The Ethics of Peta and The Death Penalty - Essay Example

The Ethics of PETA and the Death Penalty Capital punishment, more often known as the death penalty or execution (beheading, hanging or submitting tothe electric chair) is the taking away of human life due to a capital crime committed following a judicial proceeding. Capital crimes include premeditated murders and more recently the death penalty is awarded for kidnapping in some countries as well.While the death penalty is eminent the world over, there are many groups of people who consider it an unethical practice.

Capital punishment has been banned in several countries following the notion that the life that God has given to humans cannot be taken away by others humans - man killing man is considered murder and doing so in the name of justice is just as bad. Another school of thought presents the fact that an individual who has performed such a heinous crime as murder has no right to live and will be a threat to other individuals if allowed to live. Christianity condemns the death penalty; Judaism approves it and Islam holds it permissible with giving rights to the victim's family to pardon.

Human life executions are prevalent mostly following judicial proceedings unless they are extra judicial ones most established in countries of no or uncontrollable law. However, talk on the death penalty pertaining to human life overshadows equally important issues at times. Animals, like human beings have as much a right to live on Mother Earth as their more intelligent counterparts.PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It was founded in 1980 and came to public attention in 1981.

PETA is the world's largest animal rights association consisting of more than 2.0 million members. It not only focuses on animal benefits and security issues but also rejects all forms of sufferings of animals. PETA works in the course of public learning, cruelty investigations, investigation, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity participation, and protest campaigns.If we focus our attentions towards the comparison of the ethics of PETA and the general ethics of the death penalty, we will probably see that killing humans is more or less the same as killing animals.

The death penalty of humans however is considered more serious as it is an attempt to remove evil from society which some people consider is God's work and not ours. PETA focuses on saving animals from being killed in order to provide clothes, food, entertainment or sacrifice. This focus comes from the thought that like humans, animals too have "interests that cannot be sacrificed or traded to benefit others." The two groups working for the ethics of the death penalty and animals' right to live are both paradoxical and in favor of each other.

While both these forces are working to abolish the death penalty for humans and animals respectively, they have different agendas owing to the nature of the party that they are working for.The judicial death penalty for human beings is eminent only following a dreadful crime performed by an individual while killing animals is almost always considered extrajudicial as animals are considered to kill only for food. Whatever the thought behind this argument maybe, the end result is the extermination of a life which a divine being has provided to us.

References:www.peta.orghttp://www.amnestyusa.org/death-penalty/page.doid=1011005http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/thoughts.html