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Push to Grant Animal Rights in Congress

Extremists Find Friends in Obama Administration

Congress is considering a ban on “invasive research” on chimpanzees and a few other intelligent primates in a move that represents the first step toward a ban on all experiments using animals. According to Discovery Institute Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, this is just the tip of the iceberg as animal rights extremists look forward to the confirmation of law professor Cass Sunstein as the White House’s “regulations czar.” The reason: Sunstein explicitly advocates animals’ being granted legal standing.

“Of all the ubiquitous advocacy thrusts by animal rights advocates, obtaining legal standing for animals would be the most damaging—which makes Sunstein’s appointment to the overseer of federal regulations so worrisome,” Smith said.

“Animal standing would both undermine the status of animals as property and elevate them with the force of law toward legal personhood,” added Smith. “On an existential level, the perceived exceptional importance of human life would suffer a staggering body blow by erasing one of the clear legal boundaries that distinguishes people from animals.”

For more read Smith’s Weekly Standard piece So Three Cows Walk Into Court . . . .

Discovery Institute

Discovery Institute promotes thoughtful analysis and effective action on local, regional, national and international issues. The Institute is home to an inter-disciplinary community of scholars and policy advocates dedicated to the reinvigoration of traditional Western principles and institutions and the worldview from which they issued.