Commenting on the life-affirming legacy of Mother Teresa in an op-ed published at The Federalist this weekend, Heartbeat International Board Chairman Peggy Hartshorn, Ph.D., caught the attention of NewsMax.com, the No. 4-read political website in the U.S., on Tuesday.
Reaching an estimated 16 million visitors per month, NewsMax picked up on Hartshorn’s comparison to San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s widely publicized refusal to stand for the National Anthem and then-President and First Lady Bill and Hillary Clinton’s refusal to stand and applaud Mother Teresa following her address at the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast.
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Titled, “Report: Clintons Once Pulled a Colin Kaepernick on Mother Teresa,” the NewsMax article repackaged Hartshorn’s commentary, which appeared in the run-up to Mother Tersa’s canonization as a Catholic saint Sept. 4.
In her article at The Federalist, Hartshorn said the reason the Clintons refused to stand had everything to do with the content of Mother Teresa’s speech, which, “which echoed her earlier comments in her 1979 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.”
“Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want,” [Mother Teresa] said. “This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”
Instead of offering a violent “solution,” Mother Teresa urged her listeners to help mothers and fathers learn to love their babies, to start within their own families in their care for the unwanted and weak, then to move into the community and into the world. To love until it hurts. Isn’t it clearer every day that the real alternative to the violence of our world today is none other than love?
The Clintons have not learned that lesson from Mother Teresa. In fact, Hillary’s Democrats promote the most rabidly pro-abortion platform our nation has ever seen. In addition to forcing the American taxpayer to fund abortions at home through promising to repeal the Hyde Amendment, the Democratic Party’s platform would also force us to pay for abortions overseas by repealing the Helms Amendment.
Hartshorn, who was president of Heartbeat International—the world’s largest network of life-affirming pregnancy help—from 1994-2015, has been involved in the pregnancy help community since shortly after Roe v. Wade made abortion on-demand the law of the land in 1973.
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The author of several training manuals for staff, board members and volunteers in local pregnancy help efforts—all of which are available through Heartbeat International’s online store, Hartshorn also penned a 2011 history of the pro-life pregnancy help community, “Foot Soldiers Armed with Love: Heartbeat International’s First Forty Years,” which is also available for purchase.
In addition to her piece at The Federalist, Hartshorn wrote, “5 Ways Mother Teresa Trail-Blazed Today’s Life-Saving Movement,” which first appeared at Pregnancy Help News, and has also run at LifeNews.com.
Hartshorn’s work has previously appeared at The Washington Times, The San Jose Mercury News and LifeSiteNews.com.
