I believe that we as a society do have a moral obligation to help the needy. I believe that if we as an individual and/or government are in a position to help then we have a moral obligation to help. Not only do we have an obligation to help the poor, it is our duty to help them. We must help those who are not in a position to help themselves. We should help the needy get back on their feet. It is impossible to help everyone, but we should help as many people as we can. However there are different types of help, which some would consider to be right or wrong. The best kind of help is empowering them. We need to empower people to become self-sustaining, productive members of our community. By doing this we should educate them and teach them skills that they need to survive and thrive. Some may view a type of wrong help as just giving them handouts. Sometimes that can just add to the problem and you do not teach them the skills they need to get by. We cannot just give them things, you must teach them how to survive. Some may argue that by giving handouts you add to their problem, for example if I gave a homeless man on the street money he may go and by beer, which in turn could add to his drinking problem. Instead of just giving people things once, we should teach the skills that they must have in order to get it themselves over and over again. The strongest objection to my position would be that of the libertarianism. They hold that the government should punish crimes and enforce voluntary agreements, but not redistribute income. Libertarianism is a philosophy that seeks to ensure that all people have an equal chance at success, but does not worry with the results of people’s efforts. They believe that we have no moral obligation to help. But I feel that we do have a moral obligation to help those in need and that it is our duty as citizens to help them.

One well-known advocate of the death penalty who I strongly agree with is Hugo Adam Bedau. Bedau, like me, believes that the death penalty is unconstitutional and immoral. He also believes that it is unfair, because it is irreversible. Sometimes, in murder cases there has been substantial evidence to show that courts have sentenced some to prison while sentencing others to death by use of racial discrimination. Discrimination against the poor was also proven from studies done. Another reason Bedau opposes the death penalty is that it is barbarous. It brings us back to the earliest days when slavery, branding, and other corporal punishments were around. As with those practices, executions have no place in a civilized society. Bedau concludes that “capital punishment does not deter crime, and it is uncivilized in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice.” I highly agree with Bedau.

Now, thus far I have treated it as if the decision to have sex was solely the woman’s responsibility, and have not left room for several of the exceptions to my own metaphors for sex. First, I admit that sometimes women are raped and are not allowed to make their choice, and I also admit that their come certain times when a pregnancy endangers a woman’s life. Also, our society is such that a woman is essentially given the entire burden of raising her child alone. Our legal system is not set up in a way that it can truly force the man to take the same kind of responsibility the woman must take as a consequence for his choosing to have sex. For these reasons I cannot find myself to be entirely pro-life. There are certain times when it would seem that abortion almost has to be an option for a woman. Many people on the pro-life side would argue that because the child inside the woman is an innocent life, and a human being, it should never be killed. A part of me wants to agree with them, but another part feels that there is no proof to such a claim. The best support I can give is the idea of viability. I feel once a child can sustain life on its own

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