There has been suggestion that pregnancy centers moving to offer medical services is a response to the present trend of brick-and-mortar abortion facility closings. More than 50 Planned Parenthood locations closed last year and at least 100 independent abortion centers have closed since 2022, reportedly owing to financial difficulties, increased abortion regulation, and reduced access to Medicaid funds. Pregnancy centers going medical has also been used as another jumping off point for fueling the abortion activist narrative claiming the centers are “fake clinics.”
The reality is that pregnancy help began shifting toward medicalization decades ago and a large majority of centers have been medical for years. Any more recent rise in medical services offered is part of a long-term trajectory in pregnancy help, example of the movement continuing to rise to meet women’s needs, whatever those may be in a given time.
Tweet This: Pregnancy help began shifting toward medicalization decades ago and a large majority of centers have been medical for years.
Heartbeat International leadership wrote in the 2021 retrospective book, The Power of Pregnancy Help: The First Fifty Years, that:
In the third decade of the history of our movement, a major shift began to occur in our service model, and Heartbeat is happy to have been part of the visioning and collaboration that helped make it possible. We refer to it informally as “going medical.” It involved sonograms and ultrasound machines that gave us a window to the womb.
Heartbeat is the largest network of pregnancy help organizations in the U.S. and the world. Pregnancy help organizations consist of pregnancy centers and medical clinics, maternity homes, and non-profit adoption agencies.
Pregnancy centers and medical clinics comprise the largest percentage of pregnancy help organizations and are where the concept of medical services resides. Where pregnancy centers offer various resources and forms of support, pregnancy medical clinics do so and in addition provide medical services, typically limited ultrasound.
Further from The Power of Pregnancy Help:
Each of these “medicalized” pregnancy centers operates ultrasound under the guidance of an appropriately licensed physician and employs professionally trained nurses and sonographers to bring this powerful medical technology to each mother so she can make a fully informed decision about her baby.
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The roots of medical ministry in the pregnancy help movement can be found with Heartbeat’s founder Dr. John Hillabrand and other pro-life doctors who often had early pregnancy help centers operating alongside or out of their medical offices in the 1970s.
Pregnancy help networks Care Net and the National Institute of Family Life Advocates also had a hand in the process of medicalization of pregnancy help beginning in the 1980s. This progression is detailed in The Power of Pregnancy Help and summed up with the statement, “Migrating to medical services, especially ultrasound, was clearly a missional move.”
By 1998, a total of 50 medical pregnancy centers or clinics were recorded in the first medical “conversion” manual, and then, by 1999, the first year Heartbeat International instituted a medical category of pregnancy centers in its Worldwide Directory of Pregnancy Help, there were over 100 listings in the United States.
From there Heartbeat International began sponsoring periodic medical clinic symposiums for pregnancy center leaders who were providing ultrasound services, inviting NIFLA and Care Net as co-sponsors.
Since then, many centers have opted to provide additional services, such as STD testing and treatment, Napro-technology®, perinatal hospice, and limited prenatal care, with greater integration of obstetric-trained physicians and nurse practitioners into day-to-day staff positions.
Two key outside contributors to expanding the medical model for pregnancy centers were the Option Ultrasound Program, established in 2003 by Focus on the Family’s pregnancy help ministry, and the Knights of Columbus Ultrasound Initiative.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute Pregnancy Center Report, which provides continued comprehensive analysis of pregnancy help in the U.S., has shown since 2019 the proportion of centers offering free or low-cost medical services to be 8 in 10. Today that is 80% of some 3,000 centers. This high representation of medical service offering coincides with the centers delivering significant levels of goods and services while maintaining an extraordinary client satisfaction rate of 98%.
"We have more than 75 percent of the pregnancy centers across the nation actually doing ultrasound and other medical services," Heartbeat International President Jor-El Godsey told CBN News recently. "So, this has been something that's been building for the last 30-plus years."
Heartbeat International works with affiliate organizations considering integrating or expanding medical services, and the pregnancy help movement’s Commitment of Care and Competence espoused by Heartbeat affiliates dictates that “Medical services are provided in accordance with medical standards, under the supervision and direction of a licensed physician (or advanced clinical provider as permitted by law).”
Further countering the idea that pregnancy help centers have been moving toward being medical just since the abortion industry’s recent business decision to close physical abortion facility sites is the fact that the process to become medical is not a quick and easy one.
Heartbeat aids in strategic planning for going medical. This planning includes prayer and discernment of whether medical services fit into the center’s mission and vision statements. There is also a comprehensive assessment of need, typically conducted by a steering committee. Other considerations include the center’s short and long-term goals, compliance with the center’s founding documents, state and local licensing, and medical director procurement. Additionally, there must be an assessment of financial impact and marketing, the center’s volunteers and supporters, and assessment of the impact on the center’s current operations, its internal relationships, and culture.
This all necessitates and signals marked commitment on the part of the center and its personnel to serving and meeting the needs of women and families, regardless of the abortion landscape at a given time.
Godsey told CBN the abortion industry’s current retreat from having a physical presence stems from its business model centering on abortion, also why whether in abortion or life states, the model is moving online.
“Which is less about care for the woman and more about care for their bottom line,” he said. “Meanwhile, pregnancy centers are motivated because they want to serve women, they want to love on women and help them."
Christa Brown, senior director of Medical Impact for Heartbeat International, concurred.
“For decades, pregnancy help medical clinics have responded to the needs of their communities with compassion and truth,” she said. “Healthcare professionals in these clinics work tirelessly to ensure that women and their preborn children have unbiased, authentic medical care.”
“Pregnancy help medical clinics offer long-term support and real solutions,” Brown said. “Unlike the abortion industry, we do not have a horse in the race - we do not make financial profit from any pregnancy decision. And clients overwhelmingly report positive experiences in these clinics.”
The work of countless client advocates, nurses, physicians, sonographers, and various volunteers is often heroic and yet with very little recognition, she added.
“Our work is to offer the support and services sought by families,” said Brown. “So, the best decision can be made for everyone involved in an unexpected pregnancy.”
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
