AFR News: Parental Rights- Not a Hero, Just a Mom

May 12, 2014

Not a Hero, Just a Mom

“There’s a chance I won’t ever be able to walk again,” says Christina Simoes, 23, of Haverville, Massachusetts. “It’s so worth it because he’s okay.” “He” refers to her 18-month-old son, Cameron, who was with Simoes in her third story apartment when the building caught on fire last Wednesday.

“I saw the flames were only 10 feet from where I was standing,” Simoes recounted for CBS Boston. “I grabbed my son and I held him as tight as I could to my chest and I gave him a kiss and a hug, and I told him I loved him and I jumped out the window.”

Cameron suffered a bump on his head but was otherwise just fine. Christina was less fortunate. The landing was excruciating, as she broke her back and lost feeling in her legs. Then she still had to crawl away from the building with her son to escape falling debris.

“I didn’t think about it,” Simoes continues. “All I was thinking about was getting him out of there. He mattered way more than I did.”

Clearly, elitists who think bureaucrats can make better decisions for a child than his parents have never met Christina Simoes. Or Mindy Tran, for that matter.

Tran, 22, of Lawrence, Massachusetts, had loaded her 2-year-old twins into the backseat of her Honda Accord in March when the car slipped out of gear and started rolling toward traffic.

To save her girls, Tran laid down her own body – literally – to save theirs. “I laid down horizontally, using my body as a speed bump to stop the car,” she told ABC News on March 18.

When a neighbor rushed over and asked what he could do, Tran told him to “make sure my daughters got out of the car safely.” Never mind that Tran herself had suffered a crushed knee, injured hips, and a dislocated shoulder. Her concern was for her little girls, not for herself. (Tran would soon be airlifted to a Boston-area hospital for her injuries.)

“I don’t consider myself a hero,” Tran explained afterward. “I am just a mother.”

Simoes said pretty much the same thing: “I don’t think that I’m any special hero at all. I’m just Cameron’s mom.”

In my experience, the difference between heroes like these and nearly every other mom is in the circumstances. Most mothers will never need to leap from a burning building or throw themselves under a car to save their children. But as we watch mom daily sacrifice her own desires to meet the needs of her children – fixing their meals, shuttling them to rehearsals, saving for their education, teaching them vital life lessons – there remains no doubt that if the need arose, she would respond exactly as Christina and Mindy did.

“Natural bonds of affection,” the Supreme Court once wrote, “lead parents to act in the best interests of their children.” It is this fact that makes the words “hero” and “mother” so synonymous.

With Mother’s Day just passed, it is not too late to remember the moms you know who have been a hero in your life. Like you, we salute these moms (and the dads just like them) who inspire our efforts to preserve parental rights.

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To those who have already donated and made this campaign a success, we thank you.

Sincerely,

Michael Ramey
Director of Communications & Research

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