Persuasive Essay On Right To Live

“The Right to Live” Among the files and photographs on the Internet are shocking and perverse things. One particular type of files are called “crush videos”. These videos show well-dressed women stomping, or crushing, small animals under their feet. These small, harmless animals should have certain living rights as living things. These rights should be extended to all animals, no matter what size, shape, or type of animal. With these rights, there are activists that are trying to get people to see that animals are getting abused. Animals deserve certain rights. As Dog˘an expresses, “Animals have a right to life, to liberty in the sense of freedom of movement and communication, to subsistence, to relief from suffering, and to security against

The animal rights movement is trying to get people to see exactly how animals have been treated. Most people see animal cruelty as “…unspeakable acts perpetrated by warped individuals mostly against dogs, cats, birds, and sometimes horses” (Munro, 512). Once seeing how countless animals have been treated, numerous people across the world are joining the cause to help these poor “nonhuman animals”. One reason that supports that animals deserve rights is that “non-human mammals over a year of age have mental capacities for memory, a sense of future, emotion, and self-awareness to a certain extent” (Dog˘an, 474). With this reasoning, animals have enough mental capacity to be considered subjects of life, and therefore deserve rights to support this thesis. Another reason states that “rights are defined in terms of capability of having interests” (Dog˘an, 481). Animals show an interest in living. As stated, “[a]nimals have a natural motive to live…[e]very day, they practice caution and care necessary to protect themselves. Their bodies are likewise structured for survival” (Dog˘an,

They believe that since farm animals give us our meat and dairy, it should be condoned to kill these animals. These skeptics try to put up boundaries between animals, so that some animals get rights, while others do not. Cherry shows that activists have been trying to “shift [the] symbolic boundaries between humans and animals, as well as between companion and farm animals” (450). Farm animals are considered those animals frequently found on farmland. Companion animals are considered animals that would be found as pets, or as “companions” to people. There should not be any boundaries between these types or animals. All animals deserve to have the right to live good lives, without being mistreated, neglected, or abused. Another example of “abuse” against animals would be destroying their habitats. As Dog˘an explains, “we ought to avoid destroying their natural habitats… we ought to take necessary cautions to protect animals’ natural habitats from pollution that threatens their lives. The respect for their right to life requires us to take such measures”