Monkeys should be considered persons in the eyes of the law

Amina Amjed The Case for Animal Rights Round 1 1.The use of animal for science, for commercial purposes, for agriculture purposes and for the purposes of sport hunting and trapping should be abolished. 2.We should regard animals just as we regard those who are unable to defend and protect themselves such as children, the disabled and the elderly. 3.The abuse of animals for science, for sports, for agriculture and for any other human entertainment or attainment of needs for humans is fundamentally wrong. 4.We, as humans, must stop treating animals as things and treating them as beings that are capable of feeling pain and suffering. 5.It is true, that the process of change regarding animals and the rights of animals is complicated and requires extensive amount of time and finance to bring about this change but even so it is much needed. 6.The idea of animal rights has reason if not just emotion. 7.We have a direct duty to ensure safety of animals from brutality, as we do to our children and to those humans around us who are incapable of helping themselves. 8.We should not overlook animals because they do not have the characteristics and components of a human being. 9.Using animals for scientific experiments and/or for sports" purposes is brutal and against morality. 10.Pain is pain wherever it occurs. 11.Some would try to justify the use, therefore abuse, of animals by referring to what is known as contractarianism. 12.Contractariansim is the belief, by some, that morality consists of a set of rules that individuals abide to voluntarily just as we do when we agree to a contract. 13.Animals cannot volunteer or provide consent to be or not be a part of a contract therefore they cannot be moral and not considered persons. 14.However, this is true for children as well. Children cannot consent to a contract without the permission and supervision of their parent and/or guardian. Just so, animals should be protected by their guardian(s), if one is present, with the same moral perspective as another human. 15.Theories such as the cruelty-kindness view and utilitarianism have been presented to justify the protection of animals but have not proved to be entirely effective. 16.Each view is flawed is some way to segregate animal and the rights that should be given to them. 17.By taking the inherent value approach, it is evidently clear that each individual is as valuable as the next and not just what that individual can do for others. Your value as an individual would not be regarded by what you can do for me and in return what I can do for you. 18.In that same respect, an animal is considered an individual who should be treated with the same rights as me and you regardless of what they can do for us. 19.We should not use and/or abuse animals just because by doing so, it provides for the good of others. By hurting or undermining one individual we inherently subject ourselves to condone acts of cruelty. 20.The rights view of moral theory rationally explains the domain of human morality. 21.It is true, that animals lack many attributes of a human such as reading, writing, building book cases or baking a cake. 22.However, it is also true that there are some humans who are incapable of doing some of the things that I mentioned above but we do not devalue them as an individual or say that they are not human. 23.As an individual, be it a human or a monkey, we feel things, want things, have certain expectations, we feel pain and excitement, we feel frustration and we also suffer from untimely death. 24.All who have inherent value have it equally regardless of them being human animals or not. 25.The fight for animal rights is analogous to that of equality for women and other minorities. 26.In regards to animals that are used in the field of science, there is proof of devaluing these animals by testing on them routinely as if their value is reducible by their usefulness to others. These animals are treated without any respect and in doing so the rights of animals are violated. 27.In the same sense, farm animals are kept in stressful close confinements or in isolation which causes them pain and suffering. This treatment, rather mistreatment of farm animals is rooted in the view which lacks the acknowledgement of animals as individuals with independent value. Instead they are viewed as resource for "humans". 28.Killing one human for selfish means does not satisfy our moral values than why should that be true of killing or torturing animals. 29.A right, properly comprehended, is a claim that one party may exercise against another. The victim of this claim can potentially be a person, a community, or even all human kind. 30.It should than be understood that rights in general are in every case claims or potential claims within a community or moral agents. 31.Rights can be defended or claimed by those beings that can make moral claims against one another. 32.Human can make these moral choices whereas animals cannot. Animals are not beings that are capable of practicing or responding to moral claims. 33.But rights cannot simply depend on the presence of moral capacity. If that were true then we would have to agree that humans who are brain damaged or comatose lack the ability to respond to or exercise moral claims therefore they have no rights. 34.Non-human mammals have the same fundamental rights as a normal mammal to not be harmed or killed. 35.Those that have a subject of life, like normal mammals and non-human mammals, have inherent value. 36.Animals have the ability to feel pain, satisfaction, need, pleasure, disease and death, just as any human being does. 37.Therefore, I argue, that animals, such as monkeys should be considered persons in the eyes of the law. 38.Rights of animals should be respected. 39.The use of animals in science; commercial animal agriculture; commercial and sport hunting and trapping should be indefinitely terminated.