12. Read and answer the questions:

a. What is the aim of pro-life and pro-choice movements?

b. What are the arguments of euthanasia advocates and of their opponents?

c. What started the 2008 financial crisis?

Abortion

The debate over whether the abortion should be legal or not is one of the current most controversial issues. Pro-choice movements advocate mother’s right to decide whether to keep the child during the first three months of pregnancy. Also, they say that a child has a right to be born wanted into a loving family. However, pro-life campaigners argue for the right to life under any circumstances. They feel it unjust that a woman should decide whether a child will live or not. Many strictly Catholic communities call for a ban on abortions, not allowing for any exceptions such as incest or rape.

Euthanasia

Similarly heated debates split the public opinion on euthanasia. Often called a ‘physician –assisted’ suicide, it has been discussed recently by both its advocates as well as its opponents. It advocates argue that a person should be able to decide when to end his or her life when it becomes undignified of too painful to bear. There are cases of terminally-ill patients, who cannot be helped by any medical means as helping such patients to end their life in a country, which does not legalize euthanasia, equals to a murder. On the other hand, its opponents ask: What if the person in question is in coma? Or it is a severely handicapped minor, whose parents feel their child would never have a good quality of life or be able to take care of itself? The opponents say that the issue may become a very slippery slope where the elderly could feel pressured not to be a burden for their family if they need help later on in life. It is suggested that the right to die may gradually become a duty to die at a certain age.

Financial Crisis Since 2008 we have lived through a constant reminder that we have a financial crisis and heard millions of recipes and debates on how to overcome it. To trace its beginning, we must look at the global stock markets which have collapsed and global financial institutions that have fallen down. It has been triggered by the mortgage crisis in the USA. Simply put, the financial institutions have made its products too complex to be able to trace its risky elements. They took their clients’ mortgages, cut it up in pieces and re-sold them again. As a result, the financial market has been twisted and the governments had to pump money into the biggest financial institutions to prevent the whole financial system from collapsing. This is financial ‘injection’ is called a bail out.

13. Explain in English:

a ban

terminally-ill

a minor

the elderly

to trigger something

a bail out

an incest

a rape

14. There are of course other issues which can be considered global. Look at the following list and add two more issues if you can.

Then choose a topic and discuss it with the person next to you.

Foreign Aid

Minority rights

Intellectual Property Rights