My english class at SLA has just started a project that requires us to choose a topic of importance to us and blog about it. Everyone is allowed to chose their own topic  but some people are doing the same ones. Our teacher will pick one of the topics from a student in my class and we will have to debate either for or against it. We weren’t necessarily asked to choose something controversial but a controversial topic allows for a better debate. 

I have chosen the involvement of the Pro-Choice Movement in politics, mainly this upcoming election. The Pro-Choice Movement is the movement that’s goal is to give women their rights and legalize things like contraception and abortion. This topic is very controversial and is one of the main platforms some politicians run their campaigns on. For the most part Republicans are against it and for the most part, Democrats are for it. If you want to put political differences aside, the two groups can be split up by people that are against abortion and birth control, “pro-life supporters,” and people that support the issue, “pro-choice supporters.” 

In ancient times abortion was just considered a form of family planning and population control. In today’s world, the main deterrent from abortion and contraception is religion. Part of President Obama’s healthcare overhaul in 2009 was that employers provide free birth control coverage. "Every woman should be in control of the decisions that affect her own health," said the president. Recently he announced that religious groups were exempt from that law. Under the new plan, religious institutions are not required to provide birth control to their employees but the institution’s insurance company still has to offer coverage without raising the premium. 

For those who argue against abortion and contraception, it is usually a question of ethics and morals. The main Pro-Life argument is that an unborn fetus is a living being and therefor should not be terminated under any circumstances. For the most part  the politicians arguing for the Pro-Life movement are men and there are very little women advocating against contraception and abortion.

• http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=34174

• http://saigonecho.com/eng/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=938:testimony-of-rev-john-tran-cong-nghi-on-international-religious-freedom&catid=57:featurednews&Itemid=119
• http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,,VAT,,4f55c6bc11,0.html
  

     My topic for the "You and the World” project is Genetic Testing: A New Improvement In Our Lives Or A New Era of Social Injustice. I specially chose this topic because I am fascinated by my own identity based on my DNA. To first know myself is an essential step to interact and associate with other people based on the knowledge of my personality, behavior, and etc. 

      Imagine you could one day look at your genome straight from your tablet. This scenario was thought to be an inconceivable task decades ago. But, as the Human Genome project took an remarkable achievement in humanity, sequencing genomes is possible. But, it would took $350,000 and an extensive time to sequence one genome. But, everything was starting to change as new technology made sequencing genomes faster and less costly (less than $500). It may gave rise to an era about self-acknowledgement or, is it? 

      Biotech companies, like DeCode me, and 23andMe placed a feature called the odds calculator to predict the possibility for that individual to contact certain diseases. To avoid these risks, people will adjust their lifestyle, prevent, and ask for treatment before the illness strikes. It means that people’s health rates and life-expectancy of the world will increase. However, sometimes people could not distinguish from possibilities that have countless variations from facts. Therefore, resulting the individual to be overwhelmed by results that are tested by only a fraction of their total genome.   

    There is a Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) that guarantee security and privacy for all people’s genome results, but who will stop the economy from choosing the best people into their companies, colleges, athletes, and etc? Even with the protection of the GINA, will it prevent any and all future possible invasions of privacy toward genetic information as this technology become more and more popular and efficient? Will we proceed into the society featured in “Gattaca”?

   You in The World Project

Our English class project is called You and the World. This project is for us to get interested in events that are current and research information about an issue and tell others about it so we can educate ourselves and other people. We have to post our information on our blog and debate about our topics with the class.

My issue is how hard it is to found a job. There are alot less job openings in the U.S. today. The number of job openings in U.S. declined again in December. There was a decline in the economy, it was usually 4.5 to 5 million open jobs in America, now there are only 3 million. The U.S. economy is supplying an extremely low number of jobs. The government said that there were only 36,000 jobs added in January. Although an upgrade 150,000 jobs per month is enough just to keep up with our population growth. We begin to fall farther and farther behind.

All across the nation, state and local governments are swiftly cutting jobs. Government jobs use to be considered some of the safest jobs accessible, but now all government jobs local and state are facing terrible budget crunches. Actually it has gotten so serious that some cities are cutting their police forces by up to 50 percent.

Recent college grads are having a hard time finding a job.  Today’s graduates understand how bad the economy is now and how hard it will be to land their first meaningful job. Those who graduated between 2006-2008, their salary was $30,000 but for recent grads it has dropped to $27,000. According to Kate Helfrich a graduate from Case Western Reserve University, says “ I’m definetley feeling a little anxiety regarding the loan payment. You hear about programs that offer loan repayment and sign on bonuses, I don’t feel like we’ve seen that as much since the recession hit.” Bridget Coyle, who is also a graduate, wants to be a social worker, but this desolating unemployment rate is making it extremely tough. Besides this she is still very confident.

One idea of reducing unemployment is to break the cycle. There are many ways to break it.  One way is to provide government funding to companies who are becoming bankrupt. Another is get involved in technology because that is now in demand of our industry.

Bibliography:

Video, Slim Job Growth In April

Click here for more information.

 Click here for my bibliography.