In the article, “Should Animals Have Legal Rights?” (Upfront, Chrisanne Grisé, 2021) I learned that there are many people who agree and disagree with whether or not animals should have legal rights. There’s the argument that sentient animals should have nonhuman legal rights. There are many other inanimate objects that have legal rights such as corporations, ships, forests, and rivers. Bodily liberty or bodily integrity which are the rights not to be held in a cage or experimented on are highly debated because some see the obvious cruelty that comes with using the animals for these experiments but some argue that animals need to be experimented on because it’s the only way to attain useful medicine for humans. There is a difference between animal rights and animal welfare but both work towards the same goal and can benefit from each other. People that fight for animal rights are not asking for them to be able to vote or have the right to public education but with legal rights, animals have to be treated fairly and not abused.
Personally, I think animals should have legal rights because once they have legal rights they cannot be treated as property or as anything less than a living things. The argument that stands out to me the most is the one where corporations and ships have legal rights but it becomes complicated once animals are thrown into the conversation. Animals that are sentient, meaning they can perceive and feel, need to be protected and not treated as experiments or objects. People have fought for animal rights for a long time and have made plenty of progress but there is always more that can be done.
Do you think animals should have legal rights?
