Should Animals Have the Same Rights as People?

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Originally published in Santa Clara Magazine Online Edition. Downloaded by Opposing Views on November 6th, 2008.

If one brackets theological considerations and adopts a secular, strictly utilitarian view, then one could still claim that animals have, if not rights, at least value—such that animals have a moral standing in human discourse. One could claim that animals (and even plants) as species serve human flourishing and, therefore, ought to be preserved. They have actual ‘market value’ now for the work they do, for the food that they furnish, the drugs that they provide, the enjoyment that they afford human beings, etc. In all these ways they benefit human beings, only who are moral ends in themselves. Animals also have potential value for the relief or satisfaction of not yet existing human needs and wants. Therefore, it is a moral wrong to present and future generations of humans to drive into extinction whole species of animals. This falls under the heading of generational justice—doing no harm to existing or future human beings. This view does not claim that animals have rights; it only holds that human beings have rights which can be infringed by other human beings as a result of the consequences of human decisions and actions.

If, on the other hand, one introduces Christian theological considerations into the question of animal rights, then new possibilities and new difficulties arise. In his seminal study of Catholic participation in the American experiment "We Hold these Truths," John Courtney Murray, S.J. drew a sharp distinction between the conception of rights as proposed by the American Revolution and that of the French: Natural law vs. contract law. The Declaration of Independence called our most basic rights God-given and therefore "inalienable." Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are basic human rights that precede the existence of the state, for a state can only be edified by human persons who by their actions give legitimacy to government, not vice versa. The opposite view would hold that the state determines what is true and just; the state sets the measure of truth and justice, bestowing rights upon some citizens and depriving other citizens of rights according to the interests of the state. Catholic social thought has always opted for the former stance, called it Natural Law, and based it on the theological insight that human persons are created in imago Dei, in the image of God, who thereby imbues human persons with inalienable worth and dignity. Such inherent worth and value means, among other things, that human persons are always ends in themselves and can never be used as merely means to another person’s end (thus, for example, the absolute priority of labor over capital in Catholic social doctrine). A Catholic consideration of animal rights would have to return to the same source that founds a Natural Law conception of human rights in order to consider whether animals, by their very being, enjoy inalienable rights.