English Language ArtsGrades 9-12

Debate Kit: Should All Companion Animals Be Spayed and Neutered?

dogs in a cage at an animal shelter

Free Debate Kit: Exploring the Impacts of Spaying and Neutering Companion Animals

The companion animal–overpopulation crisis and the importance of spaying and neutering are hot topics in classrooms and among the public. Many schools assign debates on current issues to help students improve persuasive speaking and writing, develop research skills, and understand multiple viewpoints on controversial or complex topics. How humans can reduce animal homelessness and suffering is certainly one such topic. This debate kit provides a list of resources that can be shared with students to support their argument that spaying and neutering companion animals should be mandatory to help end the overpopulation crisis and decrease the need to euthanize animals in shelters.

Resolved: Spaying and neutering companion animals is vital to
ending the animal-overpopulation crisis, saving millions of dollars and benefiting animals’ health.

dogs in a cage at an animal shelter

Affirmative Argument

Every year in the U.S., over 6 million lost, abandoned, and unwanted dogs and cats enter animal shelters. Because of a lack of responsible, permanent homes for them, approximately 2 to 3 million of these animals – including many who are healthy, young, and adoptable – must be euthanized.

Spaying and neutering cats and dogs is the most important way humans can save them from overpopulation, suffering, and death. 

Spay/neuter surgeries are a routine, safe, and affordable way to prevent thousands of animals from being born into an already overpopulated world. Statistics demonstrate the impact of spaying and neutering: Just one unaltered female dog and her offspring can produce 67,000 puppies in six years, while one female cat and her offspring can produce a staggering 370,000 kittens in seven years.

Each year, communities spend millions of dollars dealing with the problems that the failure to spay and neuter causes. The expense of rounding up stray animals, along with feeding and housing those who are abandoned, is considerably higher than the one-time cost of a spay or neuter surgery. On top of that, many communities offer low-cost or free spay/neuter clinics. Areas with mandatory spay/neuter laws have reported a significant reduction in the number of animals who are taken to their facilities and subsequently euthanized. This demonstrates that spaying and neutering animals saves lives.

Spaying and neutering benefit animals’ health and behavior, too. For females, spaying eliminates the stress and discomfort that they endure during heat periods, removes the risk of developing uterine cancer, and greatly reduces the risk of developing mammary cancer. For males, neutering prevents testicular cancer, reduces the risk of developing prostate cancer, and makes them far less likely to roam or fight.

Animals who have been sterilized live longer in general and are less likely to contract deadly diseases, such as feline AIDS and feline leukemia, that are spread through bodily fluids. Additionally, sterilization also reduces or eliminates undesirable, aggressive types of behavior such as biting and urine marking, as well as hormone-related moodiness.

When animals aren’t spayed or neutered, many unwanted puppies and kittens are abandoned and left to suffer and struggle to survive on the streets. Or, they may be abused by cruel and neglectful people who aren’t meeting their basic needs, or euthanized in animal shelters.

While euthanizing otherwise adoptable animals is heartbreaking, warehousing them in self-described “no-kill” shelters leaves them to endure an even worse fate. In these facilities, they’re kept in cages for weeks, months, or years on end, and often go insane as a result of loneliness and confinement.

dogs on tethers and cats outside

Spaying and neutering can change this. Cities and counties all over the country are aggressively addressing the animal-overpopulation crisis by passing successful mandatory spay/neuter laws and requiring everyone who chooses not to spay or neuter to pay a large breeder’s fee.

Guardians can do their part by spaying and neutering their animal companions, supporting mandatory spay/neuter legislation, and always adopting animals from shelters. Never buy animals from breeders or stores that continue to contribute to the overpopulation and suffering of cats and dogs.

Become an ‘Expert’

Use these resources to research the impact that spaying and neutering has on animal companions’ health and well-being and to prepare logical arguments in favor of sterilization:

A PETA veterinary surgeon in an operating room, performing a procedure on an anesthetized dog.

Build Your Case

Use the resources below to gather evidence and examples to support your position that animal companions should be either spayed or neutered.

Research Articles, Scholarly Articles, and Investigative Analysis

Statements From Veterinarians and Experts

Examples of Successful Spay/Neuter Ordinances

Additional Information Regarding Spaying and Neutering

Finding Solutions

Use these resources to build a proposal that offers solutions for problems that companion animals currently face and for those that could allegedly arise if spaying and neutering were mandatory:

Puppies piled on top of each other in a metal cage at Henderson County Humane Society

Anticipate Counterarguments and Prepare Rebuttals

Visit the websites of those who oppose mandatory spaying and neutering to see their justifications for allowing more animals to be born when there is already an overpopulation crisis. Investigate what some individuals and industries stand to gain when companion animals aren’t spayed or neutered, and think critically about their motivations. Also, find out who else is negatively affected by mandatory spay/neuter legislation (e.g., animal breeders and pet stores).

Create a list of things that those who oppose spaying and neutering—despite the severe overpopulation crisis and the health benefits of the surgery—typically assert. The resources in this kit can help students respond to those counterarguments.

A brindle cat with an injured ear and swollen eyes looks into the camera

Additional Resources

Websites and Programs

Infographic and Photos

Videos

CAP worker with dog

Have students use the resources in this kit to prepare an affirmative argument that states why spaying and neutering companion animals should be mandatory. The resources will help them to support their position with scientific, ethical, and philosophical reasoning.

Do your students need to conduct an interview as part of their research? PETA staff members are available to students via phone, video, or e-mail to answer questions about our stance on using marine mammals for entertainment. Have students e-mail us directly at [email protected]. If you’d like to contact us on their behalf, please fill out the form below, and we’ll arrange for them to speak with a representative.

Request a Speaker

Thank you for helping your students speak up for animal rights. Happy debating!