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Personal Essay: The Case For Animal Rights

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Life is a beautiful sacred concept. When life was first created, an entire world existed, waiting to be discovered and figured out. Life brings forth knowledge and the desire to know all. Knowledge about life itself induces the idea of values. What must a human embody to have value? Some may say that for one to have value they must have a purpose, others may say that for some to have value they must have rights. The controversy over basic human rights and who should be granted them has always existed. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are deemed natural rights. However, someone with a mental condition may not get the liberty that someone who does not have a mental condition and can care for themselves may have. There are clearly …show more content…

There are many times throughout the course of my life where I have lived near someone who abused their pets. The idea of hurting an animal has always astonished me. Yet, there were people who did not flinch as they beat their pets and put them through misery. There was one time I attempted to intervene when a neighbor down the street in my apartment complex was dragging his dog by its collar before throwing it inside the house. All I received was a glare and a threat to mind my own business, but I still occasionally think about the sounds of the dog’s whimper. In his essay The Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan says, “All of our duties regarding animals are indirect duties”. The context that Regan states this is the defense of people who abuse their animals and believe they can, because they do not have direct duties to animals. By believing so, Regan goes on to say that those same people believe animals are objects because they cannot sign a contract giving them rights, and therefore have no value. Regan and I both believe that is wrong because animals are a subject of life and therefore have value. We as individuals must recognize this because of the equal inherent value we all manifest. After we recognize that animals have inherent value, we need to respect their equal rights and treat them with respect as …show more content…

Despite the circumstances, I became extremely enamored with my kitten Sweetie. She was my first kitten and I raised her for years. As time progressed, the feelings my parents felt toward my kitten disintegrated. We were not even going to bring her to Reynoldsburg when we moved. She was meowing in the garage as we grabbed random stuff and quickly jolted to the car. My mom told me that if I could keep her quiet in the car then I could keep her. She slept in my arms and continued to nudge me with her head until I gave her attention. Pets were not welcomed in our apartment complex. We attempted to hide her, but when the owner stopped by and saw her, everything went berserk. I was sleeping when they left in the middle of the night to get rid of her. I was aware that we were not able to keep her, but I was already discussing the matter with my cousin, who offered to keep her. They claimed to have given her to a little girl, which for some reason never struck me as odd. I cried for days and it was not until years later that my dad told me during an argument that they threw her out the window and drove off. To this day, I still continue to be disgusted by the lack of value my parents saw in my little kitten, who at the time felt like my only

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