Margaret H. (Peggy) Hartshorn, Ph.D., currently Chairman of the Board of Heartbeat International, has served on the Board for 30 years, as Chairman previously from 1990-2004.  She also served as Heartbeat’s President for 22 years (1993-2015).

Peggy co-founded Heartbeat International’s Option Line in 2002.  It is the only 24/7, bilingual, internet-based, pro-life call center in the world. Option Line handles about a quarter of a million calls for help each year, connecting callers to their community-based pregnancy help center for life-saving and life-changing help.

Peggy and her husband, Mike, joined the pro-life movement in 1973, first working with the educational, political, and legislative arm of the movement. They housed pregnant women in their home (beginning in 1974), attended their first Heartbeat conference in 1978, opened the first pregnancy help center in Columbus, Ohio, in 1981, and Peggy joined the leadership team of Heartbeat International in 1986 (as a member of the Board, later Chairperson and President of Heartbeat).

Peggy has traveled to 52 countries, teaching and training, visiting existing pregnancy help organizations, and helping to start new ones in Eastern and Western Europe, Australia, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. She has also appeared on television and radio as a spokesperson for pro-life and life-affirming alternatives to abortion, and she is the author of Foot Soldiers Armed with Love: The First Forty Years of Heartbeat International. 

Peggy is the recipient of many awards for pro-life work, including:  President’s Volunteer Service Award under President George H.W. Bush, the J.C. Penney Golden Rule Award, the Defender of Life Award from Students for Life, the Cardinal John J. O’Connor pro-life award from Legatus International, the Norrine A. and Raymond E. Ruddy Memorial Life Prizes Award, the Sanctity of Human Life Award from Care Net, the Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle Award from the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, the Founder’s Award from the Christ Child Society, the Catholic Woman of the Year Award from the Diocese of Columbus (Ohio), the Life Champion Award from Pregnancy Support Services of Asia, the Woman of Impact Award from WRFD Christian Radio, and the Praesidium Vitae Award from Aid for Women.     

Peggy has been married to Mike for over 50 years, and they have two children, adopted as infants, and 5 grandchildren.

Jor-El Godsey serves as President of Heartbeat International. He leads a staff dedicated to equipping, empowering, and encouraging the thousands of leaders and developing leaders of Heartbeat’s affiliated pregnancy help centers, maternity homes, and adoption services, in the U.S. and on every inhabited continent. He oversees Heartbeat’s core mission to be the leadership supply line for the growing pregnancy help movement worldwide by providing accurate information, training resources, leadership development conferences, programs, and daily support to help affiliates start, grow, and expand their services to women and couples at risk for abortion.

Jor-El comes to Heartbeat having served in the pregnancy help movement since 1988. He first served as a volunteer at Hope, the pregnancy help centers in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Then he joined their board, served as Chair, then as Executive Administrator. In 1999, Jor-El became Executive Director of Life Choices in Longmont, Colorado. Six years later, in 2006, Jor-El accepted the call to help Heartbeat International meet the diverse and expanding leadership needs of the pregnancy help movement as Vice-President. Now serving as the second President in Heartbeat International's 50+ year history, preceded only by Peggy Hartshorn, he continues to remind us all that we are better together.

Jor-El met his wife, Karen, at a volunteer training meeting for the Hope Center in Ft. Lauderdale. They currently make their home in Columbus, Ohio, and have three children.

Did you hear the one about the lawyer who traveled overseas and taught a bunch of U.S. military families how to better serve women facing unexpected pregnancies?

Fair enough, there’s not much promise for a joke in that question, but you have to admit, the latest Heartbeat International international training does sound a bit peculiar when you first hear about it.

The story took place October 25, when Ellen Foell, Heartbeat’s legal counsel, taught a day-long session of The LOVE Approach™ to a group of 28 staff, volunteers, and potential volunteers at Heartbeat Crisis Pregnancy Center in Ramstein, Germany.

The center, under the direction of Carrie Beliles, primarily serves U.S. military personnel and their families stationed at Ramstein Air Base, home of the 86th Airlift Wing and headquarters of U.S. Air Forces Europe.

“It was the first time teaching this material, so I really didn’t quite know what to expect,” Foell, who has been with Heartbeat International since 2012, said. “God really put two things on my heart that I tried to express to the group: The first was to encourage them to embrace their unique, God-given giftedness, and the second was to allow themselves to be released to really exercise that giftedness as they sought to serve women coming to the center.”

“It really was great to watch this group wrestle through how to apply The LOVE Approach to the real situations involving real human beings they are dealing with every day.”

While the majority of attendees were Americans connected to the military community in Ramstein, one participant came from another part of Germany with the hope to launch a pregnancy help organization in another part of Germany.

According to Heartbeat International’s Worldwide Directory, there are currently 114 pregnancy help organizations in Germany, although Heartbeat Crisis Pregnancy Center is the only Heartbeat International affiliate.

“These servants learned how to handle a great tool, and that was encouraging to see,” Foell said. “I was really impressed by the cross-section of ages and generations, and thrilled to see the seeds of more pregnancy help organizations being planted in Germany.”

Foell was joined by Heartbeat International Vice President Jor-El Godsey, who keynoted the center’s annual banquet and facilitated a meeting with European pro-life leaders during a three-day span Oct. 24-26 in Ramstein.

On one hand, it’s encouraging to see the international community’s outrage over the weekend at what can only be described as the euthanasia of a perfectly healthy, yet—tragically “unwanted”—resident of Copenhagen, Denmark named Marius.

On the other hand, the fact that Marius was an 11-foot-tall giraffe puts things into perspective.

Marius, a giraffe born in captivity, found himself in the lethal position of “unwantedness” by possessing what Animal Rights Sweden called, not “interesting enough,” genes, and his very existence posed the potential threat of inbreeding, which if you’re running a zoo, is apparently problematic.

Despite attempts to spare Marius’ life that included lucrative offers by individuals and at least one European wildlife park, along with “Save Marius” petition that garnered 27,000 signatures, “Marius was fed some rye bread at 9.15am and was killed shortly after by a shot in the head with a bolt gun,” to quote The Guardian of London.

But the kind of civility shown in these rescue efforts—and reflected in the kind of sentence in one of the world’s most respected newspapers that indirectly humanizes a giraffe—was also matched by multiple death threats against zoo officials, one of which threatened the children of two zoo administrators.

It appears the world isn’t buying into the whole idea of “unwanted” after all. At least not where giraffes are concerned.

Two and half years ago, 56 exotic animals broke loose from a private citizen’s backyard in Zanesville, Ohio, leading to what has become known as the “Zanesville Animal Massacre,” which included the killing of 18 rare Bengal tigers.

I was working at a restaurant with a friend of mine that night, and I remember being floored, not so much by the news, but by her reaction. It was the kind of reaction a person and a society tends to have at pivotal moments in history: the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President Kennedy, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Might I remind you, Marius and the Zanesville Animal Massacre are both stories about animals.

Is there no corresponding outrage when it comes to human beings?

Worldwide unrest occurs overnight when a zoo takes “unwanted” life. Society shudders at the thought of “massacring” animals that, now on the loose, pose a lethal and immediate threat to human life. Death threats against children are made in the name of the protection of animals.

And yet, the value we set on a human life rests solely on her mother’s decision. “Is my child wanted?”

We don’t allow ourselves the personal and societal outrage that this “choice” by a mother (and often by influences other than the mother herself) leads to the death of over 3,000 human beings every day in the United States alone, but we do allow ourselves outrage when it comes to giraffes and Bengal tigers.

Let me add the caveat here that I love animals. At one point in my life, I proudly subscribed to Cat Fancy, and I’m about 10 times more excited than my 3-year-old daughter every time we visit the Columbus Zoo—where we have an annual pass. I hope she and her baby sister will learn to see every window into God’s glory that giraffes, Bengal tigers, and whitetail deer have to offer. I hope they learn that from me.

Deeper than that, as a believer, I’m convinced by Scripture that my treatment of animals has plenty to say about my heart. I’m thinking here about Proverbs 12:10, which says, “Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.”

But I am bound and determined to make the most of opportunities like Marius’ afford us, to expose the fact that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. The elephant is in the room, whether you want him there or not.

Wantedness didn’t change the fact that Marius was a giraffe. Wantedness didn’t determine Marius’ inherent giraffeness. Unwantedness didn’t un-giraffe him, it led to his execution.

If you, Planned Parenthood, or my congressman can explain to me how wantedness determines humanness, I’d like to hear it. Until then, let’s do everything we possibly can to protect life—starting with the humans.

About Heartbeat International

Heartbeat International is the first network of pro-life pregnancy help organizations founded in the U.S. (1971), and now the largest and most expansive network in the world. With 1,800 affiliated pregnancy help locations—including pregnancy help medical clinics (with ultrasound), resource centers, maternity homes, and adoption agencies—Heartbeat serves on all six inhabited continents to provide alternatives to abortion. For more information, see www.HeartbeatInternational.org.

www.Facebook.com/HeartbeatInternational

by Jay Hobbs, Communications Assistant