Vivisection of Criminals (1894)

AUTHOR: Lovell, Mary Frances

KEYWORDS: animal welfare, anti-vivisection

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

The article opposes bills introduced in Ohio proposing to legalize the vivisection of criminals, linking animal welfare to human ethics.

Lovell reminds her readers that opponents of vivisection have always argued that permitting animal vivisection will ultimately pave the way for human vivisection. This scenario has now become palpably real: “Two bills have been introduced into the legislature of Ohio asking for human subjects. One provides that condemned criminals be given over to physiologists for research in the interests of science, the other provides that the criminal shall have the choice between this manner of ending and electrocution” (5). Vivisectionists, by their own admission (and Lovell quotes several instances) are not concerned with the feelings and suffering of the animals they vivisect. “Neither,” she continues, “will the feelings of criminals occupy the time and thought of those who vivisect them; and, though we who oppose cruelty because it is wrong per se, do not admit that it is really any more wrong to torture the body of a guilty man than it is to torture the body of an innocent brute, yet this very condemnation of cruelty for its very own sake, involves active opposition to all attempts at legislation to permit it” (5). Lovell insists that “[e]very W. C. T. U. meeting and convention should notice this iniquitous attempt, and by resolution condemn it and all vivisection.” She concludes: “All this should open our eyes more and more to the need of the promulgation of the sweet teaching of mercy to all creatures, and of a thorough understanding of the arguments against all vivisection” (5).