Animal Moral Rights

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Legal and moral rights should always be extended to non-human species, otherwise what would separate us from the animals? Legal rights are the rights that are granted by law and enforceable via court systems, such as the legal right to life that prevents us from killing people on a whim (Gilbert, 2012). Although legal protection does not always extend to animals globally, every state in the United States have laws prohibiting the inhumane treatment of animals in order to protect their well-being, regardless if they are domesticated or not (Stray Pet Advocacy, 2010). Even if an individual is not an animal lover, there are several benefits to supporting legal rights for all species. The most important reason would be to maintain the balance of the natural ecosystem. If we as a people were to completely eliminate a natural predator, such as the wolf, then the entire balance would shift and issues such as overproduction of the natural prey of the wolf would occur and eat more foliage than the environment …show more content…

Our moral sense is the knowledge or awareness of moral implications of our interactions with others, and is often tied to emotions (Gilbert, 2012). An example of this being, when a child does something wrong and then feels bad about it, or in contrast, does something right and is gleeful. All individuals who have a moral compass knows that is wrong to inflict pain on a living being, some just choose to do so anyway, unfortunately. Since most animals experience the ranges of emotion that humans do, we should respect them to at least a basic extent. Considering that there are very few individuals who believe that humans do not have moral obligations towards animals (Garner, 2002), there is no logical reasoning to disallow basic moral and legal rights to

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