Questions
The views expressed in the pages that follow are presented only to assist readers
in analyzing issues and in discovering possible consequences of certain decisions.
The analyses of issues does not constitute a recommendation for any particular course of action.
in analyzing issues and in discovering possible consequences of certain decisions.
The analyses of issues does not constitute a recommendation for any particular course of action.
Affirmative action
Animal rights
- Should I allow myself to eat meat?
- Should I kill animals for sport?
- Should laws permit the hunting and killing of animals?
- Should laws protect species from extinction?
- Should laws permit the trapping of animals?
- Should researchers use animals in experiments?
- Should humans keep animals in zoos?
- How should laws regulate the care that owners provide for their pets?
- How should I dispose of unwanted pets?
- Should laws allow experimentation on animals to help determine the effects of drugs on humans?
- Should we be free to use animals as a source for organs for transplantation to humans?
Assassination
Boxing
Business
- What should be the limits on the liability of a business for its products?
- Should businesses employ salespeople?
- Should a company that quits operating in a community compensate the community for the losses produced?
Campaigns, elections and political offices
Capital punishment
- Should laws allow capital punishment?
- Should doctors participate in capital punishment?
- Should laws allow the public to witness executions?
Charity
Civil rights
Crime and corrections
- Should law enforcement officers ever use deception in their efforts to root out crime and bring criminals to justice?
- Should a community maintain a registry of sex offenders?
- Should victims of sex crimes be compensated, if those victims can demonstrate that pornography played a substantial role in provoking the offenses?
- Should laws require castration for rapists?
- Should laws allow the existence of private security forces?
- Should laws allow the building and operation of prisons by private businesses?
- Should a lawyer help to get a client acquitted of a crime if that lawyer is convinced that the client is guilty?
- Should laws require the loser in court to pay all the expenses of the winner?
Domestic partnerships
Drugs
- Should I allow myself to use mind or mood-altering drugs?
- Should laws allow the sale and use of recreational drugs?
- Should laws allow citizens to use marijuana for medical purposes?
- Should laws allow Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada?
- Should laws require drug companies to test their products in children?
- Should laws require testing certain citizens for evidence of drug use?
- When should drug testing be a condition for employment?
Education
- Should the nation have compulsory education?
- Should the grading and promotion of students be based strictly on merit?
- Should there be a national curriculum?
- Should the school year be extended?
- Should vouchers enable parents to select schools for their children?
- Should some schools be run for profit?
- Should schools bus students to give them equal opportunities?
- Should schools be located in the workplace of parents?
- Should authorities in the schools ever be permitted to subject students to corporal punishment?
- Should schools teach about sex?
- Should high schools give contraceptives to students?
- Should school boards mandate the use of books written in 'Black English'?
- Should laws permit private businesses to operate in the schools and hire students to work during school time on school property?
Environment
- How should laws protect the environment?
- Should governments restrict the emissions of greenhouse gases?
- Should there be any restrictions on logging?
- Should I allow myself to use 'eco-terrorism' as a way to protect the environment?
Funding the arts
- Should the government use tax revenues to fund the arts?
- Should the National Endowment for the Arts be abolished?
Gambling
Genetics
- How should laws regulate genetic testing?
- How should laws regulate genetic therapy?
- How should laws regulate genetic engineering?
- Should genetically engineered entities be considered the property of anyone?
- Should 'responsible parties' have access to information regarding the genetic makeup of 'certain individuals'?
- Should genetic testing be used to discover birth defects in fetuses?
- Should laws allow the cloning of a human being?
Health care
- Should governments subsidize health care?
- Should the federal government institute a national health plan?
Housework
Immigration
- How should the nation regulate immigration?
- Should laws require that public education and health benefits be made available to illegal aliens?
- Should English be the official language of the United States of America?
Insurance
- Should the government reimburse citizens for losses due to natural disasters?
- Should states mandate 'pay at the pump' auto insurance?
International relations
Life and death
- Should we try to extend the human life span?
- When is the taking of human life justified?
- Should I allow myself to commit suicide?
- Should laws permit passive euthanasia?
- Should laws permit active euthanasia?
- Should I help a person who wants to commit suicide?
- Should laws permit physicians to perform euthanasia?
Marriage and divorce
- Should we get married?
- Should we make a prenuptial agreement?
- Should laws support the institution of marriage?
- Should we get a divorce?
- Should society approve of divorce?
- Should laws allow same-sex marriage?
Media
Medical ethics
- Should the physician get consent from an adult patient before treating that patient?
- When should a doctor connect a patient to and disconnect a patient from a life-support system?
- Should medical professionals ever put their own health at risk to help a patient?
- Should health-care professionals ever refuse treatment to a patient who cannot pay for it?
- Should regulations allow doctors to make 'self-referrals'?
- Should laws allow some hospitals be run as for-profit businesses?
- Should health care professionals who have treated patients for a communicable disease warn the contacts of those patients about the dangers of being infected?
- Should the government provide and encourage or require immunizations for smallpox?
- Should doctors ever make medical judgments not for the good of the patient but for the good for society?
- Should laws allow the maintenance of databases of names of those who have a communicable, incurable disease?
- Should laws allow foreigners who have a communicable, incurable disease the right to enter the country?
- Should laws prohibit health care workers who have a communicable, incurable disease from being employed in the health care field?
- Should laws require that carriers of a communicable, insurable disease be quarantined?
- Should laws compel the carriers of communicable, insurable diseases to wear a mark that identifies them as such?
- Should laws require the mandatory testing of pregnant women for HIV?
- Should laws require mandatory testing of health care workers for the AIDS virus?
- Should communities permit the operation of needle-exchange programs for IV drug abusers?
- Who should get an organ transplant?
- Should AIDS patients receive organ transplants, if they need them?
- Should laws permit the harvesting of a renewable body part from a donor against his/her will in an effort to save the life of a person who needs the part?
- Should doctors ever prescribe placebos?
- Should experimenters use placebos in their tests of drugs when doing so prevents subjects from deriving the potential benefits from a new medicine?
- Should researchers ever use humans in experiments?
- Should laws in the United States allow stem cell research involving cloning?
- Should laws permit experimentation with embryos?
- Should laws allow the medical use of fetal tissues?
- Should 'responsible parties' have access to information regarding the genetic makeup of 'certain individuals'?
- Should laws require drug companies to test their products in children?
Military draft
Parents and children
- Should parents be licensed?
- Should we have a child?
- Should adoption agencies refuse to place children with applicants above a certain age?
- Should adoption records be open to those who were adopted?
- Should laws or policies prohibit biracial or trans-racial adoptions?
- Should biracial adoptees be free to choose their own racial identity?
- Should trans-racial adoptions be allowed only for couples in which one person is of the same race as the adopted child?
- Should biological parents always have the right to take custody of their children?
- Do grown children have a special duty to support or assist their parents?
- Should society maintain orphanages?
Pornography
Privacy and secrecy
- Should laws allow the surveillance of employees in the workplace?
- Should patients have access to their medical files?
- When should drug testing be a condition for employment?
- Should laws allow the police to search housing projects for illegal weapons and drugs?
- Should names and photographs of newly convicted criminals be publicized?
- Should laws allow the publication of the names of victims of rape?
- Should laws allow telephone companies to make caller ID available to their customers?
- Should manufacturers put 'black boxes'-onboard data recorders-in cars?
- Should laws permit cameras in courtrooms?
- Should laws allow citizens to use encryption for which the government has no key on computer networks?
Reparations for slavery
Reproduction
- Should I allow myself to use birth control?
- When does human life begin?
- Should I allow myself to have an abortion?
- How should laws regulate abortion?
- Should laws allow the donation or sale of eggs to infertile women?
- Should laws compel the semen donor to assume the responsibilities of parenthood for the offspring produced with his sperm?
- Should laws permit surrogate motherhood?
- Should laws allow the production and use of artificial wombs?
Safety
Sexism
Sexual behavior
- Should laws define rape as possible within marriage?
- Should laws permit businesses to offer erotic dancing in private for adults who want it?
- How should laws regulate prostitution?
- Should laws control activities in sex clubs?
- Should society recognize sexual surrogacy as a profession?
- Should society discourage premarital sex?
- Should I have sex only with people I love?
- Should a professional code permit sexual activity between psychotherapist and patient?
- Should society respect homosexuality as much as heterosexuality?
- Should the policies of a school or business require a person to get explicit permission for sexual activity from the prospective partner?
- Should society punish adults who have sex with minors?
- Should companies develop and customers use robotic sexual companions?
Sexual harassment
Smoking
Terrorism
Voting rights
Wages
War
- Should the nation ever go to war?
- Should the nation ever use nuclear weapons?
- How should the nation deal with its stockpile of nuclear weapons?
Wealth
Weapons
- Should laws aim at disarming the civilian population?
- Should laws require the registration of firearms?
- Should ammunition be registered?
- Should the manufacture and sale of ammunition be restricted in any way by the government?