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Argument: Humans must respect animal rights even if animals can't reciprocate
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]Supporting quotations
Tom Regan, an American animal right philosopher. "10 Reasons AGAINST Animal Rights and Their Replies". Retrieved May 6th, 2008 - "6. Animals don't respect our rights. Therefore, humans have no obligation to respect their rights either.
Reply: There are many situations in which an individual who has rights is unable to respect the rights of others. This is true of infants, young children, and mentally enfeebled and deranged human beings. In their case we do not say that it is perfectly all right to treat them disrespectfully because they do not honor our rights. On the contrary, we recognize that we have a duty to treat them with respect, even though they have no duty to treat us in the same way.
What is true of cases involving infants, children, and the other humans mentioned, is no less true of cases involving other animals, Granted, these animals do not have a duty to respect our rights. But this does not erase or diminsh our obligation to respect theirs."