Key Difficulties of Writing a Research Paper on Abortion
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There is hardly any doubt that writing on abortion is hard. If you don’t have any difficulties writing on this topic, then you are in the minority. For all the others, we have written this post outlining the key difficulties of writing a research paper on abortion and how to counteract them best.
Difficulty #1: Not knowing which side to take
If you have never faced the issue yourself (be grateful for this), you are badly prepared for writing about it. The bad news is, you can hardly write a paper without forming an opinion first. The good news is, you will form an opinion quite naturally in the course of your research. Therefore, our recommendation is to do a significant amount of research before you decide which idea to use for your thesis. By that time, you should be confident in what you believe.
Difficulty #2: Inability to find anything new to add to the conversation
The topic is very old, and one can’t even imagine how many papers have been written about it. Short and long, for and against, passionate and purely scientific. It’s no wonder that you might feel helpless at some point. It seems that all that could be said has been said already before you.
Do not despair. First, read as much as you can on the matter and let your mind roam. The craziest and the most brilliant of ideas might visit you while your thoughts are far away from the subject matter.
The thing is, your brain processes the information it receives from the outer world almost non-stop, so even if you don’t make any focused effort to come up with a topic, your brain can produce an idea based on the information you have received.
And if you fail to find something unique, don’t let it get to you, too. It’s the clear flow, the appropriate structure and the appropriate nature of the arguments you choose to support your statement that define its success.
Difficulty #3: The danger to use an inappropriate source
Due to the nature of the topic, the sources you can use for research are numerous, which increases the odds of using a “bad” one. A bad source is the one that produces opinion-based information that has no or little relation to facts.
The safe bet is to use sources that operate in cold hard facts – laws, court cases, medical journals, statistical sheets, etc. A passionately formulated opinion can be used to draw attention or illustrate a point, but under no circumstances can it be used to build your whole argumentation on.
Difficulty #4: Elaborating against your reader’s opinion
With a rare exception, you can hardly predict your reader’s (professor’s) views on the matter. And if a certain bias exists, you might involuntarily provoke a negative reaction. Even a professional who usually doesn’t let personal views mix up with work could have a slight prejudice against a paper that violently opposes his or her views.
The safest course is to sound purely neutral. “Neutral” as in operating in facts and figures, avoiding any bold statements, and showing respect to opposing views. It is hard to have any negative feelings towards a person that, respectfully, maintains an opposing point of view and is ready to support this view with carefully selected facts. If anything, it gains respect.
Difficulty # 5: Thinking you should study all aspects of the problem
Abortion is a complicated issue, and there are reasons to support it, as well as have arguments against. As an intelligent person, you might be tempted to try and study every aspect of the problem, which usually ends up in a rather scattered piece. If you try going too broad, you will end up lacking the focus and the power of persuasion.
You should do the check when choosing a thesis statement. Is it specific enough? Will you be able to make a point and respect the word limit? If you have doubts that your key idea is not narrow enough, then it probably isn’t.
Last but not least, remember that an abortion paper is, in fact, a regular paper on a rather clichéd topic. No need to re-invent the wheel. Approach it with the same cool mind and reasonable thinking as you would any other paper.
