Spain’s parliament recently passed a nonbinding resolution granting apes legal rights. The New York Times discussed the trend toward granting animals human-like rights at length here and here.
According to columnist Adam Cohen, “[s]trip away the goofier rhetoric of the ape-rights activists, and their claim is straightforward. Great apes are biologically very close to humans; chimps and humans share about 98 percent of their DNA. Apes have complex communication skills and close emotional bonds. They experience loneliness and sorrow. They deserve some respect.” He also argues that giving apes the right to humane treatment will make it “harder to deny that same right to their human cousins.”
The trend toward granting animals “human” rights, which some have extended even to granting plants rights, is dangerous, particularly because it results not in the elevation of animals but in the devaluation of humanity. The devaluation of humanity to an animal level puts all living creatures at risk because animals are not moral beings. Defending human life at all stages, from the embryo to natural death, will be harder if humans are not viewed as exceptional.
In a column in the Weekly Standard, Wesley J. Smith discusses the importance of maintaining not only a distinction among species but the truth of human exceptionalism.
Even absent a theistic view of humanity, that God created people in His image and that humans have intrinsic worth from conception to death, arguments can be made for human exceptionalism (for more, visit Smith’s blog)
- Humans are the only moral, intellectual, and creative beings. These intrinsic characteristics make humans markedly different, despite any common DNA, from animals.
- If human exceptionalism is denied, there is no longer a universal human moral equality. Without the notion that humans are universally equal, there can be no universal human rights.
- Being human is not just about having rights but owing duties and obligations to other creatures, both human and animals. Humans are the only beings that owe duties and rights to others. If granted rights, animals would not owe rights to humans or to other animals. The mere existence of having an obligation toward other creatures makes humans exceptional.
- Only humans are having this discussion, or are capable of having this discussion.
- Being human is what gives people the obligation to treat animals humanely. If being human does not give us this obligation, nothing would. The lion does not treat the gazelle “humanely,” and the zebra doesn’t care if it does or doesn’t, because they are not moral agents.
Granting animals “human” rights devalues humans and creates an equivalency among humans and animals that results in no moral standards, and thus no obligation of humane treatment, rather than more humane treatment of animals. Smith says that “[t]hese and other concerted efforts to knock ourselves off the pedestal of exceptionalism are terribly misguided. The way we act is based substantially on what kind of being we perceive ourselves to be. Thus, if we truly want to make this a better and more humane world, the answer is not to think of ourselves as inhabiting the same moral plane as animals–none of which can even begin to comprehend rights. Rather, it is to embrace the unique importance of being human.”
