Excerpted from The Power of Pregnancy Help, a book telling the story of the first 50 years of Heartbeat International and the pregnancy help movement. The Power of Pregnancy Help is available wherever books are sold.

Chapter 5: Lasting Foundations for the Movement

Peggy Hartshorn

Each of our three co-founders, Dr. John Hillabrand, Lore Maier, and Sister Paula Vandegaer, brought special gifts to the establishment of AAI, and they incorporated into our work the values, purposes, and principles that characterized not only AAI’s first twenty years, but also have become the foundation for the growth and development of Heartbeat International over the last thirty years. In the previous three chapters we have tried to capture some of their special gifts and the life experiences and expertise that have left clear marks on the pregnancy help movement both then and now.

The name founders carries with it the concept that these first leaders laid down the foundations for the organization they started, Alternative to Abortion International. And today, that organization, now Heartbeat International, is indeed built on those foundations. However, our founders believed, and Heartbeat believes today, that they were building for the entire pregnancy help movement, then and now – not just for those that became or would become official affiliates. Anyone who provided life-affirming pregnancy help was and is welcome, all learn and contribute, all work together to advance the mission of saving and changing lives. So, the foundations were built and are maintained now for the entire pregnancy help movement.

. . .

Always More Than Saving Babies

All three of our co-founders had a view of our work that encompassed more than saving babies. Those who describe the mission of pregnancy help centers as “saving babies” are only describing a part of our founders’ vision and mission and part of the movement’s vision today.

Our founders focused on both mother and baby, and, in fact, on the family and the entire culture. They saw that we were involved in this work to serve women in need and help them so they could save their babies, but also (especially in the work of Sister Paula) that we were in a position to help women understand their true womanhood. Dr. John and Lore’s writings and talks also show that they viewed an attack on the sanctity of human life in the womb as an attack on society as a whole and on all humanity that would have profound ramifications. Lore tried to warn of the effect of abortion not only on women themselves and the family, but also on the perpetrators (the abortionists), and even on those who merely stood by and observed (the general public).

The first logo that was chosen for AAI, used in the very first communications in early 1972, was called “Hearts of Gold.” It is not a baby, nor is it a mother and child. The logo features two larger gold hearts (with some lines and markings, the result of life’s scars, experience, maturity, and wisdom) surrounding a tiny, unmarked, pure golden heart that represents the innocent human child. The logo shows that we need to protect, shelter, and nurture that child, born and unborn. The hearts of gold represent the family as God intended it. With the family relationships disrupted and in need of healing, the larger, sheltering hearts could be those of us in this movement protecting the child. Heartbeat’s logo has changed to the “Heart of the Future,” but Heartbeat International still features our “Hearts of Gold” on our premier Legacy Award since God’s plan for the family is still at the heart of our mission. One of the amazing things about the early AAI Academies (Conferences) was the diversity of expertise represented in the “Faculty” or conference presenters. To help the emerging centers with program development were marriage and family experts, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, doctors and nurses (with expertise on pregnancy and maternity care, fetal development, labor and delivery, nursing, sexually transmitted diseases, infertility and more), early childhood education experts, researchers, social workers, mothers, fathers, and more.

Programs developing then within the first centers (despite the early term EPS or Emergency Pregnancy Services) and first maternity homes were focused not just on the crisis intervention need for women coming in for a pregnancy test, but on parenting and family unification. For the “negative test client,” programs were developing to help her understand the risks of sexual intimacy outside of marriage. Centers were developing referral networks in their own community and finding like-minded potential partners who could amplify these messages – for example, in schools and in the culture at large.

Today, if you attend a Heartbeat International Conference or any other gathering of pregnancy help organizations around the world, you will find the same. We are about much more than saving babies. Our foundation stones are motherhood, fatherhood, healthy families, and a pro-family culture.

January is Sanctity of Human Life Month, and this year Sanctity of Human Life Sunday (SOHLS) is celebrated on Sunday, January 19, 2025. 

This is a day we set aside every year to focus on the value of every human life since President Reagan proclaimed it in 1984. SOHLS has had a great impact year after year, and its impact continues post-Roe.

We want to ensure you are equipped with the resources you need when connecting with your local churches to build relationships and raise awareness for the incredible work you are doing to reach women in your community, not only on this special Sunday but all through the year.

  Printables

• Customizable Bulletin Insert (add your own logo and information!)
• 4 Ways to Rescue Lives Card
• 10 Things you can say and do to make abortion unwanted today and unthinkable for future generations
• 2023 Life Trends Report
• 9 Things You Should Know about Pregnancy Help Organizations

Resources

• Connecting with Your Local Churches - Webinar
  
• Sanctity of Human Life Sunday - Webinar
• Energizing Churches to Engage in Pro-Life Work - Webinar
• Op-Ed Sample
• Church Letter Sample
• Client Success Story Sample
• Community Impact Report Samples
• Downloadable Videos from ProLifeDoc

Shareables

Click any of the images below to download and share them on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter using the hashtag #SOHL

By now, you have probably seen that Google has banned any and all advertising efforts promoting Abortion Pill Reversal. This life-saving protocol has been pulled down under a new Google policy that bans "unreliable claims." 

Unfortunately, Google is wrong. Time and again, we have seen the power of Abortion Pill Reversal in the mothers' gratitude and the babies' smiles. Statistics show thousands of lives have been saved thanks to Abortion Pill Reversal and you, those on the frontlines meeting with women and offering true choice.

Thankfully, in spite of the ads being pulled, women are still finding the APRN for help. Through sidewalk advocates, pregnancy centers, word of mouth, and organic search results, we are still seeing reversal starts! 

Women who find our Network do so out of an inherent motherly instinct to save her baby's life in a way that, sadly, Google would rather they never know about. These women find our Abortion Pill Rescue Network primarily through Google searches. More than 90% of our contacts come from online referrals - both paid and organic.

Big Tech's censorship of Abortion Pill Reversal denies women the right to try to save their pregnancies. It makes completing the chemical abortion the only option for them.  

We know the truth. Reversal works for 2 out of 3 women. While Google claims Abortion Pill Reversal is an "unreliable claim," we get to see in the flutter of the heartbeat on our ultrasound machines; the tears of happiness on the mom's face; and the relief in her voice when we get to tell her that she was able to save her baby's life. 

In fact, just this past Friday, the Charlotte Lozier Institute published a report showing the efficacy of Abortion Pill Reversal. 

Heartbeat International and our pro-life friends are working hard to fight this attack by Big Tech and will continue to do so. Every woman deserves to know the whole truth about abortion; that includes the facts about her unborn child, and the choices she can make every step of the way.

If your organization is experiencing issues having your digital ads approved, read What You Can Do Right Now About "Unreliable Claims"

Keep fighting the good fight! We're here for you.

Brent Boles, M.D.
APRN Medical Director

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Robyn Chambers - Focus on the Family

Bernadette Tasy - Alliance Defending Freedom

Melissa Ohden - Abortion Survivors Network

Eric Scheidler - Pro-Life Action League

Jeanne Mancini - March for Life

Sarah Gabel Seifert - EveryLife

Kristan Hawkins - Students for Life

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Like these? Check out videos from past Pregnancy Help Appreciation Weeks. You are loved. And the work you do is admired.

And don't forget to check out the deals of the day and share the love on social media!

What is Pregnancy Help Appreciation Week?

Pregnancy Help Appreciation Week was designed by Heartbeat International to honor those working within the pregnancy help movement. Through their work, women and men receive the compassionate support they need when facing a life-changing decision. They walk alongside families throughout the pregnancy and beyond, blessing them with pregnancy tests, emotional support, ultrasounds, parenting classes, and so much more at no cost. 

From volunteers to executive directors, nurses to receptionists, each person working in a pregnancy help organization has been gifted with the passion to advance the culture of LIFE! And for that, we thank you!

This year's Pregnancy Help Appreciation Week is November 11-15, 2024.

How you can thank a Pregnancy Help Foot Soldier:

• Pray. The emotional energy given by those who work in the pregnancy help movement is extreme. They give of themselves daily. Pray for spiritual refreshment for those who go into the center today.
• Volunteer. Connect with your local pregnancy help organization and see what their needs are. You may have just the right skills to fill a need.
• Donate items. Call your local pregnancy help organization and ask them what items they need to bless a new mother (such as diapers or maternity clothes) and start collecting. Not only will you bless a center, you will bless multiple families as well.
• Give. Without the generous donations of those within the community, pregnancy centers would not be able to provide their services for free.
• Share the love. Share the good work of the pregnancy help community with your social networks. Don't know what to post? Like Heartbeat International on Facebook and/or Instagram and you'll find plenty to share!

If you haven't heard of Pregnancy Help Appreciation Week before, you should expect special deals, thank-you messages, and extra prayers this week.

Plus! We'll be holding a drawing at the end of the week where one lucky winner will get a fun gift basket from us at Heartbeat!

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Shareables

Click on each image to view the full-sized version. Then, save it to your device and share on Facebook, Instagram, or tweet and show your love for the pregnancy help movement using the hashtag #ThankAPregnancyCenter

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Friday's Deal of the Day = ALL Deals + Free Resources!

We're bringing back all the week's deals for one last hurrah! Plus, there are a few Free Resources to check out. After today, you won't see deals like this again until *next* November.

Let's recap—today only you get...

$5 Monday Deals: 
Changing Clients- Shifting Focus (housing)
Discussing the Adoption Option in a Post-Roe America
Onboarding Board Members for Successful Service
Postpartum Depression
Protecting Minors from Trans On Demand Interventions
Sex Trafficking & Abortion
The Truth About Backstreet Abortion

$2 Tuesday Deals:
Opioids and Pregnancy
How to Identify and Use a Media "Hit" Piece
Surviving Christmas: Healing Resident Trauma During the Holidays
Speaking at Churches in a Post-Roe World
Healthy Boundaries in Ministry
Abortion's Long-Term Negative Impact on Men
Healing from Medication Abortion Trauma
Special Considerations of Healing from Diagnosis Abortions

50% off Wednesday Deals:
Identifying Fake Client
Advancement Bootcamp
How to Identifying and Assist Victims of Human Trafficking

75% off Thursday Deal:
From an archive of our Conference recordings of the past 5 years, get the bundle on a topic of your choice for 75% off.

*PLUS*

Free Resources

Early in the three-day meeting, the question was posed: "Has the maternity housing movement, as a whole, strayed from its core mission?" Gulp. Big question.

All present were quick to defend the good work that currently happens in the approximately 400 maternity homes across the United States. There is no doubt of the important role that maternity homes play within the pregnancy help movement. But the question lingered.

Historically, maternity homes developed to support women through an adoption plan, first as large institutional programs often staffed by Catholic religious orders. Trying to protect the confidentiality of the women coming to the program, these early homes were often shrouded in secrecy and silence. Many of the reforms in adoption began from the heartache of women who experienced adoption not as an empowering choice, but rather as a decision they felt was forced upon them without sensitive acknowledgment of the pain involved.

From these roots, as movement toward open adoptions began, the host or shepherding home model developed as families began welcoming a pregnant woman into their homes. And, in recent history, as the needs and challenging circumstances of the pregnant women in need of housing support have increased, a variety of models have developed that allow for increased expertise in supporting women in situations related to addiction, violence, abuse, and trauma. As this progression has happened, the number of adoptions in maternity homes has dramatically decreased. 

The 10 housing leaders who serve as the Leadership Council for the National Maternity Housing Coalition (NMHC), a joint-affiliate of Heartbeat International, gathered to think deeply about why this has happened and how maternity homes might restore their heritage as a safe refuge for women considering adoption. It is not as if maternity homes are not supportive of adoption.

Homes, generally, are delighted to walk with a women pursuing an adoption plan. And, several homes, especially those with over 30 years of experience, have deep organizational ties to adoption agencies. Even so, the NMHC Leadership Council collectively wondered, "Can we be doing more? Why do we continue to see declining numbers? Is there something that we, as maternity homes, can do better?"

Shawn Stevenson, the Executive Director of Life Services in Spokane, Wash., raised the question of an organization's "null curriculum". Based on his training in the education field, Shawn asked, "It makes me wonder about our programs. Specifically, What are we teaching by what we are not teaching?"

He continued, "Is there something in the way that we handle adoption that inadvertently communicates a bias we don't intend?" The statement raised a great conversation about the strategies used by homes to introduce adoption.

Through discussion, five major strategies surfaced. All are currently being used by homes to incorporate an adoption message:

1. A maternity home and adoption agency have close organizational alignment (one org, deeply related orgs, etc.) in which women are interacting deeply with both organizations.
2. Maternity homes bring in outside experts to present info on adoption during group seminars or one-on-one meetings.
3. Maternity homes use a curriculum (i.e. Baby & Me, independently developed) within the house to present adoption information.
4. Maternity homes address misconceptions moms have (e.g. foster care is not the same as adoption) directly via some other educational opportunity or awareness campaign.
5. Maternity homes actively develop policies and programming for support of birth moms (i.e. recruit birth mothers as volunteers, have birth mom support groups, have adoption awareness in policies, etc.) Additionally, some homes offer alternative post-birth housing (i.e. a host home) for a mom to live in rather than returning to home after giving birth.

While these strategies are a solid starting point, the challenge was raised on how to re-think and re-craft the strategies used to present the beauty of adoption in new and creative ways within the home environment.

Summing up the conversation, Jeannine Floores, a birth mom and adoptive mom who leads Breath of Life in Austin, Texas spoke of the need to create an adoption-positive culture throughout the organization.

"Moms need to know that you aren't focused on WHAT decision she makes," she said, "only that she makes an informed, prayerful, thought-out decision."

The National Maternity Housing Coalition took this message to heart and renewed its commitment to pregnancy decision making as the place of excellence for maternity housing programs.

"It is this decision-making process that makes maternity homes different than any other housing programs for women," Callie Neff of House of His Creation asserted, "In addition to all the other ways that maternity homes support women, we must support her in thinking about her options around how her child will be parented."

A re-examination of our past as a maternity housing movement allowed us to remember our role in championing the adoption message. As such, the NMHC is inviting homes to re-engage the adoption message in a new way this year and keep decision-making during pregnancy at the heart of their mission. You can anticipate dynamic trainings and conversations on how to achieve that goal within the upcoming year.

If you would like to contribute your thoughts on this topic, please don't hesitate to reach out to Mary Peterson, NMHC, Facilitator, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

3 Ways Option Line Works for You

As a Heartbeat International affiliate, your pregnancy help organization is automatically listed on Heartbeat's Option Line® (1-800-712-HELP), a 24-7 pregnancy helpline that answers over 1,100 calls, emails, text messages and live chats every day in English and Spanish, sending callers to local help organizations like yours. Our job is to help you care for her.

Here are a few of the ways we do that.

We share the financial load.

Every contact Heartbeat’s Option Line® makes costs about $4.25. We refer an average of 42 contacts a year to each of our more than 2,700 listed pregnancy help organizations. That’s a value of $178.50 per year for your organization alone!

We send her to your website.

On OptionLine.org, a client can search for a center near her. Each month in the past year, an average of over 200 searches on OptionLine.org have turned up your center. Our top-10 centers all averaged over 7,000 views in the last year, bringing women in desperate need of help face-to-face with your center’s information.

We cover the phones 24/7 in both English and Spanish.

Does your center struggle to cover the phones overnight? Option Line is your answer for overnight help. You can also forward your calls to Option Line when you can't cover a shift. Rather than hearing a recording, a woman will speak to a real human being, who will answer her initial questions and connect her to help right in her area—that is, you!

Bonus! When you take advantage—at no cost—of Option Line’s Appointment Scheduling, a consultant can schedule an appointment at your center right on the spot. Click here to learn more.

 As a Heartbeat affiliate, changes can be made to your Option Line listing in real-time so that women searching for you have up-to-date information about your organization at any hour of the day. 

Option Line lists pregnancy help organizations affiliated with either Heartbeat International or Care Net. If your organization prefers to not become a Heartbeat affiliate, that's okay! Care Net provides us with a list of their affiliates on a quarterly basis. We update our Option Line database based on that list. Please communicate any changes to your information with Care Net and the changes will be made with the next quarterly update.

Heartbeat International congratulates CAM (Centro de Ayuda para la Mujer Latinoamericana, A. C.) on reaching 25 years of lifesaving ministry.

Heartbeat President, Peggy Hartshorn, was honored to celebrate this great achievement with CAM representative in Mexico City, Mexico, saying: 

 "Congratulations on this very important occasion of the 25^th Anniversary of CAM. God certainly laid it on the hearts of your founders, Jorge and Magdalena, that it was essential that every woman with a difficult pregnancy, finding herself perhaps alone and afraid, could find help and hope and the courage she needed to carry her pregnancy to term.  This is because every person is made in the image and likeness of God, both the mother and the child!

Let us continue to lock arms around the world, pray for each other, strengthen and encourage each other, and recommit to the task ahead.  Our strength and power comes from the Lord.  We are responding to his call, Come follow Me.  We are running the race and fighting and good fight and we look forward to our reward in heaven where, like St. Paul, we hope to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”