You’ve heard of “pillow dogs.” Try “pillow children.”

In the following excerpt from his recent New York Times op-ed piece, Peter Singer, infamous professor of bioethics at Princeton University, shows his cards regarding his belief that human beings are not intrinsically more valuable than animals. He argues the worth of a being should be measured not by what they are, but by what they can do:

“Here’s where things get philosophically interesting. We are always ready to find dignity in human beings, including those whose mental age will never exceed that of an infant, but we don’t attribute dignity to dogs or cats, though they clearly operate at a more advanced mental level than human infants. Just making that comparison provokes outrage in some quarters. But why should dignity always go together with species membership, no matter what the characteristics of the individual may be?”