By Thea Jarvis

At the recent Washington March commemorating this country’s legalization of abortion, Pro-Lifers for Survival passed out twisted circles of paper bearing the message: “life and peace belong together.”

The simple gifts were Moebius strips, one sided surfaces joined at their center having the appearance of a two-sided circle. If you begin drawing a straight line anywhere on a Moebius strip and are careful not to go over the edge of the paper, you will eventually end up where you started.

“It’s your seamless garment,” said Evelyn Whelan, Atlanta member of Pro-Lifers for Survival and Sacred Heart parishioner, and it’s a good symbol for the apparently two-sided issue P.S. has successfully fashioned into one: abortion and nuclear armament.

Evelyn is one of some 40 P.S. members in Georgia, and over the last two weeks she and her family played host to the organization’s worldwide coordinator, Mary Rider.

Ms. Rider, who visited Atlanta to firm up grass roots support and march in the local anti-abortion rally last month, agreed with her friend that Pro-Lifers for Survival embraces a single-sided issue. “I like to think of it as antiviolence,” she remarked making a Moebius strip of her own to illustrate the point.

At 24, Mary Rider is deceptively childlike in appearance with long red curls and a voice that is restrained and gentle. A mild manner belies her strong feelings about life and peace, matters she has grappled with since she was a teenager growing up in northern Virginia when the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion was handed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

After graduating from college with a degree in computer science, she began looking for work, only to discover that “everything I could do seemed to be tied in to the military - industrial complex.” She learned of an opening for a P.S. coordinator and landed the job, but found that the group’s headquarters were to be moved to Illinois. This proved to be a stumbling block, since Ms. Rider’s roots were in North Carolina with her family and friends.

Ultimately, the city of choice was Chapel Hill instead of Chicago and the decision seemed for her, “ a real confirmation that it was what I was supposed to be doing; there was no question in my mind that I was supposed to be there.”

A year and a half into her P.S. affiliation, Mary Rider explained that Pro-Lifers for Survival is meant to be a bridge between two issues that some perceive as mutually exclusive.

“A good liberal is against the arms race, the death penalty and is pro-choice,” Ms. Rider hypothesized. Conversely, she pointed out, a hard-line conservative is presumed to be against abortion, but for capital punishment and an arms buildup.

“These are the little boxes we try to put people in. We don’t want to be challenged by somebody who doesn’t fit into the mold,” she explained.

P.S. attempts to bridge the stereotypical anti-abortion, pro-peace antithesis by emphasizing that both stances are pro-life. “Left and right are not as important to us as right and wrong,” she reads their leaflet. “And what’s right is strengthened by working with the love of life in the hearts of traditional adversaries.”

Mary Rider put it simply. “We don’t prescribe solutions or endorse candidates. We educate and build bridges.”

She noted that membership in Pro-Lifers for Survival, now between 2500 and 2700 men and women in the continental U.S., Alaska, Canada and Central and South America, covers a broad spectrum of religious and ideological persuasions. Although most are Christians, P.S. members include Jews, Buddhists, Atheists and agnostics.

P.S. is apolitical and thus can be a sheltering umbrella for republicans, democrats, socialists and anarchists. It typically draws many members from the helping professions -- teaching, ministry, social work, to name just a few.

“We try to be a home to people,” commented Ms. Rider. “We try to give them a place to feel comfortable with what often seems like strange beliefs.”

How does the group manage such a formidable task? Basically, by “changing people’s minds and hearts and letting them go from there,” Mary Rider explained. P.S. reaches out to the already converted -- those who currently link pro-life and pro-peace within themselves -- and brings them “out of the closet,” while attempting to educate those who are “pro-life in one way but not another.”

Once a consistency is reached, Pro-Lifers for Survival encourages members to strike out on their own, tackling issues with a new vision and a strong network of support.

In Detroit, the local P.S. chapter joined with the Church of Brethren, the Mennonites and the Archdiocese of Detroit in publishing pro-life, pro-peace study guides for use in Sunday school classes. A companion slide presentation, “Rainbows Promise Life,” has been well-received and widely distributed.

Washington, D.C. Pro-Lifers for Survival have been active in non-violent direct action, organizing the Pro-Life Non-Violent Action Project and the Tax for Life Campaign. “the two are more or less outgrowths of P.S.” since P.S. members were instrumental in their formation, Mary Rider indicated.

In Kansas City, where the national right-to-life convention was held recently, P.S. proponents were much in evidence, as they are at other pro-life gatherings across the country. There they sought cross-fertilization through dialogue and distribution of their pamphlets, reprints, and the P.S. newspaper, which is published five times each year.

“It breaks down the stereotypes just by our being there,” Mary Rider knows from first-hand experience.

She is currently involved, with her co-coordinator Scott Rains, in taking stock of Pro-Lifers for Survival as it rounds out its fifth year. The movement had its beginning in the late seventies when Julie Loesch, a lay Benedictine from Pennsylvania, conducted what she called “atomic Tupperware parties” as grass roots consciousness raisers. When pro-lifers attending her home meetings asked why she was worried about the effects of nuclear radiation on the unborn but unconcerned about the results of a suction machine on a defenseless fetus, she was challenged to examine her own priorities. Shortly thereafter, she organized a group of pro-lifers who marched in an anti-nuclear power demonstration following the notorious accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant.

Mary Rider hopes to follow Julie Loesch’s lead, firming up support within local chapters and expanding membership, perhaps with a “traveling school” of handouts and audio-visual presentations that would communicate what Pro-Lifers for Survival is all about.

Such expansion is not without cost, and Ms. Rider is cheered by the group’s newly won tax-exempt status that will allow application for grants and funding not before available.

Another P.S. goal is an annual convention that would bring members together for renewal and support. This has been successful over the past two years, with such divergent points as Syracuse, NY and the Carolina coast serving as gathering sites.

While here in Atlanta, Mary Rider observed that the area was “ripe for something” in terms of promoting the pro-life, pro-peace vision.

“A large population center like Atlanta, where there are a lot of different things going on, is a good place to start drawing the connection between the two. What we’re about is planting seeds. Sometimes its time for seeds to germinate and grow.”