Comunicação Escrita

It does need to be discussed at home, but just because something needs to happen, it does not necessarily means it will. How many households in Brazil have supportive parents willing to hold this kind of difficult conversation with their children? Not many, that is for sure. It is also the school's duty to educate - not to take over the parent's hole, but to aid them. And why would the fact the Government would need to spend money with this kind of important tool to educate our children be an argument against sex education classes? It is not a waste of money, it is money used on what it should be used. And I see no connection between the exposition of the students' sex life and sex education classes. In fact, if nothing, sex education classes are supposed to make children more comfortable with the subject.

And I completely disagree with the last point made. As said by Joyce and Daniella, children are exposed to sex all the time, be it in magazines or outdoors. I can assure you that sex education classes will not introduce them to what sex is. These classes are, on the contrary, supposed to educate and prevent against any kind of ill behavior related to sex children might have. They are already exposed to it, might as well educate them.

In order to discuss this issue, it is important to know what is in fact taught in sex education classes. Putting "sex" and "children" in the same sentence does not need to necessarily mean something bad at all times.

Well, think about it this way: she has acrania, therefore, while she was inside her mother's belly, there was a chance - not a certainty - she was anencephalic. However, there was also a chance that she was not - that means there was a chance she could smile, look at her parents lovingly and all those things other children do.

Now, when a baby is confirmed anencephalic while it is still a fetus, this chance vanishes. There is a chance this baby can live, yes, but that is pretty much it. This child will not be able to smile like Vitoria does, and its chances of survival also decrease significantly compared to hers.

My point is, Vitoria was never confirmed anencephalic. This is just something doctors figured, because she had acrania. Anencephaly can be reliably diagnosed, though, according to this website: http://www.anencephalie-info.org/e/faq.php#11

"If a qualified doctor has made an ultrasound scan diagnosis after the 16th week, the likelihood of a misdiagnosis is minimal.". See?

(Letícia Monho e Tamara Travassos)

Death Penalty, as its called nowadays, was first used as a way to subside the population's anger on a crime, giving it a culprit, that was to be hanged in public. As a disguised way of The Politics of Bread and Circuses, the Death Penalty was seen as a show by the mass, which was not questioned, simply enjoyed. However, these days, the reasons to kill someone under the name of the law are highly debated and vary depending on the region.

A citizen, in its essence, is a part of the society in which the person belongs. Therefore, as a fruit of society, every citizen is shaped according to the culture, the actions, the rules of the ambient and the relations to other citizens. If someone commits a serious crime, severe enough to be punished by the Death Penalty, the society holds responsibility on reintegrating this citizen back to a crimeless normal life through imprisonment. Even though, nowadays, prison’s goals are constantly forgotten, it was originally thought as a way to reintegrate a criminal back to society through activities, such as voluntary work, dealing with real life's responsibilities, which works as a simulation of life out of prison.

Thus, prison is originally supposed to be used as a means of reintegration, and not punishment, as some might think. If one thinks that death penalty is "less cruel" than imprisonment, they are, therefore, mistaken, since death penalty is solely used to punish and dispose of a “threatening” existence – that alone makes it crueler. Of course, in most societies, death may seem better than life in prison; that, however, is due to corruption and social issues. If a society that is unable to reintegrate its criminals by imprisonment legalizes death penalty, chaos will inevitably ensue.

In this scenario, innocent lives are bound to be taken, purposelessly or not. When an innocent person is locked in prison, they still may have their life back – not their lost time, but their life. More importantly, their family may have them back. When an innocent person is killed, nothing can be done. It can’t be taken back – regarding death penalty, mistakes are way too dangerous, and ideally can’t be done. We are dealing with human lives, after all. It just sounds way too risky.

Is it worth it to take on that risk, though? Is Death Penalty sufficiently efficient? According to a research published by the “Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology”, it is not: 88 percent of American criminologists believe so, at least, and 87 percent think that the abolition of death penalty would have no major impact on crime rates. This last group may be wrong, however, but not in the way one might think – Canada abolished death penalty in 1976, and homicide rate, in fact, declined.

If it is dangerous and not effective, why do some people still support death penalty? That is because seeing the criminal die may have, as said in the first paragraph, a soothing effect on the victim’s family and on the angered society. However, it is known death penalty cases are dragged out for the longest time, wasting a lot of public money in the process – by the time the convict is judged, only a few people keep track of the trial, and society will most likely have forgotten about it. As for these few people, they must understand killing out the criminal will not bring back the dead, nor fill in any voids they may have. The State must not support vengeance – in fact, how can it possibly punish murder with murder? If the government wants to teach the people that killing is wrong, is death penalty the best way to do this?

We conclude that Death Penalty is dangerous, ineffective and has wrong reasons to be supported. Thus, we are against it.

Actually, Vitoria is not an anencephalic child. She has acrania - that means she does have a brain, though it is, much like her cranium, malformed. According to the mother’s blog, “Since she was born she was considered anencephalic. But some exams done after her birth showed she has a malformed brain, with some non-recognizable structures, and she also presents many reactions.” “Presents many reactions” is the key sentence here.

There is a point that has not been raised yet, regarding not the mother's suffering, but that of the child. If, for instance, orthothanasia is, since 2010, legal so as to cease the patient in persistent vegetative state's suffering (according to Resolution n. 1807/06 of the Federal Council of Medicine), you would imagine the abortion of anencephalic babies should probably be made legal too. That is because for a child to be born, if they are in fact born, for only a measly 45% of the non aborted fetuses survive, they are bound to live in horrible conditions for the few months they actually get to live - the anencephalic children that are known to have lived most have lived for about two years tops. Maybe they are known to be unconscious, but so are people in vegetative state, as far as it goes. In fact, they are unconscious: that brings up the subject of the mother again. If the child is unconscious, why keep the mother's and family's suffering any longer? Abortion may be human beings deciding upon life and death, but so is keeping alive a child that has close to zero chances of survival. It would be pretentious of me to delve into this last point much deeper, though, for "when does life begin?" is a subject largely discussed since the Roman Empire. What I do know and can say, however, is that it is almost sadistic to let a mother carry for a whole nine months in her womb a child that is bound to die very, very early in life. It brings suffering to the mother herself, to the whole family and, though this may raise discussions, to the child as well.