The year just past was full of change for Columbus-based Heartbeat International, the world’s largest network of pro-life pregnancy resource centers.
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 24 in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case required the federal government to return control of abortion-related laws and regulations to the states.
This resulted in an increase in requests for Heartbeat’s help in finding clinics, resource centers, maternity homes and adoption agencies to provide support for women facing crisis pregnancy situations in more than 90 nations.
Heartbeat serves more than 1.5 million people annually and helps about 300,000 pregnant mothers decide against having an abortion each year, said Andrea Trudden, Heartbeat vice president of communications and marketing. She said the more than 3,000 pregnancy help organizations linked to the Heartbeat network performed nearly 250,000 ultrasounds last year.
The Dobbs ruling also led to protests, many of them led by a pro-abortion group known as Jane’s Revenge, at more than 75 pregnancy centers and other pro-life organizations, as well as about a dozen churches. More than 30 sustained physical damage, which included fires being set at the offices of pro-life organizations in Madison, Wisconsin, and Gresham, Oregon.
“We were prepared for the verbal attacks which began in May, when the anticipated Dobbs decision was leaked to the media,” Trudden said. “We weren’t anticipating the violence that targeted pro-life organizations and the cyberattacks involving people trying to take down some of those groups through online hacking.
“Heartbeat is continuing to serve pregnancy health ministries by working with our affiliates to make their locations more secure. We understand the U.S. Department of Justice is looking into possible action against those responsible in instances where physical damage occurred, but no action has been taken so far.”
The year for Heartbeat also was notable because its national headquarters moved from Upper Arlington to a larger location at 8405 Pulsar Place, just off Polaris Parkway and near Interstate 71. “It’s a larger area than we had before, with lots more open space, all of which is needed as our 24/7 call center continues to expand and we serve as the base for calls to the Abortion Pill Rescue Network,” Trudden said.
“We share the building with the Ohio regional campus of Southeastern University, a Florida-based Christian college which shares our goals. We’re part of a faith-filled atmosphere throughout the day, and that’s important to us, because we’ve always tried to be located in a space surrounded by like-minded organizations. Our previous offices were in the former Tree of Life Ministries building in Upper Arlington.”
Heartbeat is one of the nation’s oldest pro-life organizations, with a history that began before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 issued its Roe v. Wade decision – an action legalizing abortion throughout the United States until the Dobbs ruling overturned it.
Practically from the moment the decision was announced, “God’s people stepped up in every area of life in our society and worked unceasingly to fight the abortion juggernaut and overturn Roe,” said Heartbeat chairman Peggy Hartshorn.
“That was finally accomplished in the Dobbs decision through the grace of God and the work of the amazingly creative movement that also grew and developed over these 50 years.”
Heartbeat’s predecessor, Alternatives to Abortion, began in Toledo in 1971, led by Dr. John Hillabrand, a Toledo obstetrician, and Lore Maier, a refugee from Nazi Germany. For the next two decades, Alternatives to Abortion was an all-volunteer organization that maintained slow, steady growth and had reached about 200 affiliates.
In 1992, it changed its name to Heartbeat International and began describing itself specifically as an interdenominational Christian association with biblically based programs. The following year, it moved its headquarters from White Plains, New York (where it had moved to from Toledo) to Columbus, the hometown of Hartshorn, co-founder in 1981 of the Columbus-based Pregnancy Decision Health Centers. Heartbeat has been based in Columbus ever since.
Hartshorn became Heartbeat’s first full-time employee in 1993, was its chairman from 1990 to 2004 and returned to that position in 2015. She also served as Heartbeat’s president from 1993 to 2015.
“One of the best fruits of the Roe era has been the unity developed among Christians called to this work, especially among Catholics (the first to answer the call in the late 1960s and ’70s) and evangelical Protestants (who joined the movement in massive numbers in the 1980s),” she said. “We experience it within Heartbeat and see that we are always better together.
“God’s people never gave up and never gave in over the last five decades. Some of God’s pro-life warriors have passed into eternity already, but so many others have taken their places, and the work goes on.”
In 2003, Heartbeat began Option Line, the only fully staffed, bilingual pro-life contact center in the United States, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. In those two decades, Option Line has reached more than 5 million people, many of them desperate for answers related to an unexpected pregnancy.
Every day, more than 1,000 people reach out to Option Line through phone calls, live chats, texting and email. It connects callers with their local pregnancy help center and provides consultation on adoption, abortion and parenting.
Heartbeat in 2018 took another major step by taking over management of the Abortion Pill Rescue Network (APRN). Through Option Line, the network answers more than 150 calls per month from women who regret their decision to have begun the chemical abortion process and realize they have a chance to save their baby if they stop the process in time.
Chemical abortion, which has become the most common form of abortion, is a two-part process approved for use up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy. It involves use of the so-called “abortion pill,” which is actually two pills. The first, mifepristone or RU-486, blocks the effects of progesterone, a hormone necessary for a pregnancy to thrive. The second pill contains a chemical known as misoprostol, which expels the baby.
Abortion pill reversal involves taking additional progesterone to overcome the effects of RU-486 within 72 hours of ingesting the first abortion pill. Studies report abortion reversal rates of 64 to 68 percent, no increase in birth defects, and a lower preterm delivery rate than the general population for those following this procedure.
“The APRN provides a chance to save lives for those who have regrets after taking the first pill,” Trudden said. “Thousands of babies are alive today because their mothers decided to choose life through the reversal process.”
“For more than 50 years, Heartbeat and its predecessors have saved lives because one by one, in response to the spread of legalized abortion, people stepped in to help women escape the temptation and pressure to abort their precious babies.
“Heartbeat’s story continues to take exciting and challenging turns. Our ministry may be more important than ever in the post-Roe era as pregnancy help centers become more important.
“One thing that has never changed throughout our history is that the best alternative to abortion is another person. Our story continues as one of helping God’s people discover the life-saving, death-defying, soul-satisfying, God-glorifying power of neighborly love.”