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.

by Mary E. Peterson, Heartbeat Housing Specialist

When we enter this world as an infant, we are completely receptive. We receive our being from God via our parents. We receive love, nourishment, and comfort at the hands of others. 

With wonder and awe, we slowly receive the whole of creation into our understanding—starting with our hands and feet and gradually extending outward to include all of our surroundings. 

I think of my young niece repeatedly and gleefully acclaiming with amazement in her voice, “It’s raining! It’s raining!“ She delights in the very existence of rain! It’s this receptive-state that Michael Naughton is pointing out when he says “As creatures, we are first receivers before we are givers.”[1]

As adult Christians, particularly as those involved in a  sacrificial kind of ministry, we think a lot about the holiness of and need for the giving part of love. Whether it’s attentive listening, providing for material needs, upholding a woman’s dignity, or providing a safe place to cry, we give deeply of ourselves to another, pouring ourselves out in love. 

Sacrificing. Emptying ourselves for the sake of another.

Because it is so evident that the giving part of love is beautifully holy, it is easy to fall into the error of thinking of the receiving part of love as selfish or as a mere strategy that allows us to keep giving.

What a subtle and dangerous error! Scripture teaches us otherwise. Consider Mary’s fiat “be it done onto me according to your Word” and Jesus’ invitation to become like children. Utter receptivity is holy!

As you think through your ministry, be sure to remember that loving includes both giving AND receiving. Just as you are called to give of your whole being, you are invited to receive with your whole being. 

From the God of all creation as well as the people in your life, receive deeply!