ABSTRACT
The animal rights movement is involved in such areas as animal experimentation, vegetarianism, hunting, zoos, circuses, the keeping of pets, animal habitat and the broader ecology. A right is a moral, legal or social entitlement to protection afforded to the individual in his or her pursuit of good. Central individual rights are the natural rights to life, the respectful treatment of that life and the right to be allowed to fulfil the nature of that life undisturbed. Self-consciousness is an important aspect of Regan’s proposal of ‘subject-of-a-life’. Some pro-abortionists claim that the foetus does not have a right to life because it only has a potential for future self-consciousness. The individual animals that have a right to life, of course, include the prey of the individual animals that are carnivorous. Animals have been domesticated or kept in domestic environments either for work or as companions throughout time.
