With the presidential race in full swing, a controversial topic that has been on the horizon for years back is Planned Parenthood and the argument of the government funding this organization. Now most of the republican party is against Planned Parenthood, whether it’s because they don’t want to support an organization that provides abortion because of their faith or morals, or just don’t find it important enough to spend money on. Texas was the first state to defund Planned Parenthood but not soon after, Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, and North Carolina followed behind as well as Utah, Wisconsin and Ohio.

No matter what age or how much money you have you should be able to make informed, independent decisions about health, sex and family planning. Taking that away from anyone is violating their constitutional rights. The states that do provide funding provide the organization with 500 million dollars each year.

What many don’t realize, is this money goes to only 3% of the service that this whole political debate is about; abortions. The money used for abortions comes from private’s donors as well as fees, which isn’t the only service Planned Parenthood provides. These pro-life, anti-planned parenthood supporters need to realize what they are trying to stop. All they seem to be focusing on protecting is the life of fetus rather than the life of a living, walking, breathing grown woman. The organization really is putting 9% of this government funded money to cancer screening and prevention, 42% goes to STD testing and treatment as well as 34% to contraception. Many of these services young and underprivileged depend Planned Parenthood to be provided with these extremely important services.

Although Planned Parenthood receives money from private donors, it still needs government funding, which makes up for 41% of its revenue, the largest source of money they receive. That is a tremendous amount to take away from an organization. Many planned parenthoods go out of business because they cannot maintain to upkeep the clinics, raising prices for patients, turning hundreds of women away.

According to Texas’s Policy Evaluation project, which is working to track reproduction health outcomes in Texas, there were dramatic results since Texas was the first to defund Planned Parenthood in 2011. There was a 35% drop in claims for birth control implants and pills because many couldn’t afford it anymore. This then created an increase in births by 27%, Showing disadvantaged woman were struggling to get the contraceptive care they really need. Many politicians claim they are putting this money instead towards to health care providers and give lists of other possible places to visit. Indiana even offered a woman’s prison as an alternative…But just from looking at the results in Texas it clearly isn’t true. These health care providers, are out of reach from the impoverished communities that need it the most.

Planned Parenthood is extremely beneficial for young girls as well. Because of the unrealistic and ineffective “Chasity education programs” that were passed in 1981, Many schools provide lessons of abstinence instead of teaching kids how to be safe about their own bodies and sexual behavior. Planned Parenthood provides a safe and comforting place, where these young women can go to, to educate themselves about protection and safety as well as a place to go to get help if they cannot afford it or speak to a parent about it. It is commonly warned that denying these young woman good information about their own bodies and confidential health care services could have tragic consequences. For example, in 1988, Reckie Bell, a 17-year-old became pregnant and being too afraid to tell her parents and not being able to afford a legal abortion, died from an illegal one. Unfortunately, this was not the only time something like this happened to a young, afraid and vulnerable teen.

As a young woman, I feel safe knowing if I or any loved one is ever in a situation like pregnancy, the need to be tested for an std or cancer or even just a place to go to talk or ask questions, my state provides us with an organization that we can go to for it all. I believe every woman should be able to feel this way.

With the government being Planned Parenthoods largest source of money, the government needs to keep finding this organization so they can continue to help educate, care and prevent pregnancies for woman of any age, color or income as well as give them the choice to what they want to do to their bodies.

Works Cited:

“A Warning To Both Parties On Planned Parenthood And Abortion.” NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

Denbow, Jennifer M. “Abortion As Genocide: Race, Agency, And Nation In Prenatal Nondiscrimination Bans.” Signs: Journal Of Women In Culture & Society 41.3 (2016): 603-626. LGBT Life with Full Text. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

Laguens, Dawn. “Planned Parenthood And The Next Generation Of Feminist Activists.” Feminist Studies 39.1 (2013): 187-191. LGBT Life with Full Text. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

Netborn, Deborah. “After Texas Stopped Funding Planned Parenthood, Low-income Women Had More Babies.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

“Planned Parenthood | Official Site.” Planned Parenthood | Official Site. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

Stevenson, Amanda J., M.A, Imelda M. Flores, Ph.D, and Richard L. Allegeyer, Ph.D. “Effect of Removal of Planned Parenthood from the Texas Women’s Health Program — NEJM.” New England Journal of Medicine. The New England Journal of Medicine, Mar.-Apr. 2013. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

We trust what we are putting in our body because anything unhealthy, sanitized or even deathly would obviously be break a lot of rules in the food industry and would be stopped by the government, right? Of course, There are tons of strict regulations that protect what we are eating and how its produced? Nope. The Government and Food Industry aren’t as trust worthy as we hope to believe.

The food industry has changed tremendously in the last 60 years. From farms, local and small companies to large, corrupt corporations that mass produces chemically enhanced foods. Our country has no clue what is happening behind the mouth watering meats and healthy looking vegetables. Even sometimes “organic foods” are misleading and most people don’t even want to know.

Each year, over 70 million people are effected by a food borne illness, and this number is just rising. Even young children are being affected by this harmful diseases.  Robert Kenner, Food Inc. introduces the story of Kevin Kowalcyk, a young boy who died after eating only one hamburger on his way home from vacation. For years, Kevin’s mother and family has shared their story and fought the food industry’s to pass important regulation laws but it continues to be a constant battle. You would think the death of an innocent child would be enough to stop these food companies from sliding through regulations.

In one of the strongest industry’s, shouldn’t the government, medical world and corporations be heavily involved in stopping these food borne illness’s? Food companies don’t even have to have a recall a product they know is causing sickness, but many do just for the image. Its very uncommon that the government and even doctors step in unless hundreds get ill or there are multiple deaths. Mostly because its too much effort to have evidence that a certain food caused a death. Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics, and Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at NYU, states “USDA has 7,000 inspectors or so, and they over see 6,000 meat, poultry and egg establishments and 130 importers that slaughter and process 89 million pigs, 37 million cattle and 7 billion chickens and turkeys, not to mention the 25 billion pounds of been and 7 billion pounds of ground beef each year… The demands on the FDA are even more unreasonable. About 700 FDA inspectors must oversee 30,000 food manufacturers and processors, 10,000 warehouses, 785,000 commercial and institutional food establishments, 128,000 grocery and convenience stores, and 1.5 million vending operations.” We hope that professionals, like food inspectors are making sure these companies aren’t getting away with unhealthy and harmful practices of food processing, but we can’t when we don’t even have enough of them to go around.

Food Inc., an extremely effective way of opening the world to the corrupt and unhealthy food industry, takes the viewer right to the source, showing the conditions these animals are living in. They are packed into small, tight, feces ridden dark shacks, eating pounds of chemically packed foods, which leads straight to where we don’t want them; our bodies. Many don’t think or care about what the animals are eating, but according to Consumer Reports, You are What They Eat. Cows, are being fed corn which creates a fatter cow and more beef which yes, may save money for the company and farmers, but packs the animals with bacteria.  This bacteria is extremely harmful to not only their bodies but then to us. The bacteria found in their feces are often mixed in to our meat supply because of the busy and over packed slaughter houses. These cows should be fed what nature made them to eat, grass, And only grass.

It isn’t only the animals being treated poorly but the workers as well. Carole, a farmer introduced in Food Inc, states, “Having no say in your business is degrading, its like you are a slave to the company.” These large corporations break many labor and job laws as well, overworking their employees in harmful and unhealthy conditions. Robert Kenner and his film Food Inc, opens our eyes to way the food industry takes over everything, “It looks like there is diversity in supermarkets but its really just a few companies” Journalist, Michael Pollen states making us realize what we thought of as small, local and healthy brands are owned by huge corporations like Kellogg, Tyson, and Pepsi. Michael Pollen also speaks about the harmful and genetically modified foods we are eating “There is no seasons in the American supermarket. Now there are tomatoes all year round, grown halfway around the world, picked when it was green, and ripened with ethylene gas. Although it looks like a tomato, its kind of a notional tomato. I mean it’s the idea of a tomato” Yes, maybe it is nice to be able to eat your favorite fruit or vegetable all year round, but it is anything but natural.

Organic Illusions, written by Blake Hurst shines a light on the organic food industry as well. Although Organic foods are the better path to take, its still hard to trust a company that we don’t know much about. “Organic foods are labeled as organic because producers certify that they’ve followed organic procedures. No testing is done to check the veracity of these claims.” Although Hurst does not provide much evidence about these problems and the studies included had little numbers and dates, it still gets the job done of making the public question what we are putting inside our bodies.

Knowing the harmful qualities of the food you are eating, and the lack of regulation among he food industry, do you feel the need to change the way you go about finding the right food? You should. In order to stop these companies from taking over this country and to decrease the number of deaths from food borne illness, the majority has to take a stand and not support the corruption happening in the industry.

Reflection Questions

• Describe your understanding of the “writer’s project”? How were you able to identify the texts’ “project”? Discuss your own “project” as it pertains to this particular blog article.

The writers project was very helpful in the process of writing my own blog post. Looking at each text, I asked myself, “What are they trying to do?”  and “What are they using to do this.” My Writing project is similar to the texts we read in class, which was to make the reader question what they were eating. I used evidence and excerpts from multiple texts to show my knowledge on the subject from reading these multiple articles and to back up my statements.

• Describe your completion of the “Sorting it Out” workshop? What sections were most beneficial to the development of your ideas—and why? Discuss how this workshop assisted in development of draft and/or assignment organization?

“Sorting it out” was very helpful, in well, Sorting it all out. After reading multiple texts over the unit, it was helpful to go back and find the specific and important main things that made up the article. It was able to clear up and distinguish each article from its own and was very helpful when it came to writing about each text in my blog post.

• Describe your understanding of synthesis. What is its importance? How did it manifest within your drafts and/or final blog article? Provide examples.

Synthesis is the combining of multiple ideas and elements to make up a theory. This was important to think about when working with multiple texts, like Food Inc., organic Illusions, Food Politics etc. It was hard at first to be able to synthesize so many ideas into one article but I feel like I was successful by the final.

• Describe your own accomplishment (ofsomething) during this unit.

I believe my strength in my blog post was how I was able to swiftly move from one example from a text to another. I feel like sometimes It can be awkward to read a quote from one article and move to another example but I think I did well at making it clear and natural.

• Discuss the evolution of the main idea. Where did you begin (include the example) and show its progress (again, include example) throughout the drafting/revision process. To what do you attribute its evolution?

My main idea was talking about the text and their writing projects, I talked about what each article did well at and why. Throughout the drafts I added more specific information from each article so the reader was learning things about the food industry and not the articles themselves.

• Discuss what organizational strategies you implemented in order to structure this blog article. Provide examples from a section(s) of an earlier draft and other excerpts in later drafts to support your response.

Looking back I noticed the evolution of my closing. Have always had trouble with closing statements and have a habit of ending my papers on a quick and unfinished note. My first draft I ended with talking about organic illusions, “Although Hurst does not provide much evidence about these problems and the studies included had little numbers and dates, it still gets the job done of making the public question what we are putting inside our bodies.” I then added on and used a full closing statement to sum up the post “Knowing the harmful qualities of the food you are eating, and the lack of regulation among he food industry, do you feel the need to change the way you go about finding the right food? You should. In order to stop these companies from taking over this country and to decrease the number of deaths from food borne illness, the majority has to take a stand and not support the corruption happening in the industry.”

• Provide an example of the final draft where you successfully synthesize 3 texts in a concise and direct manner. Discuss how this evolved throughout the drafting process for you.

I think this was a strong use of synthesis. “Food Inc., an extremely effective way of opening the world to the corrupt and unhealthy food industry, takes the viewer right to the source, showing the conditions these animals are living in. They are packed into small, tight, feces ridden dark shacks, eating pounds of chemically packed foods, which leads straight to where we don’t want them; our bodies. Many don’t think or care about what the animals are eating, but according to Consumer Reports, You are What they eat.” I then move into talking about the Consumer Reports article.

• Discuss the evolution of the ‘lede’ in earlier drafts and its final version (provide examples of each): where did you begin, what feedback did you receive, and how did it end up in final blog article?

I cannot find my original draft with my opening but I do know My lede evolved tremendously. Before doing the lede workshop my opening wasn’t as strong and captivating. It was very wordy and boring. I believe using questions in my lede, make you want to keep reading.

• Name a specific writing/researching/revision goal you’d like to work on during the next Unit projects.

I think I need to work on diving deeper into information. I tend to stay pretty specific and stick getting the message across instead of developing and giving lots of information on a certain topic. I think its important to be able to dive deeper, especially on research articles.

After a long, busy day the only thing that could be on your mind is dinner. Starving from hours of not eating, your mouth waters at the smell of food. The last thing on your mind is where this food is coming from, how its prepared and if you will get sick. Our minds are trained not to think about what’s behind this large cheeseburger with a basket of salty fries. We trust what we are putting in our body because anything unhealthy, sanitized or even deathly would obviously be against the rules in the food industry and would be stopped by the government right? There are regulations that protect what we are eating and how it was produced? Nope. The Government and Food Industry aren’t as trust worthy as we hope to believe. The food industry has changed tremendously in the last 60 years. From farms, local and small companies to large, corrupt corporations that mass produces chemically enhanced foods. Our country has no clue what is happening behind the yummy looking meats, vegetables even sometimes “organic foods” and may never even try to find out.

Each year, over 70 million people are effected by a food borne illness, and this number is just rising. Even children, Food Inc. introduces the story of Kevin Kowalcyk, a young boy who died after eating only one hamburger coming back from vacation. For years, Kevin’s mother and family has shared their story and fought the food industry’s to pass important regulation laws but it continues to be a constant battle. that In one of the strongest industry’s, shouldn’t the government, medical world and corporations being stopping these food borne illness’s? Food companies don’t have to have a recall on something they know is causing sickness, but many do just for the image. Its very uncommon that the government and even doctors step in unless hundreds get ill or multiple die mostly because its too much effort to have evidence that a certain food caused a death. Marion Nestle states “USDA has 7,000 inspectors or so, and they over see 6,000 meat, poultry and egg establishments and 130 importers that slaughter and process 89 million pigs, 37 million cattle and 7 billion chickens and turkeys, not to mention the 25 billion pounds of been and 7 billion pounds of ground beef each year… The demands on the FDA are even more unreasonable. About 700 FDA inspectors must oversee 30,000 food manufacturers and processors, 10,000 warehouses, 785,000 commercial and institutional food establishments, 128,000 grocery and convenience stores, and 1.5 million vending operations.” We hope that professionals, like food inspectors are making sure these companies aren’t getting away with unhealthy and harmful practices of food processing, but we can’t when we don’t even have enough of them to go around.

Food Inc., an extremely effective way of opening the world to the corrupt and unhealthy food industry, Shows the conditions these animals are living in. They are packed into small, tight, feces ridden dark shacks, eating pounds of chemically packed foods, which lead straight to our bodies. Cows, are being fed corn which creates a fatter cow and more beef but packs the animals with bacteria that is extremely harmful to not only their bodies but then to us. The bacteria is found in their feces that are often mixed in to our meat supply because of the busy and over packed slaughter houses. It isn’t only the animals being treated poorly but the workers as well. Carole, a farmer who stated, “Having no say in your business is degrading, its like you are a slave to the company.”, in the film. These large corporations break many labor and job laws as well, overworking their employees in harmful and unhealthy conditions. Robert Kenner and his film Food Inc, opens our eyes to way the food industry takes over everything, Michael Pollen states, “It looks like there is diversity in supermarkets but its really just a few companies”. Even what we thought of as small, local and healthy brands are owned by huge corporations like Kellogg, Tyson, and Pepsi. Michael Pollen also speaks about the harmful and genetically modified foods we are eating “There is no seasons in the American supermarket. Now there are tomatoes all year round, grown halfway around the world, picked when it was green, and ripened with ethylene gas. Although it looks like a tomato, its kind of a notional tomato. I mean it’s the idea of a tomato.” Yes, maybe it is nice to be able to eat your favorite fruit or vegetable all year round, but it is everything but natural.

Organic Illusions, written by Blake Hurst shines a light on organic food industry as well. Although Organic foods are the better path to take, its still hard to trust a company that we don’t know much about. “Organic foods are labeled as organic because producers certify that they’ve followed organic procedures. No testing is done to check the veracity of these claims.” Although Hurst does not provide much evidence about these problems and the studies included had numbers, dates, it still gets the job done of questioning what we are putting inside our bodies.

The corrupt food industry and ginormous corporations put the money over the customers everyday. The only reason they don’t want someone to get sick from a food borne illness is not because they made someone sick but because it just makes the company look bad and lose money. They do everything they can do produce fast and cheap, breaking and bending around many regulations and laws. We cannot continue to pretend that these companies and government are trying to keep us safe. We cannot trust everything we are putting into our own bodies and have to stop letting these companies run our country and lives.