Spain approves 'human rights' for apes

Great apes should have the right to life and freedom, according to a resolution passed in the Spanish parliament, in what could become landmark legislation to enshrine human rights for chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and bonobos.

The environmental committee in the Spanish parliament has approved resolutions urging the country to comply with the Great Apes Project, founded in 1993, which argues that "non-human hominids" should enjoy the right to life, freedom and not to be tortured.

Please tell me I didn't read this. Please tell me that Spain, who recently liberalized their abortion rights (except, of course, the baby's rights) to kill unborn human babies, is actually going to put an ape on the same level as humans, and give them rights that are denied to HUMAN babies...

’m not necessarily against this, but it rings kind of hollow when they won’t be releasing Apes from the 70 or so zoos in Spain. Kind of goes against the whole “freedom” thing. And since when do humans have the power to grant “life.” Isn’t that really a function of nature and the universe?

In the U.S., currently the left cares more about “mother earth” than they do about human suffering. Thus their opposition to more oil drilling and the exploitation of oil shale.

But in Spain, the left has gone one step further. The Spanish parliament is about to extended human rights to great apes.

What is somewhat humorous, is that the same leftist government wasn’t too concerned with the “human rights” of Iraqis when it ran like scared little girls from Iraq. Once again, the left cares more about everything else than they do about you.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to see the great Apes wiped out. Protect their habitat, ban the use of their body parts for tribal medicines, but give them human rights?

I have two thoughts on this. The first is that while I’m all for measures to prevent torture of any kind–anyone who finds joy in torture where the pain and suffering of some other creature is the only end is deeply disturbed and should be dealt with (though I’ll admit I’m not prepared to answer how)–I fear the result of this measure will do less to increase the value of apes and do more to devalue human life.

Second, I’ve held that the theory of evolution ought to have an impact on our ethics. I’m setting aside here whether that impact will be for the positive or negative. I’m claiming only that it ought to influence the way we do our ethics. When I’ve mentioned this to colleagues, I’ve been resoundly rebuffed time after time. “Evolution says nothing about how we ought to behave” is the claim. I strongly disagree. This move tends to support the position that, like it or not, belief in evolution does in fact impact the way we think about the ethics of ourselves and other biological life forms.