The Black Hills Pioneer runs the following courtesy photo in last Friday's edition to promote the Bella Pregnancy Resource Center's 10th annual benefit Dessert Gala:
Bruce Byrum and his bank staff must like ice cream more than I do. $40 for dessert is a bit steep for me, but First Interstate Bank's $1000 bought three tables (24 seats total) and, I guess, some extra sprinkles.
Or you could look at the bank's contribution as covering one-fifth of the listed fee for the Gala's keynote speaker, Carol Everett:
Everett comes to Spearfish Thursday to expiate her sordid past of disturbingly shoddy and unethical practices as an administrator at Texas abortion clinics from 1977 to 1983. Everett will tell her questionable story and ask her eagerly credulous audience to conclude that her past individual experience and lack of conscience thirty years ago prove that all abortion providers and defenders of safe, legal abortion are really conniving, coercive profiteers.
Everett will then fly home to Texas with a hefty speaking fee in her pocket. If her posted speaking fee applies, make as much telling stories and soaking in applause for an hour or two than she did back in Texas in the early 1980s for lining up 200 abortions.
If we adjust for inflation, I suppose her current speaking fee is only equivalent to what she'd be making for maybe 88 abortions today. But hey, entrepreneurs, let's consider the business case. You could open a clinic, pay staff, put up with picketers and physical attacks and stigma, all while trying to provide legal and safe medical care to women in need.
Or you could skip the rent, the staff, the medical equipment, the licenses, and just buy a couple nice pantsuits. You could fly to meetings, rehash the same story you've been telling for over twenty years, and be feted with VIP receptions and pious adulation.
Now you tell me which industry is the bigger racket: women's health care or the abortion crusaders' speaking circuit?
Related: Everett also believes that feminism is a lie that destroys the family.
Slightly tangential: While reading up on the Bella Pregnancy Resource Center (one of only three crisis pregnancy centers listed on the South Dakota Department of Health's certified registry of incorrect and coercive counseling providers, I found this useful proof that government spending creates jobs:
In 2005 the NHPCC was awarded a three-year Community Based Abstinence Education Grant (CBAE) by the federal government. With the grant came necessary changes. Within a couple of months the NHPCC grew from a small volunteer organization with three part-time employees to a large organization with four full-time employees and seven part-time employees ["History of Bella Pregnancy Resource Center"].
Take that
Ugh. I guess I'm gonna have to move my accounts. Maybe I'll send them an email first, asking for a justification. I'll let you know if I hear anything! :)
I would love to hear the response... although I get the feeling that for every person who might pull an account from FIB over their sponsorship of Ms. Everett's propaganda, there might be someone else who would happily move an account over in support. Do keep me posted!