 |
           |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Mom says it's never too early to teach kids pro-life issues By Lou Panarale Catholic News Service January 27, 1999 WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNS) -- At 2 months old, Mary Rider's baby, Timothy, is already a veteran of marches that support a consistent ethic of life. |
||
Rider came up to Washington with her son from Raleigh, N.C., for the Jan. 22 March for Life marking the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States. "This isn't the first time Timothy has been with me to a pro-life rally," Rider told Catholic News Service. She first took Timothy with her, she said, when she demonstrated at the White House in late December to protest the U.S. bombings of Iraq. "So you can see he is already a veteran," she added, smiling as she held the sleeping infant in her arms. "All of my children have been involved in these things since they were born." Rider is executive director of the Seamless Garment Network, an interfaith coalition of organizations committed to respect and protect all human life "from the womb to the tomb," she explained. The seamless garment theory, first articulated by the late Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin in 1983, calls for a consistent ethic of life on issues such as abortion, war, capital punishment, euthanasia and embryo experimentation. Rider was only 12 years old when she joined the pro-life movement in 1973, not long after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Roe decision and its companion ruling, Doe vs. Bolton. From 1983 to 1986 Rider was a coordinator of Pro-Lifers for Survival, the forerunner of the Seamless Garment Network. "From the beginning, we challenged people to take the approach that they don't have to labal themselves conservative or liberal and instead take a 'pure life' approach," she said. Dawn hadn't yet broken in Raleigh, when Rider stepped outside her suburban home to wait for a car ride to Washington. At 4 a.m., she waited with a small, heavy pack on her back and with Timothy, the youngest of her four children, secured snugly to her chest in a makeshift carrier. Their ride came, and the two spent the next five and a half hours riding with members of the Seamless Garment Network. Although tired from the trip, Rider kept a scheduled interview with CNS, but explained that when it was over she would have to rush down to the Ellipse to meet friends and hand out flyers. Because Rider is a nursing mother, Timothy has to be with her at all times, which is all the better as far as she is concerned. Rider, 38, and her husband, Patrick O'Neill, have three other children -- Bernadette, 10; Moira, 4; and Veronica, 2, and they are committed to raising the children according to Catholic Worker principles of peace and community involvement. The couple established the St. Martin de Porres Catholic Worker House when Bernadette was 3. "My parents always gave me the freedom to involve myself in whatever good cause I wanted to be involved," Rider said. Her eldest daughter has been going to protests all her life, including as an infant who was still nursing, and is already deciding on her own how she wants to get involved. In November, carrying a stuffed turtle hand puppet for company, Bernadette accompanied her father to protest the operation of the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, GA. She marched with her father and 2,300 other people who crossed onto Fort Benning property, risking arrest for trespassing. The youngster later told a reporter that she was willing to be arrested "because people from other countries are being tortured by people who go to school here." Rider said she and her husband are committed to teaching their children that all life is sacred and it is important to respect life, whether it is an unborn baby or a prisoner on death row. "We can't say, 'This person is dispensable because he's not born yet,' or 'This person is dispensable because she's elderly,'" Rider said. "We have to look at everyone as a member of the family of God." Rider has a master's degree in social work from the University of North Carolina and is a former director of education for her parish, St. Mary, Mother of the Church in Garner, N.C. After the CNS interview, Rider had a half-hour to get to the Ellipse to meet her group to give them the literature to hand out. She was prepared to trudge to the subway a quarter of a mile away, holding Timothy and carrying a backpack and an armload of flyers, but a reporter offered to share his cab downtown with her. And she got to the Ellipse with a few minutes to spare, and a soundly sleeping Timothy. Back to Our Library... |
||||
| | home | action | research | our library | members | our video | products | join | contact us | our links |
 |