Human Rights for Apes

[xenologer]

Spanish parliament to extend rights to apes

Spain's parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

Parliament's environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

(snip)

"We have no knowledge of great apes being used in experiments in Spain, but there is currently no law preventing that from happening," Pozas said.

Keeping apes for circuses, television commercials or filming will also be forbidden and breaking the new laws will become an offence under Spain's penal code.

Keeping an estimated 315 apes in Spanish zoos will not be illegal, but supporters of the bill say conditions will need to improve drastically in 70 percent of establishments to comply with the new law.

This is so cool. There's another sort of creature on Earth that can think, that can reason, that can read. They do these things at least as well as human children, if not better. So it's good to see them getting some legal rights somewhere.

Comments

[sammka.livejournal.com]

There's a lot wrong with the world, but only so many of those things are things that the Spanish legislature can really address. The fact that other things are wrong with the world doesn't mean that Spanish legislature needs to wait until everything else is fixed before they can go about doing stuff for apes. It's not like Spanish parliament was thinking "gee we can only pass one law, either we can pass this law that eliminates racism and sexism in our country or we can pass this law about apes, guess we'll go with the apes because they're cuter."

Unlike the Georgia law, as far as I can tell there's no way in which the legal rights of humans, as codified by Spanish law, compares unfavorably with the legal rights of apes. The only things that the law prohibits, as far as I can tell, is keeping apes in captivity for commercial use or medical experimentation, and killing them. I am pretty sure it's illegal in Spain to do that to people of any kind.

And the only thing I was "equating" was the practice of basing moral obligations toward people or animals on morally meaningless distinctions. Because it has been used to justify colonialism, slavery, ownership of women, child abuse, and warehousing/isolation/abuse/extermination of people with disabilities, yeah, I will call people on it, even in cases like apes where the moral stakes may not be as high. It's an argumentative tool that as far as I can tell has only been used for bad.

And for full disclosure, I tend to think animals do have rights, and I'm also a disability rights geek, and many people with disabilities are nonverbal and can't make tools out of tools. I don't think it makes them less deserving of moral consideration. What makes people deserving of moral consideration is something beyond that.