RecCenter.com

Gay Marriage: It should be allowed. IT IS ALL ABOUT LOVE, regardless of gender, age, race, nationality, height etc. When the government refuses to recognize homosexual marriage/civil unions, they are injecting THEIR specific religious beliefs of the population as a whole. For example; both my mother and my aunt are Christians but my mother thinks gay marriage should be legal while my Aunt does not, so two people can be of the same religion and have unique views. Just because a politician thinks a certain way, it does not mean that all of the constituents concur. The marriage and/or relationship of a couple separate from your own does not affect you in anyway unless you are too nosy and insist on prodding and interfering in other people's lives. The elderly and the infertile cannot procreate naturally, should they be allowed to marry? Yes. Why? Because the ability to procreate is not a factor in the ability to marry. And stating that gay marriage will lead to interspecies marriage is simply asinine. Animals cannot enter into legally binding contracts, cannot consent and do not have the presence of mind or the cognitive abilities to marry anyone. To argue such is an indication of irrational thought and personal bias.

Abortion: It should ALWAYS be legal. What happens inside a woman's womb is her business. Her brain, heart, womb and skin are all hers and no one else's. Fetuses are referred to as such because there is a distinct difference between a zygote, an embryo, a fetus, and a newborn. The line of life has to be drawn somewhere and BIRTH seems a logical and efficient place to do so, considering the definition of birth according to Princeton university is "the time when something begins (especially life)". Religion has no place in science typically because science often contradicts religion. Everything short of a newborn is an accumulation of living cells...it has yet to finish developing and cannot survive outside the mothers womb (aside from premature births but even those have a risk of death without medical intervention). The reasons for an abortion are unique to each situation and we have no right to judge. I decided to carry to term but just because I did, doesn't mean that every woman has to.

Cloning: Cloning should be legal as long as the cells used were obtained with the permission of the donor. However, if time and/or testing were to show that cloning caused significant health risks to the clone, then it should be outlawed. There is also a serious potential for abuse so if made legal, there would have to be serious and specific guidelines set in place. While clones would be genetically identical to an individual, they would have their own rights, feelings and emotions. Cloning seems a little unnecessary since we don't have a population deficiency and there is in-vitro fertilization. But being difficult and frivolous is not illegal.

And with Therapeutic Cloning, Cloning and Stem Cell research are essentially hand-in-hand. TC and stem cell research should be legal. Therapeutic cloning involves replacing the DNA of an embryo and replacing it with the DNA of the person who needs a transplant, then allowing the embryo to grow for 2 weeks. Then the stem cells are extracted and encouraged to grow into whatever organs are needed. This procedure could save millions of lives and throughout this process, the fetus was NEVER IN A WOMB. And while embryonic stem cells are better then adult stem cells, adult stem cells can be used. Stem cell research can be likened to human dissection of the 18 and 19 centuries. Dissection of the human body to learn more about it used to be illegal, and body snatching became common. Now we now much more about the human anatomy because of it, autopsies are are a daily occurrence and people donate their bodies to science. Without an intricate knowledge of the human body, we cannot cure diseases, heal injuries, or learn what is healthiest for us, among other more numerous examples. To withhold SCR from society is denying ourselves the knowledge needed to improve the quality of life.