The 24/7 pregnancy help contact center Option Line plays a critical role in helping pregnant women at risk for abortion and saving lives, as reflected in findings of the latest Option Line Impact Report.
Established in 2003, Option Line® is the only fully staffed, bilingual pro-life contact center in the U.S.
Option Line connects women with their local pregnancy help organization, provides consultation on abortion, adoption, and parenting, and schedules appointments in real-time through a state-of-the-art system. Option Line also answers after-hours calls for pregnancy help organizations and partner organizations and hotlines.
A project of Heartbeat International, Option Line has an above industry standard for answered call rate. Heartbeat is the largest network of pregnancy help organizations in the U.S. and internationally. Option Line was originally a joint venture with Care Net from 2003-2012.
Since answering the first call, Option Line has reached more than 7 million people, many who are desperate for answers in an unexpected pregnancy.
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Option Line is a lifeline
Option Line had more than 377,000 life-affirming connections and Option Line staff scheduled more than 3,600 appointments last year. Adding staff during the past year, including Option Line consultants and a nurse, has allowed for more contacts, Option Line Director Nafisa Kennedy said. This is helping Option Line to serve more women more efficiently and pro-actively.
“We have, by God’s grace, added new consultants to our ranks,” Kennedy told Pregnancy Help News.
According to the 2024 Impact Report, of those 377,288 contacts, 241,239 were by phone, the primary way women reach out. Monday is typically the busiest day for phone calls. Texts were second to calls at 35,880, followed by chats at 28,947, and emails at 5,602. Digital connects through the self-service center locator totaled 65,619.
Overall, more than 1,100 people contact Option Line every day for help via phone, live chat, text, email, and that number continues to grow. As a result, more lives are rescued from abortion.
Option Line Plus expands this 24/7 pregnancy help by adding nurses to provide after-hours educational calls, equipping clients with essential information and connecting them to local pregnancy help organizations. In 2024 there were 587 connections with an Option Line Plus nurse.
Tweet This: Option Line has reached over 7 million people, has over 1,100 contacts per day, and an above industry standard answered call rate.
This year has already been busy for Option Line personnel, Kennedy noted, and she and her team expect to receive at least 400,000 calls, texts, chats, and other forms of contact in 2025.
Keeping up with trends in the contact center realm, including staffing formulas, along with tracking Option Line activity, allows Kennedy and her team to have a greater understanding of how to staff the hotline and respond to text and chat messages, she said.
“Staying tuned in to what’s happening in the contact center industry has been really helpful for Option Line,” Kennedy said. “That’s what we use to determine how many consultants we need per shift.”
Depending on the call volume or the digital volume, Option Line has as many as seven people on its busiest shifts, the team serving overnight and on holidays.
Increased client connections include APR
Kennedy believes two primary reasons account for the increase in Option Line contacts over the past few years.
One is the rise of chemical abortion.
Estimates vary but all signify that chemical abortions account for a conclusive majority of all abortions occurring in the U.S. Many women regret that decision and go online to seek help with reversing their chemical abortions. According to Christa Brown, BSN, RN, and Heartbeat International’s senior director of Medical Impact, nearly 2,100 calls came to the APRN in 2024. An increase in chemical abortions opens the door for more women to be inquiring about Abortion Pill Reversal after starting a chemical abortion.
The other factor driving traffic into Option Line Kennedy believes is the Dobbs decision of 2022, which gave back control of abortion regulation to the states. With increasing interstate abortion travel from life states to abortion states following Dobbs, and online sites able to illicitly provide chemical abortion drugs across state lines with relaxed of safety standards in recent years, more women have access to chemical abortion drugs without proper medical oversight, increasing the need for support and assistance overall.
In addition to helping women in mission critical contacts where the woman is at risk for abortion, Option Line consultants also respond to calls to the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN). After determining that a caller needs to speak with an APR nurse, the Option Line consultant sends the call to the APRN for a medical professional to further assess the situation and connect the client with a doctor or nurse who is local to them and who can help her with the APR progesterone protocol. The APRN recently celebrated the milestone of 7,000 lives saved.
Finding pregnancy help through Option Line
Most women whether searching for assistance with an unexpected pregnancy or seeking help with reversing a chemical abortion find Option Line via the internet, Kennedy said.
“In the early days, it was the Yellow Pages,” she said. “It’s kind of funny, really, as I imagine most women today don’t even know what the Yellow Pages were.”
As of the compiling of this year’s Impact Report, a woman is connected to pregnancy help through Option Line every 84 seconds.
Worldwide impact
Option Line is available for Heartbeat affiliate pregnancy help organizations around the world. Some countries are attempting to create a service like Option Line, Kennedy said.
“When we receive an international call, we’re often able to give that warm hand-off to a hotline in their country or a pregnancy help center in their country,” she said. “Heartbeat International has a Worldwide Directory of Pregnancy Help, and many of those are our affiliates.”
During the past year, the Option Line phone lines have opened up to receiving international phone calls whereas previously international contacts came through the chat function or the contact form on the website, Kennedy added.
“In the first month, we received over 100 calls from outside the United States,” she said. “It’s been incredible to be a part of that. We get to make those connections across the globe.”
Option Line answers phones for more than 1,000 affiliates when those organizations are not available, Kennedy said. Clients are normally able to get into a center within 48 hours of calling the hotline.
“We’re happy to stand in the gap,” she told Pregnancy Help News. “We will answer their after-hours calls.”
“The vision our founders had was to maintain that 24-hour service to serve our affiliates and to make sure any time someone needed pregnancy help, there’s a warm answer on the other side of the line to meet their needs,” Kennedy said. “We’re here 24/7, 365 when the needs arise, at 1-800-712-HELP.”
The Option Line number is 1-800-712-4357, and the website is OptionLine.org.
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) and Pregnancy Help News. Heartbeat is currently the subject of two lawsuits brought by state AGs concerning sharing information about Abortion Pill Reversal.
