Not ad hominem, because that has to be directed at a person. Probably not a red herring, because that involves misdirection and clues, which seems out of order for this type of work. Poisoning the well involves making further phrases seem stupid or pointless by statements made to start. A slippery slope is an action or idea that leads to problems and issues to come, and in this case i think that applies.
The writer/author uses an appeal to emotion by portraying her family as abandoned by policy makers
<em><u>Answer:</u></em>
b) The comma attempts to join two independent clauses.
<em><u>Explanation:</u></em>
When two ideas come together and either one of them can stand by itself as its own, independent sentence, then the use of the comma is correct:
Comma + a conjunction (and, but, for, nor, yet, or, so)
