Should Animals Have the Same Rights as People?

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In one episode of the 1980s absurd British sitcom "The Young Ones," Neil, the hippie of the group, famously quipped "vegetable rights and peace!" comically upping his hippie cred into the stratosphere. Hippies, of course, are presumed to be for rights for all kinds of things: trees, rocks, water, air, and, of course, animals. Not being a hippie myself, I can't really speak to the arguments for granting non-sentient things like trees rights (though there is a rather compelling environmental case to be made for protecting them from what economists call the "externalities" of capitalist industrial production) but it is worth thinking about why animals should be accorded at least some of the rights that we bipedal primates called "humans" enjoy.

To begin with, despite the question as posed, I don't think animals should have the same rights as humans in all cases. Granting the dogs I live with a right to free speech or the right to vote is pointless (insert your own joke here about the election and re-election of George W. Bush). Instead, I'm advocating for something that is much more simple. In the respects that animals are like us -- most notably, in their ability to feel pain, have subjective experiences, and value their own continued existence -- animals should have rights similar to the rights we have. In the broadest terms, this would mean that we'd have to stop eating and wearing them, experimenting on them, and bringing them into existence for our own ends.