Abolitionism (animal rights)

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Abolitionism or abolitionist veganism is the animal rights based opposition to all animal use by humans. Abolitionism intends to eliminate all forms of animal use by maintaining that all sentient beings, humans or nonhumans, share a basic right not to be treated as properties or objects.^[1][2] Abolitionists emphasize that the production of animal products requires treating animals as property or resources, and that animal products are not necessary for human health in modern societies.^[3][4] Abolitionists believe that everyone who can live vegan is therefore morally obligated to be vegan.^[3][4]

Abolitionists disagree on the strategy that must be used to achieve their goal. While some abolitionists, like Gary L. Francione, professor of law, argue that abolitionists should create awareness about the benefits of veganism through creative and nonviolent education (by also pointing to health and environmental benefits) and inform people that veganism is a moral imperative,^[5] others such as Tom Regan believe that abolitionists should seek to stop animal exploitation in society, and fight for this goal through political advocacy, without using the environmental or health arguments.^[6] Abolitionists such as Steven Best and David Nibert argue, respectively, that embracing alliance politics and militant direct action for change (including civil disobedience, mass confrontation, etc), and transcending capitalism are integral to ending animal exploitation.^[7][8]

Abolitionists generally oppose movements that seek to make animal use more humane or to abolish specific forms of animal use, since they believe this undermines the movement to abolish all forms of animal use.^[1][2] The objective is to secure a moral and legal paradigm shift, whereby animals are no longer regarded as things to be owned and used. The American philosopher Tom Regan writes that abolitionists want empty cages, not bigger ones.^[9] This is contrasted with animal welfare, which seeks incremental reform, and animal protectionism, which seeks to combine the first principles of abolitionism with an incremental approach, but which is regarded by some abolitionists as another form of welfarism or "New Welfarism".^[10]