Ethan Johnson blog #2

I grew up in a small town in Southwestern Minnesota, a town filled with god-fearing, bible-thumping, loving people.  My home county is consistently one of the "reddest" counties in Minnesota when it comes to elections.  Looking back on my childhood in town "X", I realize how relevant Lewontin's interpretation of science and how it shapes our everyday lives.  I can see clearly how it is used as a tool to separate people into natural and unnatural groups.  In this small town people are more divided by which CHRISTIAN church they belonged too than their gender or race.  With this such division, the topic of abortion had two narratives: the pro-life, natural group, people, and the people who held the belief in pro-choice, the unnatural people.  The overwhelming pro-life narrative was so overbearing that we did not hear active support for pro-choice ideas; even when said ideas were heard, the person was LABELED as cruel or heartless.  

The people that held the pro-life beliefs always said they had science on their side and that people that disagreed were ignoring science.   The science that I would hear is that a fetus develops a heartbeat roughly 3 weeks after conception, which is a true statement.  This is how science is being used as a tool to further a social agenda in my story.  

Now, I had problems living in this ideological, oppressive town.  I was constantly skeptical (I would have made Descartes proud).  I made "enemies" quite frequently by saying things such as: "I think the churches are stupid", "the government is not to be trusted", and there is more to this abortion science than just a heartbeat at 3 weeks.  I would constantly argue with my peers about abortion because they refused to accept or see the whole picture that I was attempting to lay out.  I have the opinion that abortion is perfectly acceptable until the fetus has reached a stage in development after which it can survive outside of the womb on its own, which is roughly 24 weeks.  A far cry from the 3 week heartbeat narrative that everyone else was throwing at me.  I was unnatural to them.  For many, I would guess they believed I should have attended after-school Catholic studies more, attended Sunday service more often, or maybe my parents did not raise me to hold to correct beliefs.  I was not in the norm for my small town but I did not let any label define me; I knew my ideas were greatly accepted elsewhere because of technology (the internet and social media), and maybe it was only a matter of time before more people were willing to see the whole picture.  In a way my life was shaped through these transgressions because I neither fear holding beliefs that go against the norm, nor do fear being skeptical of any and all ideas presented to me.  The intellectual struggle I experienced in my hometown helped shape me into the person I am today.

To many, I fear, science is seen as more than black and white; it is something that has many interpretations and can mean many things for them.  But I view science as black and white and maybe some gray.  To me, there is a right and wrong answer and in between there is a little room left (the gray area) for one to be skeptical.  Science is not something that can be picked apart into pieces to be used separately to further your agenda!