The largest conference in the history of Heartbeat International – the global network of pregnancy help centers – just concluded in Birmingham, Alabama. Some 1600 participants, representing 20 countries, and approximately another 400 online attendees, came together for prayer, education, fellowship and celebration in order to be even more effective in saving lives every day from the ravages of abortion.

Having been among the participants and exhibitors this week, as I’ve done since 1994, I can attest that it would be hard to imagine a gathering more filled with faithful service and love for life.

Most readers who are active in the pro-life movement will likely recognize the name of Peggy Hartshorn. She served for decades as President of Heartbeat – a role filled in more recent years by Jor-El Godsey. Peggy then served as Board Chair once Jor-El took over.

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At this conference, Peggy concluded her time on the Board, and was formally given the title of “President Emeritus,” with the gratitude of everyone who was present, and with assurances from her that she “is not going anywhere,” but will continue to be present and of service both to Heartbeat and to the wider movement.

One of the many things celebrated during the conference was that the Abortion Pill Reversal technique, made available under the umbrella of Heartbeat’s panoply of services, has now saved 6000 babies, and will quickly approach 7000. The prevalence of chemical abortion also opens this door to saving lives by quick medical intervention between the first and second drug of the technique, when the ambivalence that accompanies most abortions (whether chemical or surgical) has more of a chance to assert itself.

Various workshops and presentations reminded the participants how much the pro-abortion forces want to silence our voices as we offer this life-saving alternative, and how the abortion forces are experimenting now with a one-drug technique instead.

They don’t just want “choice;” they are zealous for the deaths of more and more babies.

And that leads to a spiritual reflection – a dimension of the pro-life movement and of pregnancy help work which was also strongly emphasized at the recently concluded conference. In a talk I provided online to coincide with this conference, I reflected that the word “heartbeat” conveys powerful Biblical concepts – the heart of God, the heart of humanity toward God, the heart of a mother, and the heart of humanity towards itself.

God’s heart towards humanity is, of course, expressed in John 3:16, that “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.” And it is in 1 John 3:16 that we find what the human response needs to be: since he laid down his life for us, we too ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

That’s the mandate that shapes every pregnancy center, every member of Heartbeat International, and indeed every faithful person in the pro-life movement.

In expressing his own heart for human life, God both uses and surpasses the heart of a mother: “Can a mother forget her infant? Be without tenderness for the child in her womb? Yet even should she forget, I will never forget you” (Isaiah 49:15).

Scripture warns, indeed, that some mothers will forget. In fact, as a sign of the end times, Paul tells Timothy that people will be “astorgos,” that is, “lacking natural affection,” or as some translations have it, “heartless” (see 2 Tim 3:3). This sin encompasses the hardness of heart that is abortion.

But in place of that, the salvation we have in Christ is promised as the giving of a new heart:

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26).

“But this is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33).

Every Spring, Heartbeat International expresses, manifests, and presents to the world the heartbeat of God himself, and the new heart he gives us, that we might love and defend life. Heartbeat will do it again next year, as it gathers in Cincinnati, OH from March 25-27, 2026.

Meanwhile, may we all manifest that heart of self-sacrificing love in all we do for the unborn!

LifeNews.com Note:  Frank Pavone is the national director for Priests for Life.

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