Girl throws puppies in river (WARNING: Video of animal cruelty)

[Bricker]

@Fish_Cheer

@LadyJane84

animals don’t have an inherent right to life

Pray tell, why not?

I’m often accused of turning every debate into a legal one. In a concurrent thread, defending this tendency, I said:

@Bricker

In my view, it’s more often the case that an issue has both a legal aspect and a non-legal policy aspect. And in those cases, I tend to focus on the legal - obviously.

Not wrong, but perhaps myopic.

But the other side of the coin is that recourse to the law gives finality of an answer. We may bicker about what the policy SHOULD be; we can much more often point definitively to what the law IS. So I gravitate in that direction because it’s a debate ender. You’ll never convince me that abortion is not a grave moral wrong. I’ll never convince you it’s not a matter of a woman’s right to choose.

But we both must acknowledge that it’s a right of constitutional dimension.

And this statement reminds me of why I do this.

I could say, “Animals don’t have an inherent right to life because it’s silly to say they do!”

But of course the response is, “Who says it’s silly?”

I’m sure you can generate any number of equally unpersuasive claims and rejoinders. Without any agreement between sides on the source, nature, and quality of “rights,” it seems well-nigh impossible to make a definitive statement on whether animals do, or do not, have an inherent right to life.

But – if we define “right,” as something for which society is prepared to provide a remedy at law for the deprivation of, then, by George, then we can easily settle the issue. Someone may claim there’s right to life for animals, and my response can be, “OK. CLaim it. Pick it off the tree where you believe it grows. Because if the claimed ‘right,’ is not one that society is prepared to recognize with a remedy at law, then it doesn’t exist.”