Friday, December 9, 2011

So I Guess I'm a Liberal Now

This post is highly opinionated.Sorry if you don't agree with my opinions.
So I actually don't care that much for politics. I don't follow them, and I know I need to be an educated voter and blah blah blah, but whatever. Politics just isn't something that interests me. In the eternal scheme of things, politics as they are here and now aren't gonna matter. At all. I actually just came up with that as my justifying reason for not caring about politics. The big reason though is that it just doesn't interest me. Some people aren't interested in history, some people aren't interested in math, some people aren't interested in science. I'm not interested in politics. I will leave politics to the politicians, and you leave me to my science and history, and family raising (though that's not starting for a little while). From what little I know about politics however, I consider myself a conservative. I have mostly conservative views, but in the words of my husband the other day, apparently I'm "such a liberal." Here's why. I took MMBio 240 this past semester (from Dr. Bridgewater btw, I highly recommend her in case you have to take that class; it's really difficult subject matter, but she makes it pretty easy to get an A), which is molecular biology, and in the last two days of class, we discussed embryonic stem cell research a little bit. Now I know this is a touchy subject, but I decided I support embryonic stem cell research. In class, we talked about how those stem cells are harvested, and this is what our professor told us. She told us that they take eggs from infertile women, fertilize them in vitro, keep the ones that take, and then implant a few of them in the mother and see if she gets pregnant. The rest they keep in a freezer in case it doesn't work, or the mother can donate them. Now I think this issue somewhat goes a long with the issue of abortion (which I do NOT support by the way, and I know it's allowed by the church, but I wouldn't even get an abortion if I was raped, and if the pregnancy endangered my life or the life of my child, I would consider it a very difficult decision), in that it regards human life. When I talked to Andrew about what we talked about in class, he told me he doesn't support it because those eggs have the potential to become human beings. It's really all a matter of when the spirit enters the body (which I think  is when the heart starts beating, but I guess it could also be when the sperm fertilizes the egg, and if that were true it would invalidate my whole argument), and if the spirit doesn't enter the body till the heart starts beating then why the heck should we not take advantage of stem cell research? It's true that our eggs have the potential to become human beings, but we have hundreds of thousands of eggs in our ovaries. I'm certainly not going to have hundreds of thousands of children. Those eggs are just going to sit in our ovaries and die, or be expelled from our body, and only anywhere from one to ten (hopefully not that many though, but if that's how many kids I'm supposed to have then alright) will actually become children, so why shouldn't they be used for something good? So much good can be done with those stem cells. Lives could be saved. And in case you think I'm going against the church for supporting stem cell research, the church actually doesn't have a position on stem cell research. In my MMBio class we read the church's statement about it and it was very pointedly worded to say that they have no opinion whatsoever. If the church came out with a statement in the future saying we don't support stem cell research, then I would change my opinion to support that, but since the church hasn't said anything for or against it, then I'm all for it. You don't have to agree with me, that's just what I think. And don't start trying to argue with me and tell me I'm wrong, cause that is just my opinion and I am entitled to it. You're entitled to yours as well, and I'm not going to try and put you down because of it.
The other issue that I'm apparently liberal about it donating my body for educational purposes and/or science. I actually kind of want to. I'm not gonna need it after I'm dead, and when we're resurrected, I'm gonna get it all back in its perfect form, so why not donate it to help people learn, and to gain a greater understanding of the human body? Andrew doesn't want me to, so we'll see if I actually do. I'm not planning on dying for a while though, so I have time to decide. Even if I don't end up donating my whole body, I'll for sure donate organs after I die.
Finally, I'm kind of tree hugger, but only in that I like to recycle and conserve energy and take care of our earth. And the reason I think recycling and conserving energy is liberal is because my roommate from freshman year was the absolute most conservative person you will ever meet (if she found out someone was liberal, she automatically stopped liking them, which I think is ridiculous), and she never ever recycled and left the lights on in our dorm all the time. It drove me crazy. Lots of things about her drive me crazy, but we don't need to go into that. Though I guess those things don't necessarily have to do with her being conservative, they could have just been due to her complete disregard for other people. And by other people I mean the people who actually have to pay for our utilities (cause we didn't have to) and for people who are gonna have to deal with landfills in the future, though it seemed she had a complete disregard for other people in general. Anyway, I said I wouldn't go into that.
So that's why I'm a liberal now. But only in those things, cause those are my only liberal views. That I know of anyway, like I said, I don't know much about politics. I'm 95% sure I'm overall conservative though.
*Wrap*

1 comment:

  1. You crack me up! I am laughing out loud! I do admire how open you are in sharing your EVERY thought without guile or pretense--you are a lot like your father that way. A wise man (Uncle Kelly) once said, "Just because you can say anything you want, doesn't mean you should..." MY opinion is that some things (about people) are better written in a private journal than in a public blog. Just because it is your opinion doesn't mean it can't hurt another person. And I love you...

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