Animal Rights
The Labor Day pigeon shoot in Hegins, Pa. attracted 11,000 spectators and several hundred protesters, who risked their own freedom to secure it for a few dozen pigeons, though bullets felled thousands more that the activists couldn’t reach. (“Animal Activists Arrested at Pigeon Shoot,” Part A, Sept. 3).
The animal-rights philosophy is simple; it extends to other-than-human animals the compassion and respect that most people grant one another. When a pigeon raised in a box is, amid noise and confusion, suddenly released and allowed, perhaps for the first time to fly, how can it be considered anything but coldblooded murder to blast that bird away?
CHRISTINE JACKSON, Senior Staff Writer, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Washington
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