A leading figure in the pro-life movement issued a challenge for attendees of the Heartbeat International Pregnancy Help Conference to help end abortion forever.
Heartbeat’s 53rd annual conference took place in Salt Lake City, Utah, April 24-26 with the 2024 theme, “United for Life.” Pro-life ambassador David Bereit served as opening keynote speaker.
Bereit, founder of 40 Days for Life, first took attendees back almost two years to the date of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs vs. Jackson case.
“Our work is far from done,” Bereit said. “Because on June 24, 2022, the United States Supreme Court did not ban abortion, they did not abolish abortion nationwide. What they did is, they recognized the error of their past ways and said there was no right to abortion in the Constitution.”
He went on to tell conference attendees the fight for life is no longer one battleground, but instead, has expanded to 50 war zones.
“They sent the decision back to you and me, the American people, through our elected officials in the states and in Congress,” Bereit said. “As a result of that decision, we went from one focus on a federal sudden, on to all of a sudden all 50 states, state by state battlegrounds, where life is at more jeopardy than ever before.”
Bereit then added, “Regardless of whether we live in a so-called red state or a so-called blue state, the environment is more treacherous than it has ever been in our time in this movement.”
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An “explosion” of abortion numbers
According to recent reports, abortion numbers have risen since the Dobbs decision. Bereit cited an “explosion” of abortion in several states, including Illinois.
“[A] 220% increase [in Illinois], more than 100% increase in New Mexico,” he said. “I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia – a 60% increase.”
Nationally, abortion rose by 10 percent, and Planned Parenthood’s abortion numbers also increased, he added.
“We see that they committed, in the last year, a record number of abortions: 392,715, up by 18,560 over the previous year, while raking in a windfall $700 million of taxpayer funding, meaning that you and I are being forced to underwrite the destruction of our nation's future, one boy and one girl at a time,” Bereit said.
He also cited a statistic that “more than 63 percent of abortions” are performed using the two pills that make up the chemical abortion regimen, meaning an increasing number of women and girls are experiencing abortion at home, alone, and without medical oversight.
Five principles to implement
Combatting the brutalities of abortion, for women, for babies, for families, for communities and for the nation, takes a team effort. God must be part of that team, Bereit said.
“It's not enough for me and you to collaborate or you and other pro-life leaders and groups,” he said. “We must collaborate with God Almighty, the author of life.”
Tweet This: It's not enough for us, pro-life leaders and groups to collaborate. We must all collaborate with God Almighty, the author of life.
He offered the audience five principles he believes must be instilled in pro-life organizations:
- Have faith and trust in God.
- Have a shared vision and purpose.
- Incorporate strategic collaborations.
- Implement constant communication.
- Have unwavering perseverance.
Bereit cited Scripture to back up each principle. He also told the audience how he and his small pre-40 Days for Life staff implemented those ideals and the results they began to see in their Texas community, including a two percent drop in the number of abortions performed in the first year of their vision, which was to see the Planned Parenthood center in their community close.
“That two percent still represented lives saved, souls impacted,” Bereit said. “The next year, more collaboration, more unity for life [and] the next year abortion went down 15 percent.”
But afterward, he said they “hit a wall.”
“We felt like everything had stalled out and our community was coming apart, not united for life,” he said, “and so I pulled our little staff together around the wooden table in our office and for an hour we went back to principle #1: Faith and trust in God.”
They prayed for God’s will to be done and to remove their own desires and plans. The idea for 40 Days for Life then took root.
“He put on our hearts the three activities of prayer and fasting, peaceful vigil, and community outreach,” Bereit said. “And He gave us a plan of how to unite our community for life like never before.”
“We launched the campaign, 1,000 people participated, and that year abortions [in the community] went down by 28 percent,” he said.
Encouraging and increasing results
As the 40 Days for Life campaign grew nationally, the number of lives saved from abortion, the number of abortion workers who left the industry, and the number of abortion facility closures grew exponentially. Abby Johnson was one of those workers who left a Planned Parenthood facility in Texas; she now is a pro-life speaker and the founder of And Then There Were None, an outreach to abortion workers.
“Starting in 2000, through nationally coordinated and eventually internationally coordinated campaigns, always staying true to those five principles of collaboration because our part was only a small part of the greater pro-life work … we saw 2,000 leaders mobilized and 750,000 volunteers,” Bereit said. “During the time I was serving we ended up seeing, by the grace of God, 14,000 lives saved as people on the sidewalks directed them to your pregnancy centers, 82 abortion centers closed their doors and went out of business, and 143 abortion workers had conversions and left the abortion industry, including Abby Johnson.”
However, the goal of seeing the Planned Parenthood in his community close did not happen, and Bereit felt “conflicted.”
“God just kept putting on my heart ‘It's too big for any [one] of us, [but] it's not too big for all of us,’” he told the audience.
In 2013 he received a phone call from Abby Johnson. By then, she had left Planned Parenthood. She told him the College Station, Texas, facility was closing “thanks to all these collaborative efforts,” and the state of Texas defunded the organization.
“I wept and I laughed with Abby on the phone,” Bereit said.
He told the audience that as pro-life organizations “link arms” and employ the five principles he provided, the vision of ending abortion nation-wide is achievable.
“Working together with others, working together with God so that, united for life, we can save more lives, help more women, impact more souls, and end this atrocity of abortion for once and for all,” Bereit said. “We are not meant to merely have that vision and purpose ourselves; we are meant to be united in that vision and purpose. Never ever, ever give up!”
Heartbeat's 2025 Conference will take place in Birmingham, Ala., April 30-May 2, 2025.
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
