About Animal Rights

Animal rights are the civil and moral rights that should be granted to nonhuman animals. Nonhuman animals should be given legal and moral rights in order to protect not just their nuanced cognitive identity, but also their mental and social lives, which combine to allow them to feel physical and psychological pain or enjoyment. Animals, like humans, should have a good life. The fact that animals are inferior to humans should not be used to justify a relationship that only deprives animals of their essential needs. As a result, humans should be obligated to care about animals in the same way that they learn from them. This paper, therefore, discusses the animal rights in the perspective of ideologies highlighted by Tom Regan in his book “The Case for Animal Rights.”Animal rights fundamentally concern the deprivation of basic needs and exposure to suffering. In order to understand how human should be obliged to fight for the animals’ rights, it is imperative to take into account key areas of animals’ right violation. This is observed in three main distinct aspects comprising the use of animals to conduct science research and experiments, commercial animal agriculture and commercial hunting and trapping sports. According to Regan (670), it is not only wrong in details of how the animals are treated from case to case but the entire system is to blame. Tom Regan hence notes that “… what is wrong isn’t the pain, isn’t the suffering, isn’t the deprivation.” What is wrong, therefore, is the whole system massively allowing the man to view and perceive animals as their resources. The perception of animals erodes their right since man has no concern for the animals’ emotions, pain, and even death.Correspondingly, the idea of animal rights has rationale contrary to human view and perception. It is high time that human beings understood the moral and legal status that animals like human have rights. Animals need space and should not be confined and deprived of their fellow companions. However, giving space to the animals and allowing them out of confined zones do not right the wrongs that human does to the animals. Regan (671) puts it that “But a little straw, more space, and a few companions won’t eliminate-won’t even touch-the basic wrong that attaches to our viewing and treating these animals as our resources.” Fortunately, in understanding and conceptualizing ideas presented by Regan in the Case for Animal Rights, recommended interventions that foster humane responses to animals include three main suggestions. First, man should totally abolish the use of animals in science where they are used for tests forgetting that that get hurt emotionally and physically. Second, human should dissolve commercial agriculture which only rare the animals to be killed or used to benefit man in one way or another. Thirdly, movements should endeavor to cease sporting activities such as animal hunting and trapping which in one hand entertains man and on the other hand hurts the animals.ConclusionConcisely, animals have a legal and moral status that should be respected and not be violated by the human. According to ideas presented by Regan, animal rights are violated in the perception that they belong to man as resources hence can be used to satisfy only their needs regardless of the consequences. Above all, it is with great interest that the whole system took responsibility in order to adopt changes that would work to ensure that animal rights are respected in equal measure to humans.Work CitedRegan, Tom. “The Case for Animal Rights.” 1985. The Norton Reader:An Anthology of Nonfiction.Ed.Melissa A. Goldthwaite et al.14th ed. New York:Norton, 2016, 670-80. Print.