For nearly four decades, a Minnesota-based pro-life organization has sought to change minds about abortion not through politics but through public education.
Mary Ann Kuharski, founder of Pro-Life Across America, said the organization began out of frustration with the growing politicization of the abortion debate and a conviction that lasting change comes from changing hearts rather than winning elections.
“I started out of frustration,” Kuharski told EWTN News. “The more I looked into it, the more I realized if we donʼt do something to change hearts, weʼre never going to save babies and moms from the devastation of abortion.”
Kuharski said she had spent years involved in political organizing before stepping away to focus on what would become a nonpartisan educational ministry. With encouragement from her husband and local pastors, she launched what she expected would be a small Minnesota organization dedicated to sharing pro-life messages through advertising.
“We said we were going to do one thing, and that is to get the truth out before the public,” she said. “What we didnʼt realize is that God would use that truth to touch hearts.”
Kuharskiʼs commitment to the pro-life movement is deeply personal.
She was adopted from one of Minnesotaʼs last orphanages and later became the mother of 13 children, including six mixed-race children with special needs whom she adopted.
“I came from one of the last orphanages out of Minnesota, so I have a special reason why I feel like there should never be a slogan that says thereʼs such a thing as an unwanted baby,” she said.
“Thereʼs always someone who will welcome that baby if they give them a chance for life.”
Kuharski said the organization began in 1989 from her kitchen table with the help of her husband and another couple. With no office and no paid staff, the group purchased 42 simple black-and-white billboards across Minnesota carrying a message encouraging people to “listen to the heartbeat” of an unborn child.
Within two weeks, Kuharski said, the organization received a call that convinced her the campaign was making a difference.
“A clinic director in St. Paul called me and said, ‘I know thatʼs you behind these billboards,’” Kuharski recalled. “She told me a woman had come in scheduled for an abortion and said, ‘I canʼt stand to drive by that billboard on my way to work every day. Will you help me?…’”
From EWTN
How sad to have to hope for conversions of hearts to stop premarital sex and baby murders. The Catholic Church and all the other churches need to get going with religious and moral training, and that must be the very core of their entire existence. Families and children must be taught and formed in Catholic faith and morals, and the clergy must be very tough with sin and work and develop strong, effective strategies to get rid of sin in our society. Start with all Catholic parishes, schools and universities. Good Catholic training and religious practice, no more worldliness, no more sin. Get busy.
I agree with you.
What are you doing?
It is the work of all Catholics, not just other Catholics. The “get busy” applies to us too.
This is an excellent idea whose time has come. God bless Mary Ann Kuharski for founding Pro-life Across America. End Abortion Now! Adoption is the option.