MEDFORD, Mass.— When Mary Ann Harold attended a convention at the March for Life in Washington D.C. in 1998 she saw a video depicting babies found in dumpsters, and it seemed to her that one of those babies gazed at her.

“I never did anything with pro-life,” Harold confides. “I didn't want to be radical. But when that baby looked at me, I knew I had been very delinquent. I felt like I had committed a sin of omission. I went to the ladies room and couldn't stop crying.”

At that aching moment, Harold resolved to do something for the unborn.

She returned to her home in Medford, Mass., and during a prayer to God for discernment, realized the United States had no collective movement of prayer for life.

To fill that gap, on Feb. 14, 1998, Harold founded a non-profit organization called Prayers for Life, whose goal is to unite people in prayer to stop abortion.

Harold consulted with volunteer Mary Jo Ridge who had taught quilting for many years and worked at a quilt shop in Cambridge, Mass. Together the women developed an idea: if people would pledge to pray 50 rosaries for the pro-life cause, their names would be put on a quilt.

The idea was not popular in the beginning. Harold explains, “It was difficult in the first year. It was hard to ask people to pray 50 extra rosaries. We only had 1,800 rosaries pledged after months of promoting the idea.”

Ridge and Harold put off designing the quilt for a year. Ridge remembers, “We went for a whole year just thinking of the form for the quilt. We wanted to get a feeling for how many names would go on the quilt, there were not that many.”

Some rays of hope began to shine, however. When Cardinal Bernard Law saw one of their pledge forms, he told Harold that he wanted his name to be on the quilt.

Things started to change. As news of the quilt spread more and more people signed up to pray the rosary. The time had come for the quilt's creation.

Two weeks before the March for Life in 1999, Ridge, with her 5-year old twin boys scurrying around her, sat down to sketch a design.

She decided it would be 93 by 93 inches, and the central image would be a rosary. The quilt would have the following message displayed prominently. “We believe the way to end abortion is to pray the rosary.” Two vertical columns would flank this main message, one to the left saying, “Prayers for life,” one to the right, “Quilt of prayer.”

A separate patch, 1.5 inches high and 6 inches wide would be made for the name of each person who'd pledged 50 rosaries. The patch would be cut, the name would be ironed onto the fabric, and then sewn into the quilt.

They had 130 names at the time, and Ridge had only two weeks. She admits that she was still sewing at 3:00 in the morning on the day of the march. But, she met her deadline and the banner was carried for the first time at the March for Life in 1999.

Ridge then contacted Cardinal Law, asking if he still wanted his name on the quilt.

He responded with a beautiful letter, dated Feb. 15, 2000, in which he said he would be delighted to be included.

Cardinal Law quoted the Pope John Paul II in his letter, “The Holy Father in the Gospel of Life exhorts us, ‘A great prayerful life is urgently needed, a prayer which will rise up throughout the world.’ The quilt of life is a wonderful response to this call for prayer.”

With joy, Ridge carefully stitched Cardinal Law's name patch on the top left column of the quilt.

The program picked up steam.

In January 2000 the Quilt of Prayer went to the March for Life in Washington D.C. for the second time, but Harold and the others decided not to parade it. Chances of damage by inclement weather were too great.

Instead, the quilt hung for three days in the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, outside the crypt church.

In the summer of 2000, the quilt's batting and backing were added. Ridge knew that was a painstaking chore, and sought someone to do a random machine quilting, but every professional machine quilter was booked up for a year.

Ridge realized she had to do the job by hand. At the same time, there was a big space at the bottom of the quilt that needed to be filled. Ridge prayed for help one night, and assistance came at once. She recalled, “The minute my head hit the pillow, the fifteen mysteries of the rosary came into my head. I realized I could put them right under the rosary beads. There was a space there 60 inches wide and 30 inches high.

I could break that up into 15 rectangular pieces 10 by 10, and the mysteries of the rosary would fit perfectly in the space.”

By August 2000 the mysteries had been added to the quilt and that October, it hung at the Respect for Life Mass in Boston.

The Diocese of Boston lauded the quilt idea. Barbara Thorpe, the Pro-Life Director for the Archdiocese of Boston, comments, “It is very exciting when people who work in parish pro-life work … through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and their own creativity come up with a marvelous idea and share it with others.”

Those with names affixed to the quilt were praying more rosaries. It was decided that, for each additional set of 50 rosaries prayed, a rose would be sewn next to the name. This stirred more enthusiasm. One woman, Marian Batas, has 11 roses on her patch.

By the year 2001, the number of names on the quilt had grown to 480. Ridge explained, “We had an avalanche of rosaries, and now we need to make decisions about where to put the names. We might make an extra panel that would hang side by side with the quilt.”

In Fall 2001, the quilt traveled from parish to parish in the Worcester Diocese. Many people noticed its impact. Maria Flores, Associate Director for Pro-Life Activities for the Diocese of Worcester, was one of them. “The quilt is a way to really approach people who might feel a little bit defensive, or who might have certain pre-conceived notions of what the pro-life movement is,” she observed.

The quilt has inspired other groups to make their own version. For example, Leo and Roberta Gauthier, Respect for Life chair-couple at St. Augustine Church in Millville, Mass. made a Parish Quilt of Prayer, after their church hosted a display of the national quilt in February 2001.

Individual states, too, at the encouragement of Prayers for Life, have begun to make their own quilts of prayer. Currently 12 states are participating: Arizona, California, Oregon, Illinois, Hawaii, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas and New Hampshire.

J e a n m a r i e Phillips, Respect Life Coordinator for St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church in Altadena, Calif., used her vacation time to start the California State quilt of prayer.

She finished that quilt in Italy this past December where she joined Prayers for Life state and national coordinators from across the country for the general audience with Pope John Paul II on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Dec. 12. After that audience, the Holy Father blessed the quilts that had been brought there, three times using his crosier.

Now, with the Holy Father's blessing behind them, all the leaders sponsoring the national and state quilts have set a new goal for 3 million rosaries. Harold says, “If we get each state to do a minimum of 60,000 rosaries. We'd have a total of 3 million.”

Word is spreading so quickly, chances are they'll reach that goal by next year's March for Life.

Mary Ann Sullivan writes from New Durham, New Hampshire.

Barbara Bartley of Port Arthur, Texas, also contributed to this story.