Mary Anne Warren Animal Rights Analysis

Animals carry an important role throughout human lives every day. Humans look to animals for numerous things such as: pets, a means of production, food, entertainment, experimental means, etc. Many animals carry human like traits, which raises many arguments and different positions on the subject of whether animals deserve rights while others feel that animals are simply animals, but may have certain interests that humans are obligated to respect. The issue is that many people confuse the terms animal rights and animal welfare when there is a fundamental difference between the two that revolves around the rights that humans have to use animals. There are many animal rights organizations including but not limited to: Best Friend’s Animal Society, The Humane Society of the United States, and the largest animal’s rights movement, People for Ethical

She claims that animals have some moral rights, but are significantly less demanding than human rights (Vaughn 563.) In Mary Anne Warren’s paper “Difficulties with the Strong Rights position,” Warren argues for a weak animal rights position. Warren makes the statement that while animals do have basic moral rights and like humans have a right to life, but their right to life is not as significant as a human’s right to life. In Warren’s paper she states, “Human lives, one might say, have greater intrinsic value, because they are worth more to their possessors.” This means that humans can obtain hopes, have plans, and have a purpose. Where animals lack this ability to look forward in the future and have hope for things (Vaughn 563.) The weak animal rights view is just that. It is weak. Warren still holds all of the beliefs of Regan’s strong animal rights position, just to a lower degree. For example, the killing of animals is still wrong to Warren, but may be permissible if only significantly necessary and done in the most humane way