Sample Prospectus

[My annotations are in blue]

Your Name

English 100 (Online) – the course name

Ticket #

Date

Prospectus – Identify the assignment

Punishing the Girls

Definition of the Problem

     (1) A few years ago, I watched a terrifying story on ABC's 20/20.  It was a story about a teenage girl who had gotten pregnant.  She successfully managed to keep her pregnancy from everyone, even her immediate family.  She secretly gave birth to a baby girl -- by herself -- at the basement of her house.  Out of fear, she covered the baby with a blanket and the baby died.  There was an investigation and trial on the teenage girl, whether she should be convicted of murder or not. 

    Every year about one million young women under the age of twenty, become pregnant.  Eighty-four percent of these pregnancies are unwanted pregnancies and about forty-two percent of them are aborted.

    In most of the United States, a minor must have a parental consent before undergoing the procedure of abortion.  This is a problem because many of the girls who become pregnant become fearful and attempt suicide, run away, or they commit crimes, such as killing their new born.  The law deprives teens of their rights and their privacy.  In developing countries, as many as 200,000 women die each year due to unsafe abortion.  The law must not drive our teens to seek unsafe abortion.  The law must protect the minors.

Solution

    (2) Some courts have declared this law as unconstitutional.  The solution I want to propose is legalizing abortion for minors, all across the nation.  Some states have already declared the parental consent law as unconstitutional.

Audience

    (3) For my readers, I plan to target the pro-choice audience who are still against minor abortion without parental consent.  Some people in favor of women's choices still oppose to this highly controversial subject.  I also plan to reach out to the general public, which include parents and lawmakers of the nation: the Legislatures, Senators, and Judges. (I do not plan to persuade the people who oppose abortion to convert to abortion advocates because that is an entirely different subject.)

Rhetorical Strategies – 3 kinds:  principle; consequence; and analogy/precedent.

    (4) My argument from consequence will come from the effects of the law. The law does not protect or benefit the minors.  Most of the teenage girls who seek abortion live with a single parent.  As many as twenty-five percent of them do not know who their father was. Their single parents are often busy with two or three jobs, and unfortunately, they do not have the intimate relationship with their children.  Many of them come from an abusive family. The girls who come from abusive family are often left with no choices.  Telling their parents about their pregnancy would be literally, the last thing they would do.  They would rather seek more dangerous options, such as running away from home, seeking unsafe, having an illegal and unsafe abortion, attempting suicide, and in few cases like the girl from 20/20, even murder.  By showing that the law pushes girls to seek unsafe choices, I can argue that the law only hurts the pregnant teens. 

    Telling one's parents that one is pregnant is admitting her sexual behavior.  We can probably imagine that telling one's parents that she is pregnant is the most difficult thing a teenager can tell her parents.  There is no doubt that it will be the most difficult and awkward thing a teenager would have to tell her parents, even for the ones who do
have a great relationship with their parents.  They will eventually ask their parents for help, support, and love.  However, the law only punishes those girls who come from a abusive, dysfunctional families.  Unfortunately, in an abusive family, they will not be supported with the love and forgiveness they deserve and need.  Thus, the law should not require teenagers to confess to their abusive parents because they can be severely beaten or be thrown out of the house. 

    I plan to make an argument from precedent.  In 1992, Maxine M. Chesney, Judge of San Francisco Superior Court has ruled that the state law requiring unmarried women under the age of eighteen to have a parental consent to be unconstitutional.  The law takes away the rights of minors and it violates their privacy. 

Sources of Information 

    (5) I intend to seek more updated material for my research.  Books will be good for arguments and counter arguments, but I plan to search for more updated material as magazine articles or newspaper articles.  I also would like to obtain information on the opinions of my possible opponents.  I also will trace the parental-rights movement from these sources.

Provisional Objective 

    (6) I hope I can convince many readers and the general public that the law does more harm to the minors than to protect them.  What we should worry about is the rights of the minors, not rights of parent.  I hope I can illustrate the negative effects of this law and get as many readers to change their mind.  I also hope to encourage the readers to send letters to the lawmakers of our nation to legalize minor abortion throughout the nation. 

Updated:  11 August 2009