The Cloning Controversy
Public opinion toward cloning is often negative. A Time /CNN poll taken a few days after Ian Wilmut’s announcement regarding the cloning of a sheep found that 93% of Americans felt cloning was bad, and 66% opposed animal cloning (Masci 2). Many religious groups have taken a definite stand on the cloning issue. The Catholic Church has been a strong force against human cloning. It declared itself opposed to human cloning in 1987 (Peterson F1). The church had many reasons to be opposed to cloning, but some specific points were strong arguments for their side. The Pontifical Academy on Life felt human cloning would not result in identical souls because God created souls (Johnson 5). The Vatican panel also felt strongly against cloning. Human cloning, it said, “represents a grave attack on the dignity of conception and on the right to an unrepeatable, unpredetermined set of genes” (Johnson 4).
Protestant churches have views on the cloning issue, too. Mr. Per Anderson, a leading figure in biomedical ethics for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and teacher of religion at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, said that the cloning issue:
has a certain kind of power over us. We associate this with divine power: changing the very structures of nature. It ties into our deep anxieties about the malevolent side to modern sci…
… middle of paper …
… we each do our part to work with our government officials, the cloning controversy can be eliminated and monitoring can become a strong reality.
Works Cited
Bognanno, Frank E., and Joseph Jilka. “Down the Road of Cloning: How a Clergyman and a Scientist Would Map it Out.” Des Moines Register 9 Apr. 1997.
Fried, George H. “Cloning-The Promise and the Threat.” USA Today Sept. 1979: 58-60.
“Getting to the Nucleus of Cloning Concerns.” Editorial. USA Today 12 Mar. 1997: 7D.
Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 1998. S1601. 5 Feb. 1998: 1-5.
Johnson, Sara. “Cloning Sheep Raises Ethical Questions.” Online. Internet. 22 Oct. 1998: 1-9. Available http://www.champion.org/cpc-cloning.htm
Masci, David. “The Cloning Controversy.” The CQ Researcher 9 May 1997: 1-2.
Peterson, David. “Clashing Over Cloning.” Waterloo Courier 2 Mar. 1997: F1 .
Wage Discrimination against Women
The Women’s Equal Rights Movement has made dramatic progress in the last one hundred years. As a result, a woman can now vote, choose almost any career, and defend her human right to happiness. But, in spite of the progress made in the area of equal rights, wage problems in the workplace still exist which deny women equal pay for equal work.
SUCCESSES
Women are closing the gender gap in workplace and higher education. They are starting to climb the corporate ladder and are moving into managerial positions. Forty-three percent of managers are women today as opposed to the nineteen percent who were managers in 1970 (“Almost, But Not Quite, Equal” 1). Women are also receiving a higher level of education. They earned forty-five percent of the law degrees in 1994 compared to eight percent in 1972. Education is an important contributing factor to the progress being made in reducing the discrepancy in wages between genders. With women becoming better educated than 20 years ago, potential for a higher salary is greater. Today, women earn fifty percent of all college degrees and forty percent of all medical degrees. It is, perhaps, because of education that women’s wages grew, on average, twenty percent faster than men’s from 1920-1980 (Clark 174). The situation is not that fewer men have been attending college, but that a greater number of women are able, encouraged and willing to take the next step in education than ever before.
PROBLEMS
Despite all that has been accomplished, wage equality between men and women has not yet been reached. Overall, women only earn 74% of what men do in America (Equal Pay). In the higher job positions, with higher wages, there is a lack of female presence. An example of …
… middle of paper …
… themselves need to realize what can be accomplished and what blocks the way. And then with those complications resolved, women stand a better chance of receiving equal pay for equal work.
Works Cited
“Across Globe, Women Earn Less.” The Des Moines Register 30 July 1996, sec. Business: 10.
“Almost, But Not Quite, Equal.” US News