Updated on October 2, 2026
(LifeSiteNews) – A Democrat judge backed by Planned Parenthood wants to extend to apes the very human rights that she denies to preborn humans, according to the latest in an animal-rights case before the Michigan Supreme Court.
This summer, the state’s highest court rejected a bid by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP) to grant seven chimpanzees at the DeYoung Family Zoo rights of habeas corpus (to challenge imprisonment) over living conditions at the facility. The court’s one-sentence denial stated simply, “we are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this Court.”
The sole dissent came from Justice Jennifer Welch, who wrote that it would be worthwhile to “explore whether the common law understanding of habeas relief should evolve in light of our more advanced understanding of the animal kingdom,” such that “chimpanzees possess a common law right to bodily liberty.”
“This case raises profound questions about bodily autonomy and whether the law should expand to offer protection to other living beings,” she argued. “Because the common law can evolve over time and indeed has evolved with respect to habeas relief, and because our scientific understanding of the animal kingdom is constantly evolving, I believe that we should explore this issue further.”
NRP attorney Jake Davis hailed Welch’s dissent as a “landmark development” for not only his organization but the “broader movement to secure fundamental legal rights for nonhuman animals,” which would “strengthen the legal foundation” of future developments.
On September 29, FrontPage Magazine’s Daniel Greenfield called attention to the case as a particularly glaring example of left-wing double standards and backward morals.
Welch was first elected to the Michigan Supreme Court in 2020, with the endorsement of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, which trusted her to “strike down unconstitutional attacks on our rights and access to health care.” Greenfield notes that during her tenure, she “took part in the court’s suppression of any legislation protecting the rights of unborn children.”
“Justice Welch cited Peter Singer, the godfather of the animal rights movement, who had argued for killing children and the elderly, and had defended having sex with animals,” he writes. “According to Welch, ‘chimpanzees can think, feel, love, grieve, and yearn’ and we should follow Peter Singer’s call to expand our circle of moral concern. Can babies feel and love? Apparently not enough to keep from being murdered in the womb.”
“What her position would be in a pro-crime habeas corpus case of the kind that was filed on behalf of the unborn child of a pregnant woman in prison in Florida might be more interesting since it would bring into conflict the abortion imperative to deny personhood to unborn children with the pro-crime agenda of freeing criminals using any and every possible trick in the book,” Greenfield adds.
The double-standard highlights the fundamental tension between leftist ideology and the foundational premises of America’s conception of justice. The concept of human rights, codified in the U.S. Declaration of Independence’s “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” is rooted in man’s uniqueness as a rational being created in the image of God. While most agree animals should be treated humanely given their capacity to experience suffering, the vast majority of human civilization recognizes them as a subservient range of creatures, with the concept of “rights” reserved exclusively for humans.
Yet most of the modern American left recognizes no human rights when it comes to the willful killing of preborn humans at any point of pregnancy, while far more passionately championing the inviolability of animal life or even plants and nature as the true measures of one’s compassion and “social conscience.”