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PRO-LIFE BILLBOARDS SAVE LIVES, SAYS KUHARSKI

Defend Life Lecture Series

Last year, Prolife Across America put up 4,250 billboards in 36 states.

Every billboard features a color photo of a winsome baby, a positive, pro-life message, and an 800-Hotline for Help phone number.

The billboards save babies’ lives, says Prolife Across America’s founder, Mary Ann Kuharski.

In Defend Life-sponsored talks February 9 and 10, Mrs. Kuharski recounted instances such as the call she received from a trucker who had seen one of the signs.

“My girlfriend just told me she was pregnant,” the trucker said.  “We’re not ready to have children, so I told her, ‘Get rid of it.’”

Responding to the message on the billboard, he then asked, “Is it true that the baby’s heartbeat starts at 24 days?”

“I said ‘Yes,’” recalled Mary Ann.  “There was a long pause.  Then he said, ‘Well, I guess we can’t do it.’”

Prolife Across America started small, back in 1989.  Mary Ann had been volunteering as a Birthright counselor in her hometown of Minneapolis.

“It used to frustrate me no end that there were so many girls that didn’t know we existed.  

“Women were coming in who had already had abortions, and some Birthright centers and pregnancy clinics were closing down because no one knew about them,” she said.

Kuharski and her fellow pro-lifers tried to get their message out with radio and TV ads, but they were expensive, and subject to the on/off button and the remote control.

So they decided to try billboards.  Mary Ann went to the Knights of Columbus, who gave her $1,200, and “wrote to everyone I knew,” asking for help.

The first set of billboards – 42 in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area – went up in 1990.

“They were primitive,” said Kuharski, “just black and white – no pictures.  They said, ‘A baby is a baby is a baby:  Listen to the heartbeat – 24 days.’”

Mary Ann called the new enterprise Pro-Life Minnesota, and as donations flowed in, the billboards increased in number and got a little fancier.

But, she said, “I had been a housewife for 25 years.  I knew nothing about advertising; all I had was zeal!”

Her naïvete nearly got her sued.

When one of Pro-Life Minnesota’s bigger donors gave birth to twins, they decided to use their photos on a billboard, with the clever message, “Save the Twins:  Heartbeat at 24 days.”

The caption played on the then-uncertain state of the Minnesota Twins baseball team, which faced possible demise.

“We just happened to use the same colors as the Twins in the ad,” said Mary Ann.

When 250 “Save the Twins” billboards went up across Minneapolis-St. Paul, “Dave St. Peters [the Twins president] called me up and threatened to sue,” she said.

Amidst all the brouhaha, Minneapolis’ liberal Star-Tribune sent a reporter to Kuharski’s house for an interview.

“Who designs your billboards?” he demanded.

“I said, ‘That’s easy!  The Holy Spirit.’”

Mary Ann meant it.  Her strong faith has been the inspiration for her extensive pro-life work, and her mainstay while raising 13 children, including six adopted children, of mixed race, with “special needs.”

“Not everybody should have 13 kids, and not everyone should adopt,” she acknowledged.

Still, she felt that the insights she has gained from her experience were worth sharing – so she wrote four books about them.

“I was loving my role as an at-home mom until I heard all this propaganda from the feminists saying what we’re doing isn’t as important as going out and getting a career and a paycheck,” she explained.

Her first book, Raising Catholic Children, introduces readers to each of her children, delves into the wealth of funny and poignant anecdotes inevitable in a large family, and offers practical, down-to-earth advice on subjects ranging from nursing to sibling rivalry to assigning family chores.

Her second book, Parenting with Prayer, offers the basics so many Catholic parents lack today because of the poor religious education they themselves received.

“Some parents want to be good Catholic parents, but they’ve never heard of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy” and other fundamental teachings of the Church, said Kuharski.

Even she and her husband John had to learn as they went.

“I’m from the ‘60s, when we [Catholics] threw all that out,” she said.

But with all the problems and needs of her children, especially the adopted ones, who had suffered neglect and physical and emotional abuse in the past, she said, “I told John, we had better start praying the rosary.”

John recommended starting with just one decade.

They began during Lent, and gradually added a decade until they were reciting the full rosary every night.

The kids complained when Lent was over and they were still saying the rosary.  But when a next-door neighbor girl, who was always over at their house, begged to say it along with them, they were impressed.

“Our children realized how important it was when they saw how much it meant to her,” said Mary Ann.

“The rosary is what kept us together and what saved us, because we had lots of kids and lots of problems,” she concluded.

Books three and four, Building a Legacy of Love and Outnumbered:  Raising 13 Kids with Humor and Prayer, tackle such topics as coping with teenagers, TV watching, adoption and chastity.

The Kuharski family has followed some basic principles:  “We eat together, play together, pray together and work together,” said Mary Ann.

“Some parents say, ‘I don’t care about anything else, just so my kids are happy.’

“Really?  Show me someone who is happy all the time and I’ll show you someone who is either on drugs or mentally ill.”

Our number one goal is to get our kids – and our grandkids – to heaven, she cautioned.

“You need to pray for them, and let them know that’s our goal.”

Now that the Kuharski children are mostly grown – Mary Ann has just three still at home, in high school and college – she has more time to travel and promote Prolife Across America (which Pro-Life Minnesota became as the billboards spread to other states).

She finds inspiration in Mother Teresa’s admonition, “We’re not here to solve the problems of the world, but to point to the glory of God.”

“That’s what we do when we do pro-life work,” said Mary Ann.

“We may not always succeed in saving a baby, but we are there to plant the seed and point to the glory of God.”

Mary Ann’s talk on February 9 was at Immaculate Conception Church in Towson.  She spoke to Catholic homeschooling mothers at St. John’s Church, Westminster, and at the Rock Creek Knights of Columbus, Bethesda, on February 10.

For more information on Prolife Across America see their website, www.prolifeacrossamerica.org.