In Psychology, I learned that children see the world in black and white. Stealing is wrong, always. Murder is wrong, always. It's when we hit the late teen years that we start seeing the shades of gray. Stealing is wrong...except when a person is stealing to save another's life. Murder is wrong...except when someone kills a man who raped a child. Hearing this in class really hit me, because I remember the days when I used to see the world like that. It's only been within the past few years that I've been able to truly see the shades of gray.
I used to (and still do) believe that abortion is wrong, and I also believed that it should be illegal. However, now I feel that if a woman absolutely feels like she has to have an abortion, she should be able to do so in a safe, sterile environment where she can have doctors on hand just in case something goes wrong during the procedure. In a similar vein, I believe that abstinance is the best way to go (it is the only 100% effective way of preventing pregnancy and STDs after all), but instead of schools teaching absinance-only sex ed, a better approach would to teach absinance as the better option, but educate teens on contraceptives as a backup plan.
It used to befuddle me that my opinions changed so much in just a couple years, which is why it is so interesting to me that there's an actual biological reason behind this change in mental processes that probably happens to all of us at one point or another. Can I just say that Psychology is the most fun class I have ever taken?
