Animal Rights Aren’t Just for Animals

My favorite new tactic when speaking with people about animal rights, is to move the conversation away from the animals, and focus instead on the advancement of people.

I’m not referring to technological or economic advancement, but to our progress with regard to decency and compassion. I’m not at all religious, and I don’t even give much thought or energy to God. Lucky for me, whether or not there is a God is completely irrelevant.

Why?

Because we need to develop compassion and act from compassion–not to please God–but to demonstrate that we understand that . . . we are all connected.

The idea of separation makes it very easy to harm another. After all, it is the other you are harming. But if God told you (and–oops!–he has) that we are all one, and if you truly grasped that concept, you’d have no choice but to accept that you are the other, or that there is no other.

Let’s deconstruct this with a concrete example:

• I am, say, Kathleen O’Hagan, Ph.D. of Midwestern University of Chicago, and I applied for and received a $200,000 government grant to get to the bottom of an issue that is vital to the survival of humans: whether moderate exercise is good for pregnant women and their babies.
• To do this, I will impregnate 60 rabbits, implant them with probes and catheters, and force them to run on motorized treadmills.
• When I deem they’ve had "moderate exercise," I’ll kill the rabbits, slice them open, and examine their fetuses.

Okay, now I’m me, again: Mary Martin, Ph.D., of Jupiter, Florida, and I’ve read more than I ever wanted to know about unnecessary, expensive, cruel, and often completely irrelevant experiments involving animals, and I’m raving mad at Dr. O’Hagan.

I could write to her, blasting her for her cruelty, and for wasting MY tax dollars on said cruelty, thereby involving me in her barbaric behavior, or . . .

I could write to her and remind her that she is the rabbit, and she is the fetus, and every time she harms another sentient being, she harms all of us, including herself. Call it karma, if you’d like, but no good can come from cruel acts. Ever.

Now, because I’m her, I’m me, and I’m the rabbits, it behooves me to handle the situation as compassionately and diplomatically as possible. Uplifting one uplifts the collective, and each kind word, particularly when its intention is persuasion, lifts us all.

Maybe you’ve got some kind words for Dr. O’Hagan.

Kathleen O’Hagan, Ph.D.
Department of Physiology
Midwestern University
555 31st St.
Downers Grove, IL 60515
630-515-6966
kohaga@midwestern.edu