Blog for Choice Day 2010
Make [abortion] safe, legal, and rare … And make childbearing safe, economically supported, and surrounded by a loving community that celebrates the mystery and miracle of life and that honors and rewards the parent or parents who have undertaken the difficult and beautiful task of raising children.
…it’s this Friday, January 22nd and this blog will be participating. So be sure to come back next week to check out my take on Dr. George Tiller’s slogan ”Trust Women” (Dr. Tiller was tragically murdered last year). You might be surprised with my take (which will be from a communications perspective; hint: I’m not a big fan of the frame “choice”).
Below is the description of what “Blog for Choice Day 2010″ is about that is up on the NARAL site:
Join us on Friday, January 22, 2010 – the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade – for the fifth annual Blog for Choice Day!
What is Blog for Choice Day?
Each year, NARAL Pro-Choice America poses a question to pro-choice bloggers before the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and then asks them to blog their answer on January 22.
Blog for Choice Day provides us with an opportunity to raise the profile of reproductive rights in the blogosphere, all the while celebrating Roe’s 37th anniversary. Plus, it’s a great way to let your readers and the mainstream media know that a woman’s right to choose is a core progressive value that must be protected and advanced.
Last year more than 500 people participated in this effort. We hope you will join us this year!
If you don’t have a blog, you can still participate! You can post your response in a Note on Facebook, or tweet your response on Twitter and use the hashtag #bfcd.
This year’s topic
In honor of Dr. George Tiller, who often wore a button that simply read, “Trust Women,” this year’s Blog for Choice question is:
What does Trust Women mean to you?
Let us know that you’ll be participating by filling out the form below. We’ll publish a list of everyone who’s blogging. Be sure to tag your posts with “Blog for Choice” to show all your readers that you’re joining in.
Reusable Bags: The BETTER Choice
Here’s a rustic print ad I did with the help of my friend Saira who modeled for me-thank you Saira! (this was part of an assignment that I did for a Communications class I’m currently taking):
Paper AND plastic are BOTH bad choices for your health
These are the basic elements of the ad:
Attention grabber: bright colors in the fruit and vegetables
Appeal: fruit, healthy living, relatable to you (you could see yourself doing what Saira is doing).
Narrative: the ad asks the question that you often hear at the grocery store: “paper or plastic?” It then urges you to be different, to “step outside of the box” and to support and pick “the better choice”: reusable bags.
Call to action: it asks you to reject the use of paper AND plastic bags so you can instead use reusable bags; it also invites you to visit the site www.healthebay.org/store so you can get your own reusable bag. In the future, the site could change to something like healthebay.org/healthyfuture (Heal the Bay does not have a site that has such a name … yet) that could be a centralized online center for people to take action (like send letters of support to newspapers and legislators or the like) on various issues dealing with marine debris. Ideally, the center would reinforce the idea that it’s going to take all of us to solve the problem of plastic bags polluting our environment, working together: 1) through legislation that taxes the use of plastic and paper bags to discourage usage, 2) cleanup efforts, and 3) reclycling campaigns; and that if you take one element out (because of pressure from powerful moneyed interests), the efforts will most likely fail to solve much.
I’m also trying to frame the situation very clearly with this ad with some long-term messaging:
- Plastic AND paper bags = bad for your health (because it impacts your quality of life).
- Reusable bags = healthy living, promising future, protecting your children from pollution.
Sure, the ad is not commercial-quality, but I think it gets the point across very effectively nevertheless.
PS Don’t forget to click on the picture of the print ad above: it takes you to a video that CurrentTV aired about the problem of plastic bag pollution in our rivers and ocean.
