The New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, is weighing whether a 50-something-year-old elephant in the Bronx Zoo has human rights — a decision that could lead to nonhuman animals winning rights.
Former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., quips the next move for the blue state of New York — which has already seen New York City give voting rights to noncitizens — may be a move to grant animals voting rights.
"Where all this will end up remains a mystery, but considering the 'progress' attained thus far by animal rights organizations led by NhRP [Nonhuman Rights Project], and with the obvious willingness (if not preference) by the Biden administration to defer many policy decisions to international forums (such as the WHO), there is cause for real concern," Barr wrote in an op-ed Monday.
"One of the criteria the NhRP cites in its case supporting human rights for its 'client,' Happy the elephant, is that she 'passed' a 'self-awareness' test by 'repeatedly touching a white "X" on her forehead in a mirror.'
"In the minds of these animal rights extremists, it would easily follow that the next step would be to declare Happy the elephant capable of placing an 'X' on a voting machine touch screen."
Barr's op-ed details the activists' push for human rights for animals, including past New York state lawsuits for a quartet of chimpanzees.
"It is easy to dismiss the legal theory that nonhuman animals should be recognized as having human legal rights," Barr wrote. "The consequences of permitting such a principle to advance and take hold even to a limited extent in our judicial system, however, are profound.
"The Maryland-based, animal-rights nonprofit The Humane League, for example, lists the following among the animal 'rights' it hopes one day to be legally recognized: the right not to be used for human food, the right not to be hunted by humans and the right not to be bred by humans."
An activist court decision in favor of Happy the elephant might ultimately end animal research.
"As with many liberal ideas that take hold in our country, they come to us from our erstwhile parent, the United Kingdom, and animal rights legislation would be no exception," Barr wrote. "An 'Animal Welfare (Sentience)' bill recently passed in the British Parliament. The legislation covers not only farm animals and other vertebrae as 'sentient' beings possessing rights, but also crabs, lobsters, prawns, and octopuses.
"It also would establish the 'Animal Sentience Committee' — a bureaucracy charged with enforcing the new-found rights; a familiar and time-honored process here in the United States as well."
Barr, an Atlanta-based lawyer, noted animal cruelty laws are already in place in the United States, along with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), despite progressive pushes to grant human rights to animals as supported by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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