Animal Rights?

[Ozme52]

But I'm asking a different question. I'm asking if it was ethical, or politically justifiable, to make it illegal in the first place.

Was the Emancipation Proclamation ethical or politically justifiable? Even though before that, slaves were property? Of course.

All laws, including those protecting our own human rights, are ethical by definition.

LIKE "rights", "ethics" is also a human construct. Sometimes we're wrong... or perhaps it would be better to say sometimes our sense of right and wrong changes.