Jan. 14, 2026

COLUMBUS — In response to the U.S. Senate HELP Committee’s Hearing today on Protecting Women: Exposing the Dangers of Chemical Abortion Drugs, Heartbeat International President Jor-El Godsey issued the following statement: 

“Today’s briefing established what we already know: Women across our country face profound harms from the use and coercive abuse of chemical abortion drugs. The Biden Administration irresponsibly eliminated key safety protocols for these dangerous drugs. Our affiliated nurses and consultants within the pregnancy help movement have firsthand knowledge of how these reckless changes have empowered traffickers and abusers, endangered minors, and left women to suffer complications — including hemorrhage, incomplete abortion, and infection — alone and without medical care.

“Our concerns about chemical abortion drugs do not stem from a so-called ‘discomfort with abortion’ but a steadfast commitment to providing women, families, and unborn children with the dignity, compassion, and scientifically supported care they deserve. 

“As our own Ohio Senator Husted noted, women often face coercion and manipulation to ingest dangerous chemical abortion drugs against their will. Our Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) will continue to provide life-affirming alternatives to women who regret taking that first abortion drug and wish to continue their pregnancies. We respectfully urge the FDA to reconsider its regulation of abortion drugs and begin by reinstating in-person dispensing.”

Under the Biden Administration, the FDA stripped away longstanding safety protocols, allowing abortion pills to be shipped through the mail without any medical evaluation, ultrasound, or in-person supervision. 

Through Heartbeat International’s Abortion Pill Rescue Network, more than 1,500 medical professionals, hospitals, and pregnancy help organizations worldwide are available to help women reverse the effects of the first abortion pill using progesterone, a hormone safely used in pregnancy for decades.

Statistics show that Abortion Pill Reversal has saved over 7,000 children to date, offering women a second chance when they’ve had second thoughts.

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Heartbeat International is the largest worldwide network of life-affirming pregnancy help organizations, offering support, training, and resources to empower women and families to choose life. The Abortion Pill Rescue Network is one of Heartbeat’s key initiatives, providing a 24/7 helpline and access to a network of medical professionals to help women seeking to reverse chemical abortions.

Website | HeartbeatInternational.org  |  Facebook | /HeartbeatInternational  |  Twitter | @HeartbeatIntl

December 29, 2025

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Heartbeat International announced today that its 24/7 helpline, Option Line, has surpassed more than 1.3 million connections with men and women in 2025 — more than tripling the number of connections from the previous year and representing the highest annual total in the program’s history.

Option Line serves as a confidential, around-the-clock front door to the pregnancy help movement, offering compassionate listening, accurate information, and seamless referrals to local pregnancy help organizations. On average, Option Line now responds to more than 3,700 connections each day, ensuring no one faces a pregnancy decision alone — even during nights, weekends, and holidays.

“Pregnancy doesn’t take a holiday or the night off, and neither do we,” said Jor-El Godsey, president of Heartbeat International. “This amazing milestone reflects the growing trust people place in Option Line and the unwavering commitment of pregnancy help organizations to meet women and families with compassion, dignity, and hope.”

Several connections are supported by Option Line Plus nurses, who provide free, life-affirming health education and help callers understand their options while prioritizing their health and safety. These nurses also play a critical role in connecting callers back to pregnancy help organizations in their communities, particularly during hours when most centers are closed.

Behind the milestone are real people and real stories. Option Line consultants regularly speak with women facing pressure, fear, and uncertainty, offering space to be heard and access to support. In many cases, those conversations lead callers to verified pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, and practical assistance through local pregnancy help centers — often transforming fear into confidence and isolation into hope.

“This achievement belongs to the entire pregnancy help movement,” added Nafisa Kennedy, director of Option Line. “Option Line exists to support, not replace, pregnancy help organizations by extending their reach and ensuring continuity of care at all hours.”

As a new year begins, Heartbeat International remains committed to strengthening Option Line’s capacity, training, and technology so that every call, chat, or text receives professional, grace-filled support.

For more information about Option Line or Heartbeat International, visit OptionLine.org or HeartbeatInternational.org.

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About Heartbeat International
Heartbeat International is the largest network of pregnancy help organizations in the world, committed to providing compassionate care and support to women, children, and families before, during, and after pregnancy. Through programs like Option Line, Heartbeat International equips pregnancy help organizations to meet needs with excellence, integrity, and hope.

“When I found out I was pregnant, I was so excited, but also overwhelmed with fear. As my hormones shifted, I spiraled into a deep depression. I began experiencing panic attacks multiple times a day, sometimes 4 or 5 [times] in a row. They would wake me up in the middle of the night, and I’d be on my knees, overwhelmed to the point where I didn’t want to continue living. Feeling like I had no control over anything, I couldn’t take it anymore and I made the decision to terminate my pregnancy.

“My fiancé didn’t want me to make that choice, but he prioritized my health and safety, so we agreed to take the first abortion pill. However, I believe in a powerful God, and He intervened. After taking the first pill, I went to take a nap before taking the second [pill] later that evening. While napping, I suddenly heard a voice in my ear, clear as day, telling me to WAKE UP AND FIX THIS. I woke up in a panic and immediately called Planned Parenthood, asking if there was any way to reverse what I had done. They told me no, that I would need to take the second pill. But, I didn’t give up.

“I kept searching for answers and finally connected with an organization [Abortion Pill Rescue® Network] that could assist me. [...] Within a few hours, two amazing nurses arrived at my home [in a mobile unit] and performed an ultrasound. [...] At every doctor’s appointment after that, I explained what I had been through, and they couldn’t understand how everything looked so perfect. My God is mighty. I still struggle with guilt, thinking about how my daughter almost wasn’t here, but every day I’m beyond grateful to be her mama.”

Abortion Pill Reversal™ can help turn back the clock. As the agile guardians of that precious moment in time when a woman chooses to give her unborn child a chance to fight for life, others might say “it is done” —we say “here is a second chance at life, just in time.”

Wendy, a single mom at nine-and-a-half weeks pregnant, called an abortion clinic. She took the abortion pill on a Saturday.

She had begun attending worship services at a church just a month prior, but that particular Sunday after taking the abortion pill, Wendy experienced God in a powerful way. “[I] prayed to God to guide and help me make the right choices. I told Him I wholeheartedly trusted Him and wanted to do right. As soon as the service ended and I walked out, I felt my chest tighten and I was overwhelmed with so much anxiety; all I could do was cry as I walked to my car, and I immediately started regretting my decision, and it was in that moment I felt God telling me to keep my baby.”

Wendy called the abortion clinic and was told there was no way to save her child. Her heart sank. Yet, she recalled seeing a sign outside the clinic about reversal, and her hope was renewed. She found the Abortion Pill Reversal™ (APR) hotline and called it. The APR operator told her there was hope for her pregnancy and was connected with a nurse to help begin the reversal process and get her connected with a local pregnancy center.

“This was on a Sunday,” Wendy said, “And it wasn’t open. But they opened it for me. The nurse was coming from church when I talked to her.” Wendy committed her life to Christ that day as she witnessed the love and compassion of those invested in her miracle at the local pregnancy center.

Isaac was born in June, and Wendy shared, “I am truly blessed; I know God walked with me throughout this pregnancy. I am forever thankful for this program, which saved my sanity and my baby’s life.”

Jodi still remembers the fear that gripped her the day she learned she was pregnant. Hoping for reassurance, she went to a clinic to check for a heartbeat. Instead, she was told there was none. The staff instructed her to take abortion pills to “clean out” her body.

Shaken and trusting their words, Jodi took the first pill and went home.

Several days later, she found herself standing in a pharmacy aisle, gathering essential supplies in preparation for taking the second set of pills. But something deep inside her didn’t feel right. A quiet, persistent tug urged her to slow down and reconsider.

Following that instinct, Jodi got in her car and found the Abortion Pill Rescue Network, asking whether the medication she had taken could be reversed. They immediately connected her with help and arranged for progesterone in hopes of countering what Jodi feared might have been a grave mistake at the first clinic.

Later, she arrived at the hospital for an ultrasound that revealed what she had prayed to see: a baby, unmistakably alive, with a strong and steady heartbeat.

Weeks went by and Jodi welcomed her daughter—tiny, healthy, and perfect—into the world. Winter was born without any defects or complications, a thriving reminder of the second chance her mother had fought for.

Jodi often thinks about how close she came to losing her. “I can’t imagine my life without her,” she says. And she means it with every beat of Winter’s little heart.

“Pregnancy help cannot be both a safe harbor and a source of punishment,” Jor-El Godsey, president - Heartbeat International

COLUMBUS – 11/11/2025 – As some abortion opponents renew a debate over whether women should face criminal penalties for seeking or undergoing abortions, Heartbeat International reaffirms its commitment to compassion, support, and hope for every woman facing an unexpected pregnancy.

Pregnancy help organizations cannot both openly advocate for criminalizing women and remain safe harbors for them.

Our mission is rooted in “personal, confidential, and nonjudgmental” care that meets women in moments of crisis and empowers them to choose life. The call to criminalize women for abortion, however well-intentioned, directly conflicts with the heart of pregnancy help. Such measures would undermine the trust that allows women to reach out for support and would erode the safe, compassionate spaces that define the movement.

For more than 50 years, pregnancy help organizations have offered what laws alone cannot provide: customized practical assistance, personal emotional support, and applied spiritual encouragement. Through life-revealing ultrasounds, positive parenting classes, material aid, housing, and connections to community resources, these organizations have reached millions of women, helping them restore broken relationships, overcome fear, and choose life for their children.

While political and legal debates continue, the work of pregnancy help organizations rise above legislation. It offers a path of mercy rather than punishment. The movement’s focus is not on condemning those wounded by abortion but on rescuing, healing, and walking alongside them with human compassion.

Abortion must end because it destroys one life and deeply wounds another. Yet the path to a world where abortion is both illegal and unthinkable will not be built through criminalization of the victims of a lucrative abortion industry, but through compassion, through the tireless work of those who extend hope in place of fear, support in place of shame, and life in place of death.

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About Heartbeat International

Founded in 1971, Heartbeat International is the largest network of life-affirming pregnancy help organizations in the world, with nearly 4,000 affiliated locations spanning more than 100 countries. Through training, resources, and support, Heartbeat International empowers pregnancy help organizations to reach and rescue more women, and to renew communities for life.

Pregnancy help organizations cannot both openly advocate for criminalizing women and remain safe harbors for them.

“Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter.” – Proverbs 24:11

Rescue is exactly what the pregnancy help movement is all about. Not through political power or legal enforcement, but by engaging directly in the dynamics of individual lives.

We often rescue a mother facing an unintended pregnancy from the fear she now feels, as her life has changed in an instant. We rescue by helping her see the truth about the life within, often through an ultrasound of her baby. We rescue by helping meet relational and material needs that can overwhelm and create obstacles to saying "yes" to her child's future. We do this with material assistance and connecting her with resources that, without us, she would have never known were available. These are the legal, and sometimes only, means that can help dissuade her from an abortion she doesn’t want.

National or local laws may openly allow for abortion or be largely ineffectual in preventing it. In either instance, pregnancy help organizations have offered a successful way to rescue many who would otherwise have been led to slaughter. Not all, for sure, but many. Our movement has helped millions of moms make the courageous choice to rescue their own baby from a life-ending decision.

But some abortion opponents, though guided by a desire to rescue, aggressively focus on the political and legislative realm. Among these are self-described "abolitionists" who specifically direct their energies toward the immediate, absolute abolition of abortion, pursued by leveraging the power of government to criminalize every aspect of abortion. These “immediatists” support the call for criminalizing women who would feel coerced or are forced into an abortion.

At Heartbeat, our vision is to make abortion unwanted today and unthinkable for future generations. And our method matters. Our Heartbeat principles affirm that all services are personal, confidential, and nonjudgmental. Such a principle is an essential posture that supports and safeguards our invitation for women to explore life-affirming choices without fear of condemnation or retribution.

Pregnancy help is a compassionate outreach to women who would otherwise feel unable to consider any option other than abortion. Pregnancy help organizations cannot both openly advocate for criminalizing women and remain safe harbors for them in their valley of decision between the life and death of their unborn child. Political advocacy for criminalization will almost certainly undercut our efforts to offer effective and compassionate care.

Jesus, similarly, responded with compassion and not condemnation when presented with or orchestrating interactions with women who were actively in sin. Even though the acts involved would have been criminal – either in civil or religious courts of that day – and leaders of the time approached Him calling for justice, Jesus extended grace and mercy.

In John 4, Jesus made Himself accessible to the woman at the well even though she was socially outcast for violating the covenant of marriage. He did not convict her of her marital status (or lack thereof) but extended the living water of salvation to her.

Then there was the woman with the issue of blood in Luke 8, who violated Jewish law by even being in the crowd in her “unclean” condition. More egregiously, according to religious laws, she reached out and touched the hem of the rabbi, Jesus. This action would have been an affront to any Jewish man, making Him ceremonially unclean and opening her to severe punishment. Yet not only did healing proceed from Jesus, but He also openly praised her faith.

Adultery was a criminal offense worthy of death for the woman we see in John 8. As a just God, He had every right and reason to exact justice. But Jesus did not condemn her. He showed mercy and even advocated for her against those who were prepared to stone her for her offense. 

The political and cultural war on life that excuses and promotes abortion requires a myriad of prophetic and practical responses. Amid war, the battlefield still tragically produces casualties even as political and diplomatic processes may be underway elsewhere to stop the fighting altogether. There is a need for medics and ministers alike serving the victims on the battlefield. In this way, pregnancy help is similar to the corps of medics who bring care and comfort to those wounded by the battle. The battlefield between the culture of death and the culture of life will cause casualties until the value for the sanctity of life carries the day.

Even then, having a law that abolishes abortion will not bring about the abolition of wounded women and men.

Presently, 21 countries prohibit abortions outright¹. Abortions are still being secured in these countries through travel, underground services, or failure (willful or otherwise) to enforce existing law. The life-saving mission of pregnancy help is practically necessary regardless of the legal status of abortion.

Abortion should, indeed, be abolished because it destroys (at least) one created in the image of God and wounds (at least) one other (the mother). All those leading the pro-life movement long for the day when abortion is not just illegal, but unthinkable—when every woman is surrounded by support and every life is protected by love. But that vision cannot be realized through condemnation alone.

Compassion, not punishment, is the path that leads women in unplanned pregnancies to healing, restoration, and life. Pregnancy help is where that path begins, offering hope in place of fear, support in place of shame, and life in place of death.

Resources for pregnancy help

• Picking Your Battles in the Boardroom
• “Our method matters” - Pregnancy help organizations cannot advocate for criminalizing women and be safe harbors for them
• Heartbeat Press Release

¹ https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-where-abortion-is-illegal

Samantha once pictured a perfect life—girl meets boy, they fall in love, get married, and raise a family behind a white picket fence. But her story took a different turn. After leaving an abusive relationship and struggling with alcohol, she moved back home to start over. A month later, she found herself on the bathroom floor, staring at two pink lines in disbelief. Within an hour, her parents knew. While they reassured her, she could only think, “This can’t be happening.”

A week later, her mother brought her to Hand of Hope Pregnancy Center. Samantha walked in with her head down, wishing it were all a mistake. But Stacey greeted her with warmth and reminded her that even if she didn’t feel okay now, one day she would. Stacey patiently talked and prayed with her until Samantha found the courage to see her baby on the ultrasound for the first time, a moment that began to change everything.

Through the women at Hand of Hope, Samantha rediscovered faith, peace, and purpose. They didn’t promise that motherhood would be easy; instead, they promised to walk beside her. Their love redefined strength for her, not in control or survival but in surrender and trust in God.

On April 4, 2025, Samantha welcomed her daughter, Zoey Grace—“a new life by grace.” Now a year sober, she continues visiting Hand of Hope each week, grateful for the family and faith that helped her turn fear into hope and pain into purpose.

In 2013, Shawnte found herself facing one of the hardest moments of her life: pregnant with her third child and abandoned by the baby’s father when she refused to have an abortion. Feeling lost and unsure of where to turn, she didn’t know that hope was already waiting just around the corner.

Her mother had unknowingly scheduled what she thought was an abortion appointment, but instead, Shawnte met someone who offered a different path, one that saved not only her baby’s life but her own. Through that encounter, she was introduced to Mary’s Shelter, a maternity home that surrounded her with love, stability, and faith when she needed it most.

On July 27, 2014, Shawnte welcomed her beautiful daughter, Bella, into the world. Today, Shawnte is an ordained minister whose experience at Mary’s Shelter continues to inspire her work. Now contracted through the court system, she helps women in similar situations find the support and strength they need to keep their children. What began as a moment of fear has become a powerful testimony of redemption, courage, and God’s grace.