CUT DEM BALLS OFF MOTHERFUCKERS!

While I agree that the practice itself is rather barbaric...

It's a necessary evil. We're not talking about wild animals with populations kept in check by predation.

We're talking about domesticated animals- pets and livestock- that no longer have a niche in the environment to fit into. Species that have negligible predators in the areas where they live.

Even with spaying and neutering as common as they are, pets still breed a lot quicker than the demand for new pets demands; best case scenario, we're looking at a lot more animals being put down in kill shelters- and that's assuming we have the capacity to handle putting down that many animals. Seriously- we have a LOT of pets and livestock that are spayed and neutered; left unchecked, just a couple generations would result in a huge population boom. In worse scenarios, we're looking at packs of semi-feral dogs in our cities scavenging off of whatever they can find- and unused to human contact to boot. Of course unvaccinated as well, and spreading disease to our pets, livestock, and even ourselves. In these scenarios, putting them down in kill shelters would be insufficient- we'd be looking at having to kill them in large numbers, with far less humane methods.

It really is a disgusting thing to do to anyone; practices such as circumcision (particularly female, though male as well) are attacked as being particular sick violations of rights. Spaying and neutering both go well beyond circumcision, and it's a practice that I loathe... but it's an unfortunate necessity. Their population will be kept under control one way or another- We can do this by limiting their birth rate via spaying and neutering, we can do this by allowing them to breed uncontrollably and acting as a surrogate predator by killing the excess population, or we can allow starvation and human self-defense to do so. Of the three, I tend to favor spaying/neutering.

The most sobering part of growing up, in my opinion, is learning that black and white decisions are extremely rare; in almost all cases we have to compromise on our morals somewhere.