A high school senior just weeks away from graduation, Jana was on top of the world. She had just been accepted into her dream college and had one more carefree summer before packing up and leaving for her new adventure.

Everything was on track. That is, until Jana began to suspect that maybe, just maybe, her path had suddenly changed directions.

Jana’s friend bought her a pregnancy test, and the pair took it to her friend's house, so that Jana’s parents wouldn't suspect anything was up. The strategy had a short shelf life, however, as the pregnancy test showed positive… she was pregnant.

Even though she felt pressured to abort her baby, Jana was terrified that some day she would regret it.

Jana cried all afternoon and well into the night. Finally, in desperation, she typed in"abortion stories" to her search engine, hoping to find stories of post-abortion women who had gone on to live happy, fulfilled lives.

What she found was StandUpGirl.com. Jana read story after story about young women just like her who had submitted to an abortion and later shared their experience on the online forum. Story after story was shared as encouragement to not make the same mistake as the writer.

Moved by what she read, Jana clicked a box on the sidebar, opening up a live chat program.

The chat link connected Jana to an Option Line® consultant, who answered her immediately. Jana poured out her heart, sharing her fears, and what she'd read on StandUpGirl. She shared that, while she wanted to protect and care for her baby, she felt it would be selfish to bring a child into the world without a good job, house, or stability.

On the other end of the live chat, the Option Line consultant helped Jana understand that giving her child life was the most unselfish thing she could do. She explained to Jana that, in addition to single parenting or married parenting, Jana could also choose to parent through adoption, entrusting her child into the hands of an adoptive family.

She also let Jana know that help was available to her. A pregnancy center would be able to work with her for everything from diapers and wipes to maternity clothes and community referrals for help with food and medical care.

As the early morning conversation came to a close, Jana agreed to visit a center in her area, and told the Option Line consultant she finally felt ready to sleep, knowing that a brighter day lay ahead.

While Heartbeat’s Option Line® gains most of its traffic from its own advertising and web presence, the 24-7 pregnancy helpline also partners with several national organizations like StandUpGirl.com and TeenBreaks.com to reach over 1,000 contacts per month—just like Jana—via live chat and text.

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.

As the phone center manager for Pregnancy Resource Center of Gwinnett, Georgia, Lana Duffell has very little time to call her own.

Without the persistent effort put forth by Lana and her co-laborers, the call from a local woman or girl facing the desperate circumstance of an unexpected pregnancy might fall through the cracks, and cause her to choose abortion as the only option she can see at the moment.

So most days, Lana keeps her nose to the grindstone and her ear to the phone.

But when Lana and her staff decided to take time off during this Christmas season, she had no concerns about the calls and contacts that were sure to come in. Lana and her staff had full confidence that, even if they wouldn’t be there to answer the phone, Heartbeat International’s Option Line® would.

While Lana and her staff rested and reenergized for the coming year, the staff at Option Line routed a total of 39 calls and contacts to Pregnancy Resource Center, ensuring that not one woman seeking help fell through the cracks.

“Option Line has been there for us on a 24/7 basis, when we are in meetings and also when our phone lines are overwhelming,” Lana says. “With Option Line, we are at peace, knowing that our callers will get a live person who can offer them information about abortion alternatives or set an appointment so that we can do further counseling.

“Option Line answers our calls when we are not available, making the difference between losing a life and saving it.”

Since it opened shop in 2003, Option Line has answered the call more than 1.5 million times, in addition to 2.5 million unique visitors to its website, www.OptionLine.org.

That translates to a staggering amount of birthdays, which otherwise would never have been. For now, we’ll celebrate just one: Happy 10th Birthday, Option Line!

Since answerering its first phone call in early 2003, Heartbeat International's Option Line® has responded to over 1.5 million calls, text messages, emails and instant chats from women and familes facing unexpected pregnancies. Option Line staff are available 24/7, 365 days per year to answer callers' questions and connect them to pregnancy help organizations within their local communities, utlizing Heartbeat's Worldwide Directory of Pregnancy Help.

In their own words... 

The result

Listen to the positive impact Option Line has:

One Monday, a Tallahassee center answered the phone to hear a young woman ask about an abortion in the third trimester.  The volunteer Karen spoke with the caller for a long time in hopes of changing the young woman’s mind.  Before hanging up, Karen prayed with the caller.  On Thursday, Option Line connected a caller who had questions regarding a late-term abortion, to the Tallahassee center.  This scared young woman was pleading for help. Soon, this young woman realized that she was talking to the same center she had called 3 days earlier.  She asked if Karen was available, and the Executive Director explained that Karen was out of the office.  As they concluded their conversation, she asked the caller to please consider what they had discussed and encouraged her to call back on Monday to speak with Karen.

Well, she did call back on Monday, but she said that she was at the hospital delivering her baby.  The center was thrilled that she was giving birth to a healthy baby instead of aborting!  Since the woman didn’t have much support, the center scrambled to find all the resources she needed including a labor coach, information on adoption, and even a donut!  The birthmother called before leaving the hospital to thank the center for all of their encouragement.

This story has a very happy ending.  Not only was a life saved, but a woman was saved from the effects of abortion, and a baby was given a new home with a very happy adoptive family.

Option Line is proud to connect callers to centers so they can receive the help they truly need.  Option Line consultants rarely get to hear the outcome of their calls, but each time we send a caller to a center, we pray for the center’s availability and resourcefulness.  We understand how hard it is to “wo-man” your 24-hour hotlines and staff your centers and keep up with current resources and information – but we need you and women need you.  Thank you for all of your hard work and preparation!

The Option Line® that you know and trust is going strong, now fully managed by Heartbeat International®.

Since Option Line took its first call in 2003, more than 1.5 million women and their friends have used this valuable service to connect with their local pregnancy help organizations. Heartbeat International’s goal is to connect every person who contacts our Option Line to the nearest help center that can meet her needs.

Nothing can replace the face-to-face support that local pregnancy help organizations provide to those involved in an unexpected pregnancy. By partnering with the pregnancy help network and other life-affirming efforts, we offer help to those who need it most.

Heartbeat’s Option Line is committed not only to women who need help, but also to highly personalized service to the pregnancy help network.

Using the technology of Heartbeat’s Plus Link program for web-based appointment setting, Option Line consultants can set appointments for at risk women in participating help organizations. Scheduling these callers immediately increases the likelihood that women will keep their appointments and choose to carry their babies to term, increasing the number of lives saved.

The Extend Web Services program develops and manages engaging websites for pregnancy help organizations at an affordable cost. This effective web presence allows centers to compete online with abortion providers. Centers that take advantage of Extend gain the confidence that the content supplied to their site by Heartbeat is legally and medically accurate.

Every day women in crisis are being helped and connected to their local pregnancy help centers to receive even more life-saving support.

Option Line story as told by one of our consultants:

Monday I received a chat from a 19-year-old girl.  She was scheduled to have an abortion on Wednesday. However, I could tell that she was extremely conflicted about the appointment. She openly shared with me that she viewed abortion as killing a life. I knew she did not truly want to go through with the abortion.

As we chatted, I discovered that her boyfriend had made the appointment for her. He was very controlling and threatened to abandon her. The girl had no intention of staying with her boyfriend long term but feared that she could not stay in college or make it financially on her own.

When I asked her what her mom would say about her decision, she said her mom would tell her to keep the baby. At that point we had a breakthrough! The girl decided to cancel her abortion appointment that day and I helped her make an appointment with her local pregnancy help center!