Tuesday, March 20, 2012

(assignment #4) Blog Critique

As stated in class, the blog selections were pretty poor, however, I did find a great article that got my wheels turning. Author Emily Cadik wrote an article on her blog titled, "Race to the Bottom: A Round-Up of Pre-Abortion Torment Legislation Nationwide." I do not agree with her every point, but I enjoy the prospect of dissecting her post.

One of Cadik’s points is that in Tennessee they have a proposed bill that would make public a lot of information about the doctors performing abortions and quite a bit of individual information about the women getting them. At first glance, I felt this possible bill would be great for tracking information related to abortions. However, Cadik makes an extremely valid point that in smaller cities or towns you might as well be writing down the woman's name and address and asking for confrontations. The information could be misused. I really enjoyed her point on this tidbit of information.

Cadik also stated that, "the sponsor of Alabama's ultrasound bill is actually the vice president of an ultrasound equipment company." The way she noted this fact was with a negative connotation. However, if you think logically, there is nothing for the sonogram company to gain from this legislation, their company is not directly affected if women choose to keep their babies or choose to abort them. Also logically, the people who make sonogram machines have their own individual feelings and thoughts about life, death and babies. It is easy to assume that people who are truly passionate about their work in this field most likely value life and it would make sense that they would likely use their funds to support the pro-life side of the argument. I feel Cadik is reaching too far and trying too hard to make an innocent fact appear sinister.

On the other hand, I did appreciate Cadik's last comment about the amendment that has been introduced in Virginia about men's health and Viagra. This brings up the whole argument that has been ongoing lately about how the Legislature and Congress are hyper focusing on women's health (Abortions, contraception, etc) and their lack of focus on men's health. It really is becoming a sexist issue and it has taken quite a turn from where I thought the abortion topic would ever have ventured.

As for Cadiks audience, obviously she is writing to a more liberal crowd that is clearly against abortion. Though I agree with her stance for the most part, I feel her argument was weak and could have been more clearly defined with other examples. I would say that Cadik is pretty credible. It appears the blog itself is written by a staff that is potentially more journalistic in nature and not just some person with opinions writing a personal blog. She also did a great job at linking to outside articles to back up her points. Overall, good article, but she could have used more hard examples instead of soft 'finger pointing' type stuff. It almost read like a frustrated teenager who just found out some 'tasty tidbits' but what they really found pointless scraps.