The pregnancy help world is truly international, and one never knows when they may have the opportunity to impact lives across the world.
A South African couple living in the United States found courage to choose life while visiting a pregnancy help center in a small Midwestern town. Pregnancy Options Lifecare Center Executive Director Gina Little credits Heartbeat International for the resources she and her team were able to provide for this couple.
Selma and Joseph* had a VISA to work in the United States when they discovered the Selma was pregnant. When they came to Pregnancy Options Lifecare Center in Faribault, Minn., their plan was to abort. They remained resolute after talking with the center’s client advocate.
Little offered the couple an ultrasound to confirm whether the pregnancy was viable. If it were not there would be no need to have an abortion.
“Why would you want to make a decision you might not have to make?” Little said she told them.
The couple said they would return the following day but that they wouldn’t change their minds.
Something on the intake form stood out to Little.
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She remarked to Selma and Joseph how they’d marked that they are Christian, which they confirmed. Little asked whether they minded if she would pray with them.
“Sure, you can pray for us,” the couple responded.
“And so, I did,” Little said. “I just asked the Lord to embrace them as they were discerning what to do with this pregnancy and that He would help guide them to make the right choice for them.”
Selma and Joseph returned the next day and for an ultrasound.
“The ultrasound registered five weeks, five days, and on the screen, clear as day, you saw the heartbeat,” Little told Pregnancy Help News.
“The dad is crying, and mom is like, ‘Is that really my baby?’” she recalled.
The couple chose life for their unborn child.
“It was our first in-house ultrasound on our new ultrasound machine,” Little said. “God was in the house that day!”
Staying connected with pregnancy help
The story doesn’t end there. The couple traveled around the country for work, and Little and her staff were able to find pregnancy centers throughout their stops using Heartbeat International’s Worldwide Directory.
“We were sending them to pro-life centers where they could get help, they could get support and encouragement,” Little said.
“You're going to be in Missouri? What county in Missouri? We can look it up,” she said. “We were giving them pregnancy resource centers the whole time they were in the United States.”
Selma and Joseph’s story continued back in their home country.
“We were able to say, ‘Where do you live?’ and we could connect them with pregnancy resource centers in South Africa,” Little said.
Tweet This: Using Heartbeat International’s Worldwide Directory we were sending them to centers where they could get help, support, and encouragement.
Little and her team then got to see how the new parents were doing even further in their journey.
“This spring they sent us a picture of them pregnant, and then a couple weeks later they sent us a picture of their baby, a little girl,” she said.
Connecting lives across the miles
Little had attended the annual Heartbeat International Conference also this past spring, and during a session she met Daniele Gradwell, executive director of Pregnancy Help Network/Africa Cares for Life.
“Only God can do that – He gets all the glory,” Little said. “Before I went to the conference, I thought it would be really cool to run into somebody from South Africa.”
The two women have remained in touch, she added.
Help from Heartbeat
Little has served as executive director of Pregnancy Options Lifecare Center for 10 years. Prior to becoming the director, she worked for another non-profit and ran a business.
“The Lord has given me a gift to come in and assess and to build stability and a strong foundation,” she said. “And as long as we stay on His strong foundation, we're good.”
Little has attended several Heartbeat conferences, whether in-person or virtually, and when she took the helm as director, she said she found strong support and valuable resources through Heartbeat International.
“I was really feeling over my head in trying to learn all the pro-life stuff,” she said. “I knew nonprofit stuff, but it was the pro-life stuff where I felt so inadequate.”
She took the new director’s training at Heartbeat's Pregnancy Help Institute, and through the annual conferences, she said she had developed strong relationships and friendships as well as has received valuable resources and education.
“Heartbeat, for me, is like my lifeline,” Little said.
“Look at what happened,” she said. “This Midwestern pregnancy resource center was able to use that book that they tirelessly put together, and we were able to connect [Selma and Joseph] everywhere they went, knowing and trusting that they would be supported and encouraged. I'm still in awe, like I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.”
Moving forward with pregnancy help
Faribault is located about 50 miles south of Minneapolis. Pregnancy Options Lifecare Center offers numerous services, including STI testing and parenting programs, and continues to move forward in growth.
The center opened a satellite office in early October, serving a community 15 to 20 minutes from Faribault, stemming from a goal Little set five years ago after the Birthright location closed in that town.
“It's just never left my heart that they needed their own center,” Little said. “It’s just one day a week right now, but I want it to grow.”
Additionally, her center plans to offer a fatherhood program, using volunteer male mentors. She hopes to launch that program in early 2026.
“Heartbeat has taught me to be bold, [and] I feel like Pregnancy Options has been living boldly because we're building on the Lord's direction,” Little said. “When you care about the people God does some mighty work.”
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
*Pseudonyms
