Chimpanzee "Personhood" Is Back In Court

sciencehabit writes Chimpanzees are back in court. Judges in New York State heard the first in a series of appeals attempting to grant "legal personhood" to the animals. The case is part of a larger effort by an animal rights group known as the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) to free a variety of creatures—from research chimps to aquarium dolphins—from captivity. If the case is successful, it could grant personhood to chimps throughout the state.

Comments

Chimps have rights, babies don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Something's really fucked up when it's wrong to kill a remorseless murderer or imprison a chimp, but a baby can be coldly killed because they haven't taken a breath.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[lgw]

What does "pro-life" mean to you?

The majority of Americans, 58%, are pro-life if you take that to mean "abortion should be legal in only a few circumstances, or outright illegal" (only 39% support legal abortion in "all" or "most" circumstances). Very few of those 58% are "anti-contraception" as that's a fairly extreme religious view (even most Catholics don't buy it).

Your belief seems to be:
* Some people support X
* Some people who support X support Y
* Therefore, all who support X support Y

Which makes me wonder if you've ever even thought deeply about the issue.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[ihtoit]

here, I'll fuck your head up:

Until it has taken its first breath, a fetus has NO RIGHTS. It isn't even a person in the legal sense. It is an "event". A transient condition on a woman. Legally it is in the same class as a cancer. If a court decides it is to be forcibly removed and reared in a whitewall institute, there is NOTHING the mother can say, nothing ANYBODY can say on the matter, the decision is made and nobody can claim to represent the event's rights because a: it is not human and b: it has no rights.

source: vast legal experience including background in cases similar to the Paccieri baby snatch, where the fetus was taken to order to feed the adoption market.

Re:Chimps have rights, babies don't

[misexistentialist]

The only contraception that really works is the kind out of the user's control and not dependent on education, i.e. either permanent sterilization or semi-permanent implants. The abortion industry is secretive so you don't have a profile of their customers, but there are plenty of college-educated non-believer women getting multiple abortions because they "forget" to use contraception that they got for free from taxpayers. After all the point of the sex drive is to produce babies, the disturbing reality is that abortion is women's preferred form of birth control, the only way you can stop this is with less "choice"

They'll have rights

[msobkow]

They'll have rights as soon as they can hold down jobs to feed themselves.

Re:They'll have rights

[jedidiah]

Plenty of mentally and physically handicapped people hold down jobs of varying levels of sophistication.

On the other hand, if you can't fend for yourself then you should have fewer rights and probably should be treated as a child. Things like mental competence are important as they are a measure of how much of a threat you are to yourself and those around you.

If you need the supervision of a toddler or an infant, you probably shouldn't be treated like an adult.

This is one key feature of non-defective humans. Eventually you can safely let them off their leash.