Planned Parenthood has been a prominent institution in the United States for many years now. This institution is crucial to the reproductive health and safety of women and young girls all across the country. Its main purpose is to educate women of all ages on reproduction, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, birth control, and much more. Recently President Trump chose to defund all government spending towards Planned Parenthood. By defunding this organization women everywhere are going to lose their rights to necessities, such as free birth control, and more. Overall the defunding of Planned Parenthood will seriously impact the health, wellbeing, and education of women all over the country in a negative way.
Sources:
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/
This website lists all of the medical resources provided by planned parenthood. It talks about what the organization is all about.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/05/politics/paul-ryan-planned-parenthood-obamacare/
This article shows what defunding of planned parenthood would do to women and men across the country and the negative impacts it would have.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmp1102915#t=article
This article talks about how women and children are being left behind in the governments choice to defund planned parenthood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSdf2iy_ROU
This source shows all of the things that planned parenthood provides for people all across the country. It supports how necessary the healthcare they provide is for people in the United States.
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Counterintuitive 
Planned Parenthood has been a prominent institution in the United States for many years now. This institution is crucial to the reproductive health and safety of women and young girls all across the country. Its main purpose is to educate women of all ages on reproduction, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, birth control, and much more. Recently President Trump chose to defund all government spending towards Planned Parenthood. By defunding this organization women everywhere are going to lose their rights to necessities, such as free birth control, and more. Overall the defunding of Planned Parenthood will seriously impact the health, wellbeing, and education of women all over the country in a negative way.
You’ve chosen an important topic, Chance, one well worth your time. But so far, that’s all you’ve done. There’s no thesis here to support and the counterintuitive angle is missing. I would not disagree that PP has an educational purpose, but you’d have a hard time defending your position that that is its primary purpose. Your claims about the impact of Trump’s proposed defunding are all defensible, as are many more, so you could certainly make effective cause-and-effect arguments from material that supports those claims. But, is that your thesis? That defunding PP will have negative consequences?
I ran some of your claims through Politifact, which I highly recommend as a reliable fact-checker of claims made by politicians, and found a very useful source for you:
http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/aug/07/john-cornyn/john-cornyn-tweets-planned-parenthood-provided-abo/
It spells out some very important features of the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal dollars from being spent on abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life in peril.
Another one is this overview of 5 Things to Know About the Fight Over Planned Parenthood
http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/08/03/5-things-to-know-about-the-fight-over-planned-parenthood
The value of your topic is that it is meaningful and has real-world consequences. The danger is that you’re wading into a highly-charged political debate where most of the easy sources will reflect the overheated opinions of people not very interested in facts. YOU DO NOT want to “pick a side” in the abortion debate to defend, since the odds of you saying anything that has not already been said once a day forever are zero.
THE SENATE BILL
Monday’s vote is on barring federal aid to Planned Parenthood and shifting the money to other health care providers.
That’s big money for Planned Parenthood. It says of $1.3 billion in revenue last year, $528 million came from taxpayers, including state funds that help finance Medicaid.
Planned Parenthood defenders say cutting federal aid wouldn’t affect the abortions it provides because federal money cannot be used for abortions except for cases of rape, incest or when a woman’s life is in peril. Opponents say squeezing money from Planned Parenthood makes it choose between spending its remaining funds on abortions or other services.
That paragraph provides a hint on a counterintuitive approach to the topic. Most of PP’s funding DOES NOT COME from the federal government. You need to find out how much of the $528 million is federal and how much is from states. The money from the states finances services to Medicaid patients who cannot afford services from other providers. Therefore, the result of cutting federal funding to PP WILL NOT BE to reduce the number of abortions provided to rape victims, incest victims, or women whose lives are in danger. It will be to REDUCE ALL OTHER SERVICES, including free contraception. RESULT: more unwanted pregnancies, some of which will end in abortion. Cutting to the chase: defunding PP will result in MORE ABORTIONS.
See if you can find the numbers to support that position, or one very much like it.
Is this helpful, Chance?
[FAILED TO REPLY]
Yes this was helpful because I did not realize all of that about planned parenthood. But what I’m struggling with is how to make my thesis. I want to discuss why defunding planned parenthood would hurt the well being of men and women across the country. Planned parenthood assists both men and women and not everyone realizes that. I want to get across that it is a necessary institution and provides care and well being for everyone. I’m not sure how to sum this all up into a strong thesis.
Your mistake here is completely understandable, Chance. You believe that the purpose of a research project is to find evidence to support a thesis you’ve decided in advance is correct and provable.
The problem with such an approach is that it blinds the researcher to truth. Evidence in support of the thesis is considered valuable. Evidence that clearly contradicts the thesis is ignored or discarded. Evidence that can be interpreted to support either position depending on point of view is presented in the light most favorable to the thesis.
If the paper proves anything, it will prove that a thesis CAN BE DEFENDED, not that it is correct.
You have selected a thesis: Opponents of Planned Parenthood seem unwilling to accept that defunding the organization will do far more damage to the vast number of its beneficiaries than is worth the perceived advantage of preventing a few pregnancies.
Now, go find out all you can about who Planned Parenthood benefits, how many abortions it performs, and how much of its funding comes from taxpayers. If the evidence you gather, contrary to your prejudices, demonstrates that there’s nothing counterintuitive about defunding Planned Parenthood, YOU WIN, not by PROVING THE THESIS YOU PROPOSED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEMESTER, but by PROVING THAT FACTS SUPPORT A MEANINGFUL THESIS.
Move boldly forward, checking your hypothesis against the facts with every source you find. trusting in the truth of the evidence. When all is said and done, You’ll present a paper that proves WHATEVER YOUR THESIS EVENTUALLY TURNS OUT TO BE.
Have I done a better job of explaining the process this time?
Reply, please. This is a conversation.
Yes that makes a lot more sense now. I was trying to prove that my thesis is right instead of defending it to be proven. Basically I have to find facts that’s support my thesis and prove that it is legitimate without seeming like I’m trying to make claims that my view is right? It just has to be factually correct?
You’re almost there, Chance. Maybe this will help.
Let’s not talk about a THESIS at the start. We’ll start with a HYPOTHESIS. If you’ve had a lab science course, you’ll recognize that when an experiment is conducted, the scientists don’t know or care whether their hypothesis will prove to be TRUE or FALSE.
The experiment is considered a success either way because it PROVES SOMETHING.
Given the conditions, physical objects will behave in a particular way. Whether the way they behave matches our predictions or not is irrelevant. We have shown that they behave a certain way under the conditions of the experiment.
The same is true of a research project. We begin with a Hypothesis. In your case: defunding Planned Parenthood will do far more damage to the vast number of its beneficiaries than is worth the perceived advantage of preventing a few pregnancies. Or something like that. This is for you to decide.
For ten weeks, you read everything you can about the benefits, costs, outcomes, disadvantages, funding mechanisms, and ethical ambiguities, among other things, of Planned Parenthood. Whatever evidence you find is valuable experimental data. At the end, you will have come to an informed conclusion about Planned Parenthood’s benefits and costs. THAT’S WHEN YOU CRAFT YOUR FINAL THESIS. You name the thesis that you know the evidence will support AFTER you’ve collected and analyzed all there is to know.
For now, name a Hypothesis. You’ll find out later whether it’s true or not.
okay now i fully understand i believe. thank you!
Good. 🙂 You can help me explain it to your classmates tomorrow!
Chance, you haven’t given yourself an assignment here. Reply, please.