This was my first honors classes at Longwood and it mainly involved weekly discussions and annotations. The class covered topics about issues going on throughout the world like LGBTQ, wage differences between men and women and issues involving medicines. For our final project, I had to pick one topic that I believed was a topic that needed to be discussed more and explain it using seven different points and having an article to back up my argument for every point. My topic was the Rights Parents have over their children’s bodily autonomy. My first point was, is circumcision justified by cultural and religious beliefs. Through this point, I explained how circumcision was the parents right because of the “right in trust” claim. This helps explain how children cannot exercise their rights when they are very young because they don’t know what to do. The second point was, who has the right to children’s bodily integrity, parents or the state? The main argument from this point is that parents have the right to the majority of their children’s bodily autonomy as long as it does not intel abuse or neglect from the parent. The third point was, why do so many Chinese children suffer from cleft lips? The main argument made in this was that China is able to give out 50,000 cleft lip surgeries a year, but they are not even getting half of that. The argument is trying to explain that China wants to help out the children, but can’t because the government can’t reach the rural parts of China. The fourth point was, do babies really need to have their tongue-tied? The main argument in this is that parents should get their babies tongue-tied if they are having problems with breastfeeding. The fifth point is, what to do if you have an intersex baby? The main argument is that parents need to listen to their babies doctor to make the best decision on what gender to choose for the baby. The sixth point is, is ADHD medication being prescribed too often? The main argument is, how ADHD is becoming increasingly more common in anyone who appears to need it. The seventh point is if parents disagree with doctors on their child’s treatment, who should have the final say? The main argument is, parents have the overall say in their child’s medical life unless it will end up hurting the child. Overall I think this class gave me a better understanding of what issues are still going on in modern day times.
Attached is my final project I did on the rights parents have over their children’s bodily autonomy.