, or did not exist, then you would never see someone in jail for torturing their puppy or killing a cat. The fact that humans, the dominant species on the planet, can be punished for violating the rights of animals proves that animals do in fact have real, enforceable rights.

However, you have to keep in mind that the ones doing the enforcing of the rights of animals are also humans. Without humans supporting the rights of animals, the animals would quickly lose any and all of the rights they have and would go back to being simple property of their owners, who would own all rights to the animals.

So, animals do have rights, but they are flimsy rights that are only maintained and enforced as long as humans find it convenient. Humans will protect cats and dogs from being tortured, but they love their hamburgers far too much to protect cows, just proving that animals get rights when humans feel like it.

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