Leaders from Heartbeat International shared the importance of the right for pregnancy help organizations to offer women the opportunity to try and save their unborn children after they’ve started a chemical abortion at a pro-life event in Washington D.C.
Heartbeat is the largest network of pregnancy help organizations in the U.S. and globally and manages the Abortion Pill Rescue Network, a network of nearly 1,500 healthcare professionals, pregnancy centers, and hospitals that administer the Abortion Pill Reversal protocol.
Heartbeat International President Jor-El Godsey and General Counsel Danielle White addressed a crowd at Thomas More Society's (TMS) Defending Life event.
Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) is an updated approach to a treatment used since the 1950s to prevent miscarriage. It involves prescribing progesterone to counter the effects of the first drug in the two-drug chemical abortion regimen.
Chemical abortion consists of mifepristone, which starves the unborn baby of nutrients by blocking progesterone, the hormone in a woman’s body that sustains pregnancy, and misoprostol, taken a day or two later to prompt the woman to go into labor and deliver her deceased child.
If a woman starts a chemical abortion, taking mifepristone, and she has regret, if she acts quickly enough it may be possible to save her unborn child. Results are best within 24 hours, but reversals have occurred as long as 72 hours after the mifepristone was ingested. Statistics show that to date more than 7,000 lives have been saved thanks to the Abortion Pill Rescue Network.
[Click here to subscribe to Pregnancy Help News!]
Abortion proponents attempt to quash APR through legal or legislative means, or with censorship.
Currently Heartbeat is facing two lawsuits in state court brought by state attorneys general in California and New York concerning sharing information about APR. Other pregnancy help networks and organizations have been similarly sued as well.
Non-profit public interest law firm Thomas More Society is representing Heartbeat in Letitia James v. Heartbeat International & CompassCare, et al., and The People of the State of California v. Heartbeat International & RealOptions.
Abortion Pill Reversal is a very simple process, but it's a very complicated issue, Godsey examined for the TMS gathering.
“Because a woman has felt such a pressure,” he said. “She might have been even coerced into an abortion decision, and she's actually taken the first pill of the abortion pill regimen, which is not one pill, but two.”
Tweet This: Women often felt pressure, have been coerced into an abortion decision, and experience regret, seeking to reverse their chemical abortions.
“She's taken that first pill, and something inside of her suddenly awakens to the fact that that was not the right decision,” he said, “that was not the right choice.”
“But she, in that moment, is not thinking about having an abortion,” he added. “She's actively aborting her child.”
Godsey explained how the response when a woman calls the APRN saying she just took the first pill, wanting to know how to stop it, is progesterone.
“Progesterone,” said Godsey.
“What a woman produces in her own body to sustain a pregnancy,” he said. “So, it only makes sense when you have this foreign mifepristone coming in and trying to block progesterone, that the way to address it is simply to introduce a high volume of progesterone. The very same thing she produces herself. And so that, by the way, is Abortion Pill Reversal.”
Godsey recounted how Abortion Pill Reversal Network founder Dr. George Delgado transferred the network, now the Abortion Pill Rescue Network, to Heartbeat International in 2018.
“At that time, there were about 450 women who had reversed their abortion with progesterone,” he said. “That was then. Now we count more than 7,000 babies.”
“We answer that call around the clock, 24/7,” Godsey said. “We are there for that moment when she's searching for us.”
Godsey then discussed how Big Tech suppression ensued in 2021 and continues to this day.
Ads for the 24/7 pregnancy help contact line that Heartbeat manages, Option Line, and for the APRN, were removed by Google. Facebook had done some suppressing as well.
Heartbeat was able to get most of it back over time, Godsey said, but not Abortion Pill Reversal.
“So, they have labeled that an unsubstantiated claim, although we have 7,000 points of evidence that tell us it’s a substantiated claim,” Godsey said.
“Big Tech has not allowed us to advertise it,” he said. “They keep boxing us out for that. And it is that slowed our progress, but we continue to marshal on and continue to help women who regret that decision and are looking for an answer to change the path that they have put themselves on.”
“And that, apparently, is what makes the Big Abortion attorneys general vary troubled,” Godsey noted. “Because the fact that there are women looking for reversal actually confronts the idea that the other side is trying to say, the panacea that abortion is supposed to be - it is not.”
Women step in and say, for whatever reason, they were clouded, they were coerced, or actually forced, or even poisoned with this without their knowledge, he said.
“And they say, ‘I have to find an answer,’ and that's what our team does, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even on the holidays,” said Godsey. “We talk to women just like that.”
There are many powerful stories, he said, but there's one where Heartbeat was able to help a flight attendant as she was getting on a plane on the east coast, and by the time she landed on the west coast, the hotline team had gotten a resource for her.
“But the AGs are very upset about this,” he said. “Apparently, they don't want anyone to know about this. They're not actually suing us about the provision of abortion reversal. They're suing us for promoting it. So, they're apparently okay that it exists. They just don't want anyone to know about it. And we don't find that acceptable at all.”
White recounted that Heartbeat did not have the benefit of learning about the California lawsuit the normal way, which is by being served.
“We had the media call us up and say, "Do you have a comment about this lawsuit?"” she said.
White explained that the cases would take the highest caliber attorneys and she had confidence that TMS counsel was up to the task.
“But it's important,” she said. “It's not just important for Abortion Pill Reversal. It's important for helping to support OB-GYNs, who are afraid because ACOG is coming in and they're putting power on these doctors who are afraid to do APR. They were afraid to stay with the pregnancy center.”
White concluded by expressing optimism for the cases in Thomas More Society’s hands.
Heartbeat personnel also participated in a briefing on Capitol Hill with Congressional staff during March for Life week on the dangers of chemical abortion and the hope of APR.
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) and Pregnancy Help News. Heartbeat is the subject of two lawsuits brought by state AGs concerning sharing information on APR.
