Jor-El Godsey is President of Heartbeat International. He joins us to set the record straight about the good work of pregnancy help organizations.
Legacy providing help and hope
Godsey helps us understand the decades-long legacy of pregnancy help work. Well before Roe v Wade, pregnancy help started in the late 1960’s as individual states legalized abortion. He says their work is helping women not need abortion.
Profit motive negates reality
Senator Elizabeth Warren and other abortion rights advocates argue the centers are “fake clinics” and worse. But those same advocates take large donations from Planned Parenthood and other organizations which stand to benefit financially and politically from abortion rights and practices. Godsey says this dynamic involves couching abortion as empowering women. They also present a false dichotomy of this “empowerment” or pregnancy centers. This narrative negates the reality of the many downside impacts of abortion in the lives of women who experience it.
Politicians fail to mention the two million women who are helped without charge to them. Thus they fail to mention a true motive for any so-called harm. Instead, pregnancy help organizations have grown and evolved from offering only pregnancy tests and gospel tracts to the medical services offered at over 70 percent of pregnancy centers today. In addition the PHO’s offer spiritual support as an outreach which is truly holistic
Community based care, enjoying wide support
The vast majority of funding comes from the local community where the centers are located–in more than 50 percent of counties in the US. These donors represent the pregnancy help movement as well. Politicians who oppose PHO’s are opposing the will of these donors as well.
From his bio: Jor-El Godsey serves as President of Heartbeat International. He leads a staff dedicated to equipping, empowering, and encouraging the thousands of leaders and developing leaders of Heartbeat’s affiliated pregnancy help centers, maternity homes, and adoption services, in the U.S. and on every inhabited continent. He oversees Heartbeat’s core mission to be the leadership supply line for the growing pregnancy help movement worldwide.
Jor-El has served in the pregnancy help movement since 1988. He first served at pregnancy help centers in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. In 1999, Jor-El became Executive Director of Life Choices in Longmont, Colorado. In 2006, Jor-El accepted the call to help Heartbeat International as Vice-President. Now serving as the second President in Heartbeat International’s 44 year history, he continues to remind us all that we are better together.
Jor-El met his wife, Karen, at a volunteer training meeting for the Hope Center in Ft. Lauderdale. They currently make their home in Columbus, Ohio, with their three children.
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