Animals Rights: The Importance Of Animal Rights

Since the 19th century, Animal rights have long been a subject of great controvercy. Over the years, many animal activist groups such as PETA and the ASPCA, have formed around the world to not only hekp protect animals rights, but spread the word as well. Animal rights is the belief that animals have the right to be free from human use as well as explotation. In todays society, animals are used in a variety of different ways (meat, milk, fur, hunting...ect.)To most animal activists, their core belief is a rejection of scientific research while also acknowledging that animals have feelings of their own.

The idea of animal rights may be new or may even anger some people because throught the world animals are used for a variety of different reasons.

We have since seen many animals including whales and birds who communicate using language and movement. What about when it comes to feelings? Although animals do not have the ability to talk or make decisions, sentience, which is described as the ability to suffer, plays a big role in the animal rights movement. Activists strongly believe that because an animal has the ability to suffer, it is worthy of moral consideration. “the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” (bentham,

The core belief of most people involved in the movement is simple, if an activity causes pain and suffering to another person, it is therefore morally wrong, and since animals are capable of suffering, it is morally wrong to cause them to suffer. Most activists feel that to treat animal suffering different than human suffering is unjust, this is referred to as speciesism. Speciesism, which is treating an animal differently because they are a different species, is often times compared to racism and sexism by activists. People who object to speciesim, have the opinion that just becauase a species is different, they should all be treated with the same moral