Reuters reports today that the Spanish Parliament's Environmental committee has approved legislation to extend the fundamental "right to life and freedom", to our cousins the Great Apes.
"Yes your honor, that's the one! He did it!"
What a giant leap for human consciousness!
From the Reuters article:
Spain's parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.
Certainly there have been cases in the past such the one in Austria last year, where an animal rights group went to court to argue that a human-raised chimpanzee destined to be used for experimentation was close enough to human to be recognized as such and thus entitled to equal protections. In any case, until now, these sorts of efforts have typically been limited to this or that animal specifically, never something this sweeping.
In my mind this is a gargantuan story. While I sincerely doubt that the vast majority of humans on the planet are ready to embrace their Great Ape cousins as equals, this legislation provides some evidence that human consciousness, which once embraced the idea that humans of a certain color were not humans at all, can now conceptualize "self-aware" consciousness in animals other than h. Sapiens.
The article notes that the drive to create this legislation came from the efforts of the Great Apes Project, whose stand is that these creatures "should enjoy the right to life, freedom and not to be tortured." The founders are two philosophers, who started the organization in 1993. Brilliant stuff.
One final note. I might perhaps be considered remiss as a dKos diarist if I didn't note that while Spain passes legislation that extends the rights of life and freedom to species other than human, folks over here in the US such as John Yoo, who helped craft legal defenses for torturing, refuse to answer whether or not our seated President can legally bury people alive.