For complete details on completing this assignment, refer to Center of the Debate (#GEA) Stage 2 (5% of final grade). Use the document in your group channel on Teams. Only one group member should submit the document for the group.

Stage 2 challenges students to begin thinking through policy ideas that will improve the lives of people who can become pregnant and reduce the need for abortion. In this assignment, you will start outlining the policies you would like to focus on. Once you have some ideas in mind, you will begin to work through what you want to accomplish and how you will get there.

Instructions

As you consider your approach to this assignment, you should think about:

1. the needs of/the barriers faced by those who can become pregnant and anyone impacted by pregnancy & children
2. possible interventions/policies that would address those needs.

Your creative approach does not have to be fully fleshed out at this point. You are just putting your ideas out there, and we will give you some suggestions on developing that idea. You must submit at least one approach, but you can suggest up to two. If you submit two, we will let you know which one we think is stronger. Be sure that you incorporate enough detail so that your concept is clear and understandable.

You may use either bullet points or complete sentences. As far as length, 100 words is a good estimate. The key is to get your idea across. You should make every effort to keep the points brief while still giving the reader a clear overview of your intentions. You are welcome to include the motivations behind your choice. The better the detail, the better the feedback we can provide to help you as you continue to develop your ideas.

Some things to keep in mind:

1. Any issue may only be addressed by a single student per group. For example, if you want to discuss contraception, no one else in your group may do so. The group will have to negotiate their topics. That’s part of working together.
2. Speaking of contraception, that is a fairly obvious issue to consider. Choosing it will mean you will need to come up with an idea that knocks it out of the park. The same goes for sex education. It has been done to death.
3. Check to see if your idea already exists. The purpose of this assignment is to innovate! For example, providing public assistance to low-income pregnant people or new parents for health care, food, and housing. Programs like Temporary Cash Assistance, WIC, and Medicaid. cover those things now. They are not perfect by any means, but they’re out there. Try to avoid duplicating what already exists.

Establishing a Foundation

You will need to do some background research to determine what issue women and people who can become pregnant face. Choose sources that can be used to back up your interventions, selecting those that use evidence-based approaches that are neither left nor right leaning and focus on facts. That means making use of sources that come from scholarly, peer-reviewed journals and reputable journalism and websites.

I cannot encourage you enough to make use of the librarians on campus. They are absolutely delighted to work with students on research projects! You can schedule a consultation with a librarian, and they will help you locate applicable sources. There is no charge for this service, so take advantage of their expertise.

Since abortion has been an increasingly heated topic since early in 2022, there has been significant media coverage about all the issues revolving around the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It might be worth your time to stay abreast of the news. There are also a few web sites I recommend for information on reproductive issues that provide evidence-based information:

The Guttmacher Institute
The Kaiser Family Foundation.
The SisterSong Collective.
Status of Women in the States: Reproductive Rights.
Ground NewsLinks to an external site. (This is the site I mentioned in class). In addition to the web site, an app is available for both iOS and Android.)
Flipboard Magazine. (Contains news about topics pertaining to our class, including abortion. This collection can give you some context for the challenges and issues that women and people who can become pregnant are facing.”

I also found an incredibly well done and timely podcast episode that is quite neutral. I have listened to it myself, and all the information presented is factually based. I cannot recommend it enough as a primer for beginning this part of the project. A transcript is available, and, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, you will find every single source they used to provide carefully researched details. You can find it on Spotify: Science Vs: – Abortion: The Science and The Supreme Court. You can find the other platforms available for this podcast by visiting the Science Vs website.

Collaborating On the Assignment

This stage is a group assignment, so you will be working on a document together through Microsoft Teams. (See Step 2: Set -Up Microsoft Teams from Module 0 for help setting up Teams.). I will create the groups in Teams and put a document in “Files” so you can work together and share ideas. For portions of the #GEA assignments that require group work, using a collaborative document will help you see the work that the other folks are engaging in so there is not a duplication of work.

Please label each idea with the first and last name and the U number of the student who will be working on that topic.

You may assume that you will have funding for any initiatives you would like to suggest.

Questions?

Email us! Come to office hours. We can sit down and chat about your ideas if you like. We cannot give you a topic, but you can bounce your ideas off me! We am here to help you be successful in the course.

Submitting Your Work

This assignment will be due on Sunday, February 11 at 11:59 PM. It must be turned in through the Canvas assignment link: Center of the Debate (#GEA1) Stage 2

Only one person in each group needs to submit the assignment. Your assignment must be uploaded in one of the following file formats: .doc, .docx, .pdf. It is in your best interest to double-check to see that your file was uploaded properly and viewable. If we cannot view the assignment in Turnitin, we cannot grade it.

Please note that this assignment will be screened by a plagiarism checker, so do keep that in mind. The use of AI is also prohibited beyond helping you find issues to address.

Grading

Your assignment will be graded out of 5 points. You can expect to receive a good grade for the assignment provided that your ideas are pertinent to the issue and practical. If there are issues with the group’s submission, we will provide some general feedback for you to move forward to the next phase..

If one or more group members do not contribute to the assignment, they will be ineligible for credit. Track changes will be enabled on the document, so it will be evident who did what work and when.