The Six Principles of The Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org
Abolitionist Vegan Society
The Abolitionist Vegan Society is based on The
Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights by Gary L. Francione.
The Six Principles of The Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights:
- The abolitionist approach to animal rights maintains that all sentient
beings, humans or nonhumans, have one right: the basic right not to be
treated as the property of others.
- Our recognition of the one basic right means that we must abolish, and
not merely regulate, institutionalized animal exploitation—because it
assumes that animals are the property of humans.
- Just as we reject racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism, we reject
speciesism. The species of a sentient being is no more reason to deny the
protection of this basic right than race, sex, age, or sexual orientation is
a reason to deny membership in the human moral community to other humans.
- We recognize that we will not abolish overnight the property status of
nonhumans, but we will support only those campaigns and positions that
explicitly promote the abolitionist agenda. We will not support positions
that call for supposedly “improved” regulation of animal exploitation. We
reject any campaign that promotes sexism, racism, heterosexism or other
forms of discrimination against humans.
- We recognize that the most important step that any of us can take toward
abolition is to adopt the vegan lifestyle and to educate others about
veganism. Veganism is the principle of abolition applied to one’s personal
life and the consumption of any meat, fowl, fish, or dairy product, or the
wearing or use of animal products, is inconsistent with the abolitionist
- We recognize the principle of nonviolence as the guiding principle of the
animal rights movement. Violence is the problem; it is not any part of the
A Note: In order to embrace the abolitionist approach to animal rights, it
is not necessary to be spiritual or religious, or to be an atheist. You can
be a spiritual or religious person, or you can be an atheist, or anything in
between. It does not matter.
What does matter is:
- that you have moral concern about animals and that you want to do
right by animals. That moral concern/moral impulse can come from any source,
spiritual or non-spiritual; and
- that you regard as valid the logical arguments that our moral concern
should not be limited to some nonhumans but should extend to all sentient
beings and that we should abolish, and not regulate, animal exploitation.
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