For this semester in Girls for girls we are focusing more on debates and discussing important global issues regarding women’s rights. Since we are back to face to face learning we can have more debates and be able to organize fund raisers. However we still can not meet with the girls, as the outsiders are not able to come to OSC.
Right before we started face to face learning we had a debate on abortion laws, and the following week (second week of f2f school ) we will have a discussion on discrimination and unfair treatment towards south asian women locally and internationally. Along with discussing our own experiences.
Debate on Abortion Laws
On January 21st, we had a debate in our service about abortion laws where half of the group argued why abortion should be legal and the other half argued why it should’t be. I was on the “why it should be legal” group and some of the arguments I had were as follows;
– Women’s right to have a choice over her own body
– Health concerns that may occur if the baby was to be kept
– Personal beliefs
– Cultural shame a women may face if the baby is to be kept
– Economic unavailability of the parent to take care of a child
– The baby being conceived in a non-consensual manner, therefore causing the woman to not have the child.
With this debate I was able to work collaboratively with the people on my side of the argument and keep valid arguments throughout the debate.
With this topic of debate I was able to recognize and consider the ethics of this choice (abortion) and be able to come up with valid arguments. As there are many factors that act upon the ethics of this choice like religion, beliefs and culture. Recognizing that, and being able to respond to it with a rationalized argument has helped me achieve ethics and beliefs learning outcomes.
I have also demonstrated engagement with an issue of global significance, as abortion laws are still not all the same in all countries. It is a topic that is being globally discussed as some countries still refuse to legalize it. With this debate we were able to weigh up the pros and cons of abortion, and as a result within our group the pros outweighed the cons.