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Dignity of human life comes before animals
By Michael Coren
May 19, 2010
Michael Coren
In the middle of May euthanasia became the lead story on Ontario radio and television and even made the front pages of the national press. About time too. Nor was it merely a media sensation. People actually took time off work to demonstrate outside the building where the “mercy killing” was taking place. They chanted, sang, nailed crosses into the ground to represent the victims and gave interviews in which they cried with anger and emotion.
No, no, don’t be silly. It wasn’t because handicapped children, old people or the terminally ill were being killed. That would hardly cause a ripple within the numbed populace and Canadian journalism. No, not humans but 350 cats and dogs were being put down because of a major outbreak of ringworm in an animal shelter just north of Toronto. Such was the outcry that local politicians became involved, the Premier spoke out and a campaign was launched to “save the innocent.”
Quite so. The innocent. Yet just a few minutes away from where all this happened were groups of mentally ill people who sleep rough in freezing conditions, beg for food and are regularly insulted and spat upon. So please spare me the argument that care for animals and care for humans are part of some inevitable continuum. They aren’t. We have managed to escalate our empathy for animals to a hysterical, pagan level at the direct expense of people.
No, no, don’t be silly. It wasn’t because handicapped children, old people or the terminally ill were being killed. That would hardly cause a ripple within the numbed populace and Canadian journalism. No, not humans but 350 cats and dogs were being put down because of a major outbreak of ringworm in an animal shelter just north of Toronto. Such was the outcry that local politicians became involved, the Premier spoke out and a campaign was launched to “save the innocent.”
Quite so. The innocent. Yet just a few minutes away from where all this happened were groups of mentally ill people who sleep rough in freezing conditions, beg for food and are regularly insulted and spat upon. So please spare me the argument that care for animals and care for humans are part of some inevitable continuum. They aren’t. We have managed to escalate our empathy for animals to a hysterical, pagan level at the direct expense of people.
There is something fundamentally contrary to Christian virtue in all this because, as creatures made in the image of God, we ought to feel a greater spark of love and understanding for our brothers and sisters than we do for animals. It has little to do with vulnerability because even the suffering of babies, especially if they are black and brown, is frequently ignored or even justified by people who routinely weep for rabbits. Christ died for our sins, not for our sentimentality.
We see this echoed in international policy as well as daily reaction. Peru, for example, has one of the largest fish catches in the world but cannot properly feed its population. Half of its fish stock is exported to North America each year to be used as cat food. Try proposing the death of a million cats so as to save a million Peruvians and see what happens!
To ignore the suffering of an animal is inhuman, to obsess about the suffering of an animal is anti-human. But this is what we do, even to the point of creating an entire ideology around the hideous misnomer of animal rights. The notion of rights is a human construct and human rights can apply, obviously, only to humans. Because we are distinct and superior we have to act in a compassionate way towards animals but this demands use rather than abuse, not a fantasy inclusion of animals into human society.
Babies matter more than kittens, children of the poor matter more than pets of the rich, humans are more deserving of life and liberty than sharks and ants. By the way, it’s deeply significant that cuddly critters induce more sympathy than ugly ones. Cuteness appears to be the measure of an animal’s right to life. Or perhaps how intelligent they are — dolphins and dogs being kings of the cause. Yet if this is the measure, humans being the most intelligent of creatures must then deserve the most respect.
As the most important and most inalienable right is that to life we cannot avoid the jarring difference between our over-reaction to a civilized treatment of animals and our indifference to the killing of the unborn. Simply, abortion mills are worse than puppy mills. To expose this neurotic, perverse juxtaposition, however, is to invite mockery and anger. “Not that old issue again, nobody cares.” Then another phone-in show about how animals do less harm to the planet than men and women.
We are a product of God’s plan, as are animals. To reverse the order of His intentions and His creation is not only a denial of Him but another example of selfish, pampered, western foolishness. Disney instead of decency. Christ fed the multitude; it was they who had rights and who were hungry. The fish didn’t really matter that much.
Michael Coren