Choice 1: Organize a personal experience around this topic and write a narrative/make a film of your experience. Post it on your blog - ideally with uploads of photos and/or video. + Narrative/Analysis
(IF THE VIDEO DOES NOT APPEAR AT FIRST, PLEASE REFRESH THE PAGE.)
Duration: 16:22 Download Link of Video: Click here to download
*Edit in Thank You end clips: Thank You to Matt, Alina, Chloe, and Davendra.
**Citations of statistics and quotes used in the video can be found here.
Narrative/Analysis
We weave our thoughts into a quilt of frameworks that embody our opinions. These frameworks represent what we decide is just or or evil in this world. Often, expressing one's conviction is easy while, understanding the reasoning behind one's opinion poses as a difficult task. Although difficult, investigating the reasoning behind the opinions we have is well worth the effort because we will be able to better understand what and why we believe certain actions are morally right or unjust. To understand the opinions we express so militantly when our beliefs are ever attacked, we must understand how we are influenced and persuaded by others. Society places blame and injustice on the things it believes deprives it of its natural right and so, the contenders of this of world fight to protect their creed.
Abortion, a controversial topic, stands as a knife to the throat of republican ideologies and, to democrats, stands as an exercise of the right to women to make health decisions for themselves. Republicans and Democrats, both contenders, voice their arguments about abortion with vicious words and visualize their principles and doctrines to persuade the common man to favor one perspective over another. Like these contenders, my peers have their own opinions on why they believe abortion, the law of the land, is acceptable or unacceptable. To further my understanding of why my peers hold true to their sentiments, I have conducted interviews to reveal how some people in society have attempted to persuade and influence my peers of a certain stance on abortion and how my peers decide if abortion is acceptable or unacceptable by presenting to them arguments and statistics that political figures, among others such as family members, pose to attempt to exhort beliefs into their minds.
When asked to express their opinions, my peers had openly acknowledged the lasting influence their parents had had on their beliefs about abortion. It seemed that where you were raised and what you were taught to believe was important in developing your opinions on not only abortion but, other things as well. "I've been going to church my whole life. I've been raised to believe that any child is worth having. It's always a good thing...My parents have taught me that abortion may be a sin but, if one decides to commit such sin, god will forgive if one can repent for oneself" says Matt. Matt had expressed sincere discomfort while talking about abortion but, seemed to regurgitate the beliefs of religion that coincided with his opinion about abortion as if he had both heard and seen these words. To regurgitate a belief, to me, means to submit to conformity - to the common belief. To Matt, the common belief was that of his family's and so, it seemed logical or rather easier for him to express the one perspective he was allowed to explore. We see now that limits, such as religion, create the basis of one's understanding of what is right and wrong. It is true that it is ultimately our choice to believe in what we believe but, this ability is barricaded when we are given only one perspective to argue.
Alina, on the other hand, had said that originally her parents had told her that abortion, under any circumstance, was wrong. For sometime she had believed this statement until she had moved to another place - another city - New York City. Her parent's fire of influence quickly went out as she saw herself surrounded by new beliefs and customs. "Before I had moved to NYC, I was against abortion because my parents had taught me that. After I came to NYC, my opinion changed, and I decided to be pro-choice" says Alina. Was this the conformity that struck Alina as it had Matt? As liberal as NYC may be, could it be that being part of the crowd was easier than to defend one's actual belief? It turns out that Alina's pro-choice stance had another underlying reason - a reason defined by a woman's natural right to make health decision for herself. "I do think that a woman has the right to choose and to control her own body...Ultimately, it's her own choice." As Alina reasons and brings up this natural right of women, we jump into what society distinguishes what an individual's right is.
Americans have been coaxed with ideologies of freedom - of having rights to essentially do and express what they believe. We can ask ourselves how do we decide if abortion is right rather than an offense? In what context is it considered good or bad? "Maybe the mother is not ready to take care of her baby. She needs to have the option to abort" says Alina. It's revealing to recognize that we desire that all the alternatives and options be available to us. For these options would allow for women to calculate the benefits and risks of choice to their advantage. Is it selfish for a woman to want to relieve herself of the financial burden a baby would bring if she could not support the baby? If aborting a baby is to insure the baby will not have a difficult life because the mother is not able to support the baby, is abortion then acceptable? These are certainly important questions to ask. What benefits us the most in a situation will facilitate and dictate our opinions as it would for women who are financially unstable.
I could spend months, maybe years, trying to understand why some people believe abortion is right or wrong. The unfortunate truth is that I will never be able to fully understand. The best we can ever do, as humans who are capable of observing and evaluating, is to slowly unfold the creases of the reasons we place behind our conceptions.
Bianca, I really enjoyed reading your blog. I think you have a very strong argument in your last paragraph, where you make a very good job of presenting us with an argument as to why it is impossible to understand everyone.
ReplyDelete"I could spend months, maybe years, trying to understand why some people believe abortion is right or wrong. The unfortunate truth is that I will never be able to fully understand. The best we can ever do, as humans who are capable of observing and evaluating, is to slowly unfold the creases of the reasons we place behind our conceptions."
Abortion,is an interesting and powerful topic, which has made people argue for as long as its idea existed and it is indeed very interesting to observe how peoples' opinions vary and why there is no way to fully dissect these opinions. The best we can do is indeed, observe and evaluate. You make your opinion clear and your examples support it very well.
Also, after reading your blog, it really made me put myself in perspective and try to evaluate myself from another point of view - one other than my own.
"Was this the conformity that struck Alina as it had Matt? As liberal as NYC may be, could it be that being part of the crowd was easier than to defend one's actual belief? "
This made me indeed wonder where my beliefs come from and explore whether or not it was really easier to give into the society's ideas than stand up for my own. Your point is very thought provoking and it allowed me to try and be somewhat unbiased and dig deeper into the roots of my ideas.
Keep up the good job, your post was very striking and captivating at the same time, as it could make one think. It was also well written and to the point, which made it interesting.
Bianca! You interviewed your peers about abortion, a difficult subject which, unfortunately, seems to become more common in our society. You also wrote an analysis of your interviewees' response and connected their opinions to what happens around us.
ReplyDeleteI value your courage to interview people about such a taboo subject. At places, the questions seem almost uncomfortable but both you and your peers managed to approach them in a mature way.
Your project matters to me because I, myself, know a person who was considering abortion. She lived in Poland but your project showed me that the attitude towards abortion is the same here as it was in my country. I find that interesting and I am glad you gave me an opportunity to compare the subject in two different environments.
Martyna
i like that you pointed out the difficulty in determining whether or not abortion is right or wrong. I like that you also talked about how peoples opinion on abortion is based on their cultural background, religious background and social environment. Being able to understand different peoples perspectives, allows people to be less biased.
ReplyDeleteI would suggest you offer your take on the questions you asked at the end of your paper. I also think it would be nice if you define what right and wrong means to you and what it means to others because people have different perspectives on the meaning of the word.
Reply to Alina:
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you enjoyed my project and understand the main arguments I presented to you. I intended to make my readers re-think and reconsider the reasons behind their opinions and so, I was more than happy to hear that you tried to put your self in a different perspective and evaluate your ideas and opinions. However, I didn't intend for my reader to become unbiased because truthfully, no one person can be un-biased. It's simply impossible because we base our decisions and beliefs on our past experiences and those that were told to us. I hope that others become as captivated as you were after you read my project. I'll be sure to look out for your insights and criticisms in the near future!
Reply to Abdul M:
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost, thank you for spending a generous time for writing such a lengthy comment. I truly appreciate it. I feel accomplished to know that you fully understood what aspects of abortion I wanted to focus on. I had unintentionally chosen people of different races to interview but, now that you've pointed it out, I see the benefits of doing so. Diversity or rather, opposing view points are always good to have in a persuasive paper. I'll definitely make it necessary to provide all the possible perspectives of a topic the next time.
I hope to create more writing pieces that are important to you so that my writing cannot only capture your interest but, provoke you to take a step forward in your actions as person with opinions subject to change or influence. To answer your first question - doing this project definitely helped me evaluate myself and how I would argue my stance to an opposer. Like that of my interviewees, I have been influenced by my parents and most likely propaganda. My opinions on abortion, as well those on other topics, are subject to change as the surrounding popular influence changes along with them.
Thank you for saying that my post was better than yours but, I think that's degrading to you and your work. Your work was especially revealing and I applaud you for your use of statistics, an area of which my project lacked in. I will take into account for my next project that my reader will not always have prior knowledge to the topic I choose to talk about. It would have been ideal if I had defined what abortion was. Though I mentioned some statistics in my film, I should've put more statistics in my paper like you've just suggested. Although offering more information about how political parties feel about abortion would be beneficial, I wanted to focus more on the opinions of my peers. I will try my best to better educate and engage those who choose to read my posts.
Reply to Martyna:
ReplyDeleteThank you for recognizing that the topic I chose to write about and explore as difficult and controversial. However, the difficulty of my topic does not make up for my lack of creativity as many people have decided to explore the same topic in the same way. I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you define abortion as being taboo...When you have the time, please help me understand what you mean by saying abortion is taboo. What makes it taboo?
I assure you that my peers were very comfortable answering questions - it was the camera that probably put them under pressure. I find that my peers approach the subject with certain prior knowledge - knowledge that I surprised to have known that they had. I've never actually known someone who was in the process of deciding if she wanted an abortion or not but, I'm glad that you were able to connect your experience of knowing someone who had to my project. I'd really like to explore what the attitude towards abortion is like in Poland. Although I am sure that some opinions on abortion in Poland are similar to that of the U.S., I also know that there are separate opinions and reasoning I have not heard of yet. Like you have given up your spare time to read this, I can only ask you, with gratitude, to give me the opportunity to learn about these topics in the perspective of someone who was not originally from this country.
Reply to Stephanie:
ReplyDeleteI agree that being able to understand different perspectives, allows people to be less biased. However, my paper was far from objective. I'd like to have been more objective but, it was difficult to find people to interview who were not liberal. Offering my own take on the questions I asked at the end of my paper would have been helpful in letting the reader know what had interested me in talking about abortion. When it comes time for me to conduct another experiential project, I will definitely be sure to answer the questions I pose to my own readers. It wouldn't be fair of me to ask if I, myself, have not answered the questions yet.
I hadn't thought about defining what right and wrong meant to me or to the people I interviewed. Thank you for pointing this out because I realize that making the distinction is important in understanding an opinion wholly. It's even more so important because people do have different perspectives on the meaning of the words and to assume that all my readers have a generic definition of right and wrong is bad. Thank you for taking the time to read my post and your criticisms are always welcome!