You may have noticed that I don't often use my little corner of the blogosphere to engage in any sort of discussion of hot button issues. I don't often bring to light things that are important to me because, honestly, I don't want to argue. Today, however, I am sharing with you a letter from my mother-in-law, who is far more fearless in her activism. She is hard at work trying to gain funding for to bring a mobile pregnancy center to Delaware; the need for this Stork Bus is apparent to me as both a Catholic and someone who is trained in birth work, and that is why I whole-heartedly welcomed her guest post. Here is what she writes:
Dear Catholics,
How would
you like to participate in a stunt that, if it comes off, will REALLY piss the
heck out of the folks who profit from abortion, like Planned Parenthood and
their kin?
My name is Rae Stabosz. Some of you know me. Most of you
don’t. I would like to interrupt your kitten videos, your reddit snark and your
all-purpose interwebs fun and bring you a bold display of naked desperation.
You don’t have to label yourself “pro-life”. Labels can
sound like polemic. This is a non-political stunt for anybody who holds to this
equal care principle: in an unwanted pregnancy, both the pregnant woman AND her
unborn child deserve equal respect and care.
Here’s the
stunt:
Between now and Sunday, November 30 – we internet White Hats
will pool our resources and fund a SINGLE mobile pregnancy center equipped with
ultrasound!
· It will be
beautifully appointed and staffed by professionals; it will park outside of
abortion clinics in Delaware and offer FREE ULTRASOUND, FREE PREGNANCY TESTING
and FREE COUNSELING to women in crisis.
· It will also
park at fairs, church festivals, and other happy community events, educating
the public to the marvels of ultrasound technology and what it shows of
intrauterine development.
· All we want to
build the bus and put it on the road is $120,000 in capital expenses. We will
get the operating expenses on our own! (there’s a reason for that).
You
may have heard of Save the Storks, the national organization founded by Joe
Baker in 2011. Save the Storks is taking the country by storm. Its mission is
“to equip pregnancy centers to more effectively connect with
abortion-vulnerable women ... by providing Stork Buses — mobile medical units —
so that pregnancy centers can offer free sonograms and pregnancy tests wherever
women need them.”
Two
months ago, an eclectic group representing two of the three counties of Delaware
founded the Delaware Stork Bus, Inc. Our intention is to carry out the Save the
Storks vision in Delaware. We have signed a contract with Joe and Co. We are ready to rumble. And we want your
help.
We
have put together a crowd sourcing campaign on GoFundMe with a goal of
$120,000.
BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT... I can hear you say.
· “Why should
I help you? Aren’t there other groups in
the country trying to get a Stork Bus off the ground?”
· “I live in
Kokomo, Indiana, home of the Kokomo Mantis. Why should I care about little
Delaware?”
Fair enough. Here’s where “stunt” part comes in. I DO live in Delaware, and I DO want to pull
out all the stops to get this Stork Bus up and running. I freely admit that it
is self-serving.
But if the stunt takes off we could scare the pants off of
Planned Parenthood and fund more than just one little Delaware bus!
“For the children of
this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light, “ Jesus
tells us in the gospel of Luke. And
isn’t it the truth?
No Stork Bus project has used crowd funding to our
knowledge, and we hope to establish a precedent. The secular world has been a lot quicker to
harness the power of crowd sourcing than we have been. Witness the success of the ALS Bucket
challenge. In two weeks’ time it made four million dollars for the ALS
Association and its 38 chapters. It did this by harnessing the power of social
media and the fun of seeing people (especially celebrities) have buckets of ice
dumped on one another.
Yet the ALS Association supports using human embryos for
stem cell research, and so Catholics and others were not able to embrace this
as readily as some.
$120,000 is just 4800 donors giving $25 each. What if the
White Hat blogosphere gives more??
Here is the deal, and it’s a good one:
If we raise more than $120,000 between now and the end of
November, we will give 100% of all additional monies collected to the national
Save the Storks project!
That’s right! We are not greedy. This is our first
fundraiser, and we are targeting our capital expenses only. We will trust in our fundraising acumen to
raise the first three year’s operating expenses on our own. We came up with
this stunt not just for Delaware Stork Bus, but for all of us. We want to show
the abortion industry that we can get a fully-outfitted Stork Bus on the road
in a little more than two-months time. That will have them shaking in their stylish
yet affordable boots!
We don’t want this to be a Zero Sum Game. If YOU give to US, we don’t want you to worry
that other Stork Buses will suffer.
Save the Storks gives grant money as part of its mission. So
if our little stunt goes anywhere, and we collect any extra we make above our
capital goal of $120,000, we will give the rest to Joe and his good people to
give in grants as they see fit.
Most of you don’t know me from Eve, even though I’ve been an
internet presence since before there was an Internet! (international PLATO
system in the late 70’s, anyone?) I have left a 20+ years trail on the
Internet. Look me up and see if I seem
trustworthy.
Look our entire Board of Directors up! You’ll find some
surprises!
Yes, you will find that we have paid our dues. We are
trustworthy. Children of light:
allons-y! No need to be less sensible
than the children of the world!
Rae Stabosz, with the Delaware Stork Bus Board of Directors:
Evelyn Baldwin
Susan Bullock
Nicole Collins
Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich
Ed Taubert
Tim Werbrich
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