What about sterilisation of children with various disabilities associated with significant developmental delay? it's a contentious issue and not as cut and dried as you would think.
Example - a pre-pubescent girl with severe brain damage, in a permanent vegetative state who is already a huge load for her parents who care for her at home (due to lack of proper institution-based nursing facilities). Should she be sterilised, given ovariectomy and hysterectomy, to keep her physically small so she can be more easily handled with less risk of injury to both her and her elderly carers? Or a girl with condition similar to Downs Syndrome who also has other issues surrounding an absolute terror of blood - should she ever be permitted to menstruate, it will cause severe emotional trauma to her, every month.
Or a similar case - a girl with sexual precocity but lacking inhibitions or the understanding of the consequences, certainly incapable of caring for a baby - should her parents be permitted to have her sterilised?
Flip side - girl who is apparently uncontrollable and risking pregnancy, may be a bit 'slow' - at what IQ level should parents be able to step in and say, "no kids, ever?" SHOULD parents have this right in any situation? What if the girl is smarter than previously assessed, only apparently 'slow' because she's been restricted in her access to education? Maybe with rehabilitation and a chance at normal life, she could be a good parent and deserves the right to have a chance.
This has been debated here in Australia, we've had some heartbreaking cases.
We also have our own "Dr Death" - Philip Nitchke - who has been running a constant campaign in favour of right to die. He's not as creepy as other "Dr Death" characters but he IS passionate about it.
Other topic ideas - giving police the right to get DNA from anyone they want to. This is soon to become law in Australia, we've been told. If you're innocent you have nothing to fear. If you're guilty, then accessing your DNA will save a lot of court time and other innocent people who could be later victims if you're not stopped.
Innocent until proven guilty, even for terrorism suspects. We have a case here right now, a Dr Haneef from India who was locked up without charge for days and days, they only charged him when they were going to have to let him go for lack of airtight evidence. Then he was bailed - but before he could walk out the door our government had revoked his work permit, making him an illegal immigrant subject to incarceration for an indefinite period before deportation. The evidence against him keeps shifting. We were told he had given a phone card to his cousin - we were going to do the same sort of thing with our NZ phone cards before we flew home, if there had been any credit left. Why waste it? We couldn't use it after we left NZ.
So he gives a not-quite-used-up pre-paid phone card to his cousin. Then we were told the same card was found in the car that was used to bomb the airport in Scotland. Sufficient, some thought. Except that our laws say that giving it to his cousin is not the issue, he would have had to knowingly give the card to a terrorist organisation, for the purpose of aiding the terrorism. Even if he had known his cousin was planning a terrorism attack, this would not have been sufficient to charge him unless it could be proved he knew the card was to be used in the attack or its planning.
Now we're told that our police got it wrong - the phone card was found some miles away, in the cousin's flat. There had never been any suggestion that the phone card was used in the attack.
Is this guy innocent or guilty? We don't know, but neither have we had a chance to know. It hasn't been tested properly in court, only in the media. And then our government gets virtuous and says we shouldn't talk about it at all, it's not fair to the man! When most of the media is saying, "Something's not right here, we need to see people treated honestly and fairly in the legal system so if/when they ARE found guilty, we know it's been done properly and not just for political expediency to find a handy scapegoat."
I think our government is only getting virtuous because it's also getting embarrassed.
But then again, is this level of vigilance perhaps advisable, given the level of fear and our vulnerability?
What is right? What is safe? Should Dr Haneef be considered a sad but necessary casualty in the war on terror? (hate that term - it's terrorism, not terror).
Or an even newer issue - for years, there have been reports of sexual abuse in children living in Aboriginal reserves up in the Northern Territory. Where the usual incidence rate for sexual abuse is 1 in 4 for girls and 1 in 10 for boys, in these areas it's been increased at least fourfold - which means EVERY girl, about half the boys.
Now our government has sent loads of people up there to intervene (can you tell we have an election coming up?). The intervention includes withholding welfare payments in cases where children do not attend school regularly (even when children have no school they can attend) or do not have mandatory health checks (including looking for evidence of abuse) and doling out welfare payments to ALL, even where the families are doing the right thing. They're now saying they'll micromanage payments to ALL families where children don't attend school, but not all families. Only all Aboriginal families.
A lot of indigenous people in other countries (especially New Zealand) are getting very angry at this discrimination, and yet the Aborigines on the reserves are welcoming the government intervention.
Basically, our government said, "We must do something!" and sent a task force, and THEN thought, "But what can we do?"
They're still working it out. Not easy.
A serious suggestion - feel free to raid Aussie shores for contentious topics - we have plenty of them, plus you're less likely to offend people close to home.
We have plenty of information on all these issues on very recent Aussie news websites.
By now you should have enough topics to share with the rest of the class!
Marg
