Displaying items by tag: Press Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday | January 12, 2016
Contact: Jay Hobbs, Director of Communications and Marketing
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COLUMBUS, OH - Cindi Boston, who helped start and has led successful pregnancy help center in Missouri as its CEO since 1999, has been named Heartbeat International’s Vice President, it was announced Tuesday.

The announcement comes just days after the organization named former President Peggy Hartshorn, Ph.D., as Board Chair and promoted former Vice President Jor-El Godsey to President. Boston, whose involvement in the pregnancy help community dates back to 1989, had previously served on Heartbeat International’s Board of Directors starting in 2013.

“From the time we were started by pregnancy help people back in 1971, Heartbeat International has always believed in the strength and expertise of our network, and Cindi is a perfect example of this,” Godsey, who has been involved in life-affirming efforts since 1988, said. “We have admired Cindi’s strengths as a leader ever since we first met her, and it is truly amazing to think about what God has in store for Cindi and for Heartbeat International in coming years.”

Boston chaired the initial board of Springfield, Missouri’s Pregnancy Care Center in 1998, helping to turn $2,000 of seed money and a mailing list into an organization that has served more than 265,000 expectant moms, dads, and students over the past 15 years.

Boston has brought several of the parents who chose life—along with their children—to Heartbeat International’s Babies Go to Congress annual event in Washington, D.C., and is leading one of the six teams preparing for the event Jan. 21.

A 2011 recipient of Heartbeat International’s Servant-Leader Award, Boston has developed relationships with local and state politicians as a member and Board Chair for Missouri’s Alliance for Life. Her efforts helped cultivate a positive environment in the state legislature that adopted its 2011 Resolution Honoring Pregnancy Care Centers and, more recently, increased its partnership with pregnancy help centers through its Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program.

With Boston on board as Vice President, Heartbeat International’s senior leadership team brings more than 60 years of direct involvement with local pregnancy centers between Boston, Godsey, and Senior Director of Ministry Services Betty McDowell. All three hold designations as Life-Affirming Specialists through Heartbeat International's Academy.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday | January 7, 2016
Contact: Jay Hobbs, Director of Communications and Marketing
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COLUMBUS, OH - Peggy Hartshorn, Ph.D., Heartbeat International’s President for the last 22 years, has been selected by the organization’s Board of Directors to serve as its new Board Chair. The change goes into effect Thursday, Jan. 7.

The first full-time president in the organization’s 45-year history, Hartshorn is now resuming a role she held from 1990 to 2004 at Heartbeat International. She was also a founding board member for Columbus-based Pregnancy Decision Health Centers, dating back to 1981, giving her over 36 years of experience steering an organization from a board level.

Along with her fellow board members, Hartshorn’s first action in her new position has been to appoint former Vice President Jor-El Godsey as Heartbeat International’s new President, a change that is also effective immediately. A long-time pregnancy center leader on the local level dating back to 1988, Godsey has served as part of Heartbeat International’s senior leadership since 2006.

“We are so pleased, as a Board of Directors, to extend this call to Jor-El Godsey as our organization’s new President,” Hartshorn said. “Jor-El has established himself as a great leader, both within our network of life-affirming pregnancy help and more broadly, among our peers in the international pro-life community. We have every confidence that he will continue to lead Heartbeat International into a new era of excellence as we strive together to make abortion unwanted today and unthinkable for future generations.”

Shocked when the Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling on Roe v. Wade in 1973, Hartshorn and her husband, Mike, thrust themselves into the pro-life arena immediately. They opened their home to pregnant women beginning in 1974, then served together to open a pregnancy help center and pregnancy helpline in Central Ohio.

Hartshorn has written much of Heartbeat International’s core training materials for staff and volunteers at local pregnancy help organizations, including The L.O.V.E. Approach, which was first released in 1994 and is now in its third edition. She was also instrumental in founding Option Line, a pregnancy helpline serving the U.S. and Canada that has reached more than 2.4 million women with life-affirming pregnancy help since first answering the call in 2003.

As Board Chair, Hartshorn will now focus the majority of her time on crafting new training manuals and building upon her 2011 release, Foot Soldiers Armed with Love: Heartbeat International’s First Forty Years, with writing that connects the pregnancy help community into the larger pro-life community.

A leader and director at local pregnancy centers from 1988 to 2006, Godsey holds a Life-Affirming Specialist designation through Heartbeat International’s Academy, and, like Hartshorn, is a widely sought-after speaker among pregnancy help organizations throughout the U.S. and globally.

Major accomplishments under Peggy Hartshorn’s presidential tenure:

• Launch of 24/7 pregnancy helpline, Option Line (1-800-712-HELP, OptionLine.org), which has answered 2.4 million calls, texts, emails and live chats since 2003.
• Growth of affiliation from 100 in 1993 to nearly 2,000 at the beginning of 2016.
• Expansion of affiliation to include maternity homes under National Maternity Housing Coalition, medical clinics with ultrasound, and mobile ultrasound units.
• Strategic partnerships established with joint affiliation partners on every inhabited continent.

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 nearly 2,000 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 IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday | August 18, 2015
Contact: Jay Hobbs, Director of Communications and Marketing
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Tweet This: @HeartbeatIntl's Danielle M. White brings experience from @AllianceDefends, @ThomasMoreSoc

COLUMBUS, OHIO – Joining a team that serves a network of nearly 2,000 affiliated pregnancy help organizations and over 8,500 pro-life pregnancy help individuals worldwide, Danielle M. White, J.D., has been named legal counsel for Heartbeat International.

White replaces her predecessor, Ellen Foell, who served in the capacity from 2012-15. A member of the Ohio State Bar Association, the Columbus Bar Association, and the Christian Legal Society, White also serves as an Allied Attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom.

A recipient of the prestigious Blackstone Fellowship while a law student at Ave Maria School of Law, White studied the bioethical issues surrounding a recently developed human cloning procedure in London. She also gained experience as a summer associate for the Thomas More Society, which defends the traditional family, religious liberty, and the right to life.

“We are very pleased to welcome Danielle to our team,” Vice President Jor-El Godsey said. “Her credentials speak for themselves, but what has impressed us more than anything is Danielle’s heart for pregnancy help. She is truly committed not only to the cause of life, but to serving the women and families our network works so tirelessly to reach.”

White first became involved in the pro-life movement when she began attending the March for Life in Washington, D.C., as a middle school student. She subsequently joined the pregnancy help community at centers and maternity homes in Ohio and Florida while an undergraduate at Franciscan University and a law student at Ave Maria School of Law.

White, who served as senior editor for the Ave Maria Law Review in law school, will oversee the content development for Heartbeat International e-publications On the LeaderBoard and Capitol Matters, which are targeted to affiliated individuals of Heartbeat International.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday | March 10, 2015
Contact: Jay Hobbs, Director of Communications and Marketing
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Tweet This: "We exist to empower a woman with true choice. That's why @naral attacks us." @PeggyHartshorn

COLUMBUS, OHIO – Responding to a report released Monday by abortion advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice America, Heartbeat International President Peggy Hartshorn, Ph.D., pointed to what she calls the fundamental difference between “true” and “false” reproductive health.

NARAL’s report, “Crisis Pregnancy Centers Lie: The Insidious Threat To Reproductive Freedom,” represents several years of opposition to the 2,500 pregnancy help organizations operating independently in the United States, most of whom are fully funded by local and private donors.

In its 24 pages, NARAL’s report features 107 citations. However, 92 of those (86 percent total) come from its state and local chapters, and eight more are from Planned Parenthood’s research arm, The Guttmacher Institute.

“The sole purpose of every pregnancy help organization is to provide the love and support every woman deserves in an unexpected pregnancy,” Hartshorn said. “We exist to empower a woman to make the healthiest choice for all involved. That is why NARAL attacks us with these false and flimsy allegations.”

Hartshorn, who attended the Diocesan Family and Life Congress in Manilla over the past weekend and trained Heartbeat International joint affiliation partners serving throughout the Philippines, pointed to the good work of pregnancy help organizations, both in the U.S. and all over the world.

She is author of Heartbeat International’s top-selling volunteer training resource, The LOVE Approach—first published in 1994—which teaches a truly woman-centered approach.

“No woman should ever feel so alone, coerced, or hopeless that she ends her child’s life through abortion,” Hartshorn said. “That’s why, in every corner of the globe, Heartbeat International affiliates and others provide all the facts about pregnancy—including the baby’s development and the many serious physical and psychological dangers of abortion.”

“This report is an attack on the truth and true reproductive freedom. Only a fully informed choice can be a true choice.”

Tweet This: "This report is an attack on true reproductive freedom." @PeggyHartshorn

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday | Feb. 23, 2015
Contact: Jay Hobbs, Director of Communications and Marketing
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Tweet This: Father of #prolife movement created legacy of life, family, true reproductive healthcare

COLUMBUS, OHIO – Responding to news of the death of Dr. John C. Willke, a key pioneer in the pro-life movement, Heartbeat International President Peggy Hartshorn, Ph.D., has issued the following statement:

“We are all saddened to hear of the loss of Dr. Jack Willke, who many call the father of the pro-life movement,” Hartshorn said. “When I became president of Heartbeat International in 1993, we became colleagues as leaders of national and international organizations, but before that, he was a dear friend and a mentor to me.”

[Click here to see video of Heartbeat International President Peggy Hartshorn's comments on Dr. Willke's passing.]

Willke, 89, died Friday, Feb. 21, at his home, according to a press release from Life Issues Institute, an organization he and his late wife, Barbara, founded in 1991.

The Willke family’s work in the pro-life arena began in the 1960s, when the couple started producing and distributing slides and brochures detailing the facts about fetal development and abortion procedures. Dr. Willke served two terms (1980-83, 1984-91) as president of the National Right to Life Committee.

His 1985 book, “Abortion Questions & Answers: Love Them Both,” helped shape the national pro-life movement’s dialogue to what Heartbeat International has called a “woman-centered approach.” Heartbeat International honored Dr. Willke with its “Servant Leader Award” in 2003.

“We owe so much to those early medical leaders, who knew that true healthcare for women involved respect not only for the woman, but her unborn child. What a tremendous example they have been—and are—as we continue to carry on their legacy.”

Hartshorn, whose career in the pro-life field began as president of the Columbus, Ohio, chapter of Right to Life, worked closely with Dr. and Mrs. Willke when both were involved with the organization. It was Willke’s brochure and slides, “Life or Death” that served as Hartshorn’s initial introduction into pro-life work.

Hartshorn appeared in “Dr. Willke, A Pro-Life Legacy to Last a Lifetime,” a documentary on Dr. Willke’s life and legacy produced by Life Issues Institutes in Jan., 2015.

“I remember so many things about Dr. Willke, and one of those things is the example of family that he embodied. He and his late wife, Barbara, were together in this movement, and I believe that is such an important thing as we commit ourselves long-term to stand for life and a culture of life. We need the help and support of families in this movement.”

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 nearly 2,000 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.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday | Feb. 10, 2015
Contact: Jay Hobbs, Director of Communications and Marketing
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COLUMBUS, OHIO – Heartbeat International, the world’s largest and most expansive network of pregnancy help centers, medical clinics, maternity homes and non-profit adoption agencies, has released its 2014 Annual Report, which reviews the organization’s 43rd year of life-affirming work.

Highlighting the group’s list of 2014 achievements, its 24/7, 365 pregnancy helpline, Option Line®, answered its two millionth contact since it launched in 2003. After answering initial questions via phone, text, live chat or email, Option Line consultants seek to route a caller directly to his or her local pregnancy help organization to find in-person help during a difficult or unexpected pregnancy.

Tweet This: Heartbeat's Option Line answered its two millionth contact in 2014.

The contact center answers over 17,000 contacts every month from the U.S. and Canada, and now has Spanish-speaking consultants available 72 percent of every 24-hour cycle, with a 2015 goal to make Spanish-speaking consultants available 24 hours per day.

“A 24/7 pregnancy helpline has been at the very center of our life-saving vision since the day Heartbeat International was first formed,” President Peggy Harthsorn, PhD., who has served as president since 1993, said. “To see this vision become reality—and to think of the millions of lives directly rescued and impacted by Option Line—is truly satisfying and speaks volumes to the power of God and the faithfulness of our supporters over the decades.”

Hartshorn, who was recognized by Students for Life as a 2015 Defender of Life in late January, also highlighted Heartbeat International’s role in furthering the work of SOS Vita, a pregnancy helpline operated by Italian affiliate partner Movimento per la Vita, with technological upgrades and training in Heartbeat International’s Talking About Abortion resource.

Included in the 2014 milestones, Heartbeat International welcomed its first-ever affiliate in mainland China. The organization’s founding executive director, whose name is withheld for security reasons, was presented with a check for $10,000 at the 2014 Heartbeat International Annual Conference, with all funds coming by way of contribution from the network’s 1,800 affiliate organizations on every inhabited continent.

Heartbeat International’s 2014 Annual Report can be viewed in its entirety here.

"This is one more evidence that pregnancy help organizations are winning the battle for life."

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday | January 14, 2015
Contact: Jay Hobbs, Director of Communications and Marketing
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COLUMBUS, OHIO – Responding to a report from LifeSiteNews.com uncovering an ongoing plan between the Maryland chapter of NARAL Pro-Choice America and the public officials in Montgomery County, Md., to impede or eliminate pregnancy help organizations, Heartbeat International President Peggy Hartshorn, Ph.D., pointed to the success of pregnancy centers in her companion article at LifeSiteNews.com.

Read LifeSiteNews.com Report Here: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/exclusive-e-mails-reveal-maryland-officials-collaborating-with-naral-to-shu

Read Peggy Hartshorn’s Response Here: https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/why-do-abortionists-go-to-such-lengths-to-eliminate-us-because-we-threaten

“Heartbeat International and our worldwide network of life-affirming organizations believe no mother should feel so alone, so vulnerable, or so coerced that she ends her child’s life through abortion,” Hartshorn, who has served as Heartbeat International’s President since 1993, wrote. “These vital organizations enable a mother to make a true choice through a variety of services, including ultrasound, options counseling, maternity housing, and the ability to make an adoption plan.”

“And this is why we pose such a threat to NARAL and company. It’s not just that we are their competition. It’s that we are winning.”

Hartshorn’s comments come in the wake of the publication of an email string dating back as far as 2009, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, which capture ongoing strategy between Maryland’s NARAL chapter president Jodi Finkelstein and current Montgomery County Council president George Leventhal.

The pair discussed the County’s ongoing strategy to compel government speech from Heartbeat International affiliate Centro Tepeyac Silver Spring Women’s Center. Montgomery County first passed a city ordinance Feb. 2, 2010 requiring, “limited service pregnancy resource centers” – any facility that does not perform abortions – to post a sign in English and Spanish in its waiting room saying that “the Center does not have a licensed medical professional on staff” and that “the Montgomery County Health Officer encourages women who are or may be pregnant to consult with a licensed health care provider.”

A lawsuit brought by Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of Centro Tepeyac resulted in three separate court victories, which finally resulted in the County dropping its unconstitutional ordinance and paying Centro Tepeyac $375,000 in legal fees.

“Pregnancy help organizations like Centro Tepeyac exist so that every mother can feel loved and supported during her pregnancy,” Hartshorn said. “The only opponents to this mission are those who, like NARAL, stand to gain financially and ideologically by the intentional killing of a child within the womb.”

Tweet This: Pregnancy help organizations exist so that every mother can feel loved and supported during pregnancy.

13-year-old saved from abortion to meet with law-makers at Babies Go to Congress

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday | December 22, 2014
Contact: Jay Hobbs, Director of Communications and Marketing
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – A little child shall lead them. This well-loved statement will get plenty of airtime this Christmas season, but the phrase may end up becoming the theme of Heartbeat International's Babies Go to Congress® when the most powerful prolife effort on Capitol Hill takes place January 22-23, 2015.

An entourage of five former pregnancy help center clients and their children, rescued from the threat of abortion, will be highlighted by 12-year-old Christiana Pablo from Bowie Crofton Pregnancy Center in Bowie, Md., who is already blossoming into an outgoing champion for the life-affirming support offered by the more than 2,400 pregnancy help organizations rescuing 3,000 babies each week in the United States alone.

Faced with an unexpected pregnancy, Christiana's mother, Victoria Chan-Pablo—only 15-years-old at the time—found the support she needed to welcome Christiana into the world at Bowie Crofton Pregnancy Center. Her eldest daughter has been joyfully repaying that debt, sparking fundraising and community-building efforts for the center, which has served over 24,500 women and families since opening its doors in 1982.

"I say that Bowie Crofton Pregnancy Center saved my daughter's life because they opened up our eyes and gave us the knowledge, the strength and the encouragement to help us carry out our decision in keeping our baby," Victoria said.

Christiana and Victoria will have a chance to tell their story to their elected congressional representatives, along with centers from Ohio (Pregnancy Decision Health Centers), North Carolina (LifeLine Pregnancy Help Center), Indiana (Matrix Pregnancy Resource Center), and Arizona (Living Hope Women's Center). It is the first time in the history of the program that North Carolina will be represented.

Since beginning the program in 2009, a total of 109 women and children representing over 50 centers have visited 222 congressional offices from 23 different states.

"It's difficult to imagine a more empowering experience for a woman than Babies Go to Congress," Peggy Hartshorn, Ph.D., President of Heartbeat International, said. "This is an event that drives to the very heart of what life-affirming work is all about: every mother feeling loved and supported, both during her pregnancy and into parenthood."

Heartbeat International President to receive Defender of Life recognition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday | Oct. 7 2014
CONTACT: Jay Hobbs, Director of Communications and Marketing, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

COLUMBUS, OH – Celebrating her nearly 42 years of hands-on involvement in the life-saving ministry of pregnancy help, the last 21 of which as President of Heartbeat International, Peggy Hartshorn, Ph.D., will be honored as a Defender of Life by Students for Life of America, the group announced Tuesday.

The award is set to be presented at Students for Life of America's West National Conference in San Francisco, Calif., on January 25, 2015. Students for Life of America has also announced Professor Robbie George of Princeton University as its East National Conference recipient.

"It is truly an honor to be recognized by an excellent pro-life organization like Students for Life," Hartshorn said. "The work they are doing among high school and college students around the country is remarkable, and I am so thankful to commend with them the great work that pregnancy help organizations are doing every day in every region of the world."

Jolted by the announcement of the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous Roe v. Wade decision Jan. 22, 1973, Hartshorn immersed herself in pro-life work almost immediately, becoming involved in Columbus (Ohio) Right to Life in the following weeks. She and her husband, Mike Hartshorn, then began housing pregnant women in 1974, which led to their realization of a call to begin a pregnancy help organization in 1978.

That call led to the 1981 founding of Pregnancy Decision Health Centers, in Columbus, Ohio, which now serves over 15,000 clients annually in eight locations throughout Central Ohio.

Peggy Hartshorn joined the board of Heartbeat's forerunner organization, Alternatives to Abortion International, in 1986, before taking the reigns as president in 1993. During her tenure, Heartbeat International's umbrella has expanded from around 100 centers to over 1,800, comprising the largest and most expansive pregnancy help network in the world.

Hartshorn's previous awards include the Cardinal John J. O'Connor pro-life award from Legatus International, the Norrine A. and Raymond E. Ruddy Memorial Life Prizes Award, the J.C. Penney Golden Rule Award, the Sanctity of Human Life Award, 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), and the President's Volunteer Service Award under President George Bush.

Previous Defenders of Life Award winners include Congressman Christopher Smith (R-NJ), Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, Father Frank Pavone, Abby Johnson, David Bereit, and Phyllis Schlafly.

"Real women are being silenced and gagged in the process."

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
Thursday | December 18, 2014
CONTACT: Jay Hobbs, Director of Communications and Marketing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

COLUMBUS, OH – An article first posted Dec. 5 on Vocativ.com before it was picked up at Slate.com and The Daily Mail, among others, calls into question both the demand and medical research behind a treatment designed to reverse the effects of Mifepristone, developed by Dr. George Delgado, M.D., F.A.A.F.P.

Dr. Delgado, who sits on Heartbeat International's Medical Advisory Board, is medical director of Culture of Life Family Health Care and founder of AbortionPillReversal.com, which has built a network of 226 pro-life OB-GYNs who are prepared to provide an early dose of supplemental progesterone to block the effects of Mifepristone—the first of two pills administered in the RU-486 regimen.

"We are grateful for Dr. Delgado's work," Heartbeat International President Peggy Hartshorn, Ph.D., said. "It is a shame to see his good work besmirched by agenda-driven writers, determined to grow the business of abortion.

"The tragic thing is that real women who have either been helped by this treatment or wish that they had been, are being silenced and gagged in the process," Hartshorn said. "Pregnancy help organizations like Dr. Delgado's offer each and every woman the true compassion, support, and choice she deserves."

The articles—released over two years after Heartbeat International reported the site's launch and first distributed a webinar on the procedure through Heartbeat Academy—cite the small sample size of women included in an initial peer-reviewed 2012 report published by Dr. Delgado.

Dr. Delgado's team is currently reviewing its cases from the time of the initial report—which included 28 contacts and four births following ingestion of Mifepristone from May to December 2012.

Neither Dr. Delgado nor his team have been contacted by reporters linked to the recent articles.