Bill of Animal Rights

[Brandon Becker]

Bill of Animal Rights

Following is Responsible Policies for Animals' (RPA's) proposed text of a Bill of Animal Rights. In the long process of promoting unalienable equal individual autonomy, ecology, and dignity rights of all animals, RPA welcomes suggestions for revisions so the final ratified Bill will have the same capacity to protect and empower as the Bill of Rights and subsequent rights Amendments and laws.

All nonhuman animals shall henceforth be considered persons under the Constitution and laws of the United States of America and shall possess the following unalienable equal individual autonomy, ecology, and dignity rights. A person's being nonhuman shall not constitute a Constitutional or legal basis for unequal treatment.

Corporations, institutions, industries, and other nonliving entities shall henceforth not be considered persons under the Constitution and laws and shall possess no rights comparable to those of persons.

No human being, or government or other human-created object or entity, shall abridge the autonomy right of any nonhuman animal not to be captured, sexually or reproductively molested ("bred"), owned, used, exploited, controlled, or manipulated, genetically or otherwise, by any human being or human-created object, device, or entity.

No human being or government, or other human-created object, device, or entity, shall abridge the right of any nonhuman animal not to be injured, killed, or captured without due process of law as applicable to human beings. Self-defense may only constitute an exception to this provision in circumstances like those involving only humans.

No human being, or government or other human-created object, device, or entity, shall abridge the right of any nonhuman animal to move about freely, seek food, water, or shelter, communicate, play, congregate, associate, migrate, court, reproduce, raise offspring, and otherwise behave as natural to the animal's species unmodified by humans as through "breeding" or genetic manipulation.

Any human being shall have standing to sue for enforcement of these rights on behalf of any nonhuman animal(s) and to redress grievances on behalf of any nonhuman animal(s) through the same institutions and procedures as established for human beings.

 

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Link: http://www.rpaforall.org/billofanimalrights.html