(Oregon Right to Life) — Pro-life pregnancy resource centers reportedly served more than 2.1 million people last year, according to Heartbeat International, a worldwide network of pregnancy help organizations.
During an annual meeting in late April, Heartbeat International President Jor-El Godsey reported that pregnancy resource centers affiliated with the network conducted 2,164,043 in-person client visits in 2024, potentially changing many minds and saving countless unborn babies’ lives.
The number cited by Godsey does not include the visits at the more than a thousand centers affiliated with the Care Net network and other unaffiliated centers, suggesting the total number of contacts at pregnancy resource centers is far higher. In the U.S., pregnancy resource centers currently outnumber Planned Parenthood abortion facilities 15–1 and provide a wide range of life-affirming services and resources to mothers and families, including ultrasounds, counseling, baby supplies, and adoption referrals.
“It is the pregnancy help movement that has stood the strongest against abortion even as the United States was plunged into the darkness of the Roe v. Wade decision,” Godsey said, according to a report published by LifeNews. “Pregnancy help outreach was successful even when the laws weren’t, rescuing hundreds of thousands of lives each year.”
Godsey told attendees that Heartbeat International currently has over 3,000 pregnancy help affiliates worldwide, including more than 1,357 overseas. On its website, Heartbeat International estimates that some 300,000 women per year choose life for their babies following contacts with affiliate centers. Meanwhile, an analysis by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute tracking the 1,100 centers affiliated with Care Net estimated that its pregnancy resource centers were responsible for saving the lives of over 800,000 unborn babies between 2016 and 2020. And pro-life laws have been making a big impact as well. A recent Institute of Labor Economics study reported “approximately 32,000 additional annual births resulting from abortion bans” in just the first half of 2023.
Heartbeat International’s outreach last year included the initiation of almost 2,000 Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) efforts last year, a protocol whereby women can reverse the effects of the first abortion pill and save their baby by taking progesterone. A 2018 peer-reviewed study on the use of progesterone to combat the effects of mifepristone estimated a 64–68% success rate with no negative effects to the mothers or their babies.
In his LifeNews piece, former Executive Vice President of Family Research Council Chuck Donovan said Heartbeat International’s annual meeting drew some 1,600 network members from 44 U.S. states and over 20 countries, with participants coming together “to educate one another, share encouraging projects, and craft strategies for countering a worldwide culture of death.”
Meanwhile, news of the more than two million people helped by pregnancy resource centers last year comes as Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives this year introduced a bill that would enshrine protections for pro-life pregnancy resource centers nationwide even as some states seek to restrict their life-saving work.
The Let Pregnancy Centers Serve Act, introduced by New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith, New York Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, and Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Fischbach, would protect pregnancy resource centers from being compelled to “to offer, provide, or distribute an abortion-inducing drug…refer a person for an abortion… counsel in favor of an abortion…” or “post any advertisement, sign, flyer, or similar material that promotes or provides information about obtaining an abortion…” The law also protects pro-life centers from measures that would restrict them from “providing information, care, counseling, classes, or other services related to pregnancy, childbirth, or parenting” while they refuse to “perform, refer, or counsel” for abortion.
Reps. Smith, Tenney, and Fischbach reportedly plan to request a hearing for the Let Pregnancy Centers Serve Act this year.
To locate pro-life pregnancy resource centers and other resources in Oregon, visit ortl.org/community-resources/.
