Yesterday, on my drive home, I saw this sticker on someone's car. Does this make
any sense? It's not clear to me how spaying and neutering pets "saves" lives. It may prevent unwanted animals from being born, but isn't that different from
saving lives? We wouldn't tell sexually active teens to use contraception in order to save lives, would we? Preventing a life from coming into existence is not a way of saving a life. I don't know what sense of "save" the person who designed this sticker could possibly have in mind.
The only way I could make sense of this is if we think that unborn pets live in some kind of pet-heaven, and spaying and neutering is a way of saving unborn pets from being born into circumstances where they will be unwanted, abandoned, or abused. But that's silly, as is this sticker.
I imagine that the idea is this: unwanted pets end up at the SPCA where they are eventually put down. These killings would never have occurred if those animals had not been born.
ReplyDeleteSo what the sticker means is something like "Prevent Unnecessary Killing." But what it says makes no sense, I agree.