This year’s Pregnancy Decision Health Centers (PDHC) gala dinner, held Sept. 19 in Columbus at Villa Milano, offered a personal invitation.
The event followed PDHC’s Lancaster gala held the previous week on Sept. 12 at The Tree Church.
The theme, “Here am I. Send me!” was inspired by the same verse in Isaiah 6:8. The prophet recorded hearing a voice asking, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” and he responded, “Send me!”
The gala’s special guest was David Bereit, the founder of 40 Days for Life, an internationally coordinated 40-day campaign that aims to end abortion locally through prayer and fasting, community outreach and an all-day vigil in front of abortion businesses.
Bereit encouraged his audience to answer God’s call of “Whom shall I send?” today by making abortion personal and standing in the gap for preborn children and their mothers.
In attendance were Darlene Yost, wife of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, and PDHC founders Mike and Peggy Hartshorn. Mike sits on PDHC’s Board of Directors and Peggy is chairman emeritus.
Bereit shared the story of 40 Days for Life’s beginnings in College Station, Texas. He and his wife, Margaret, had hosted a potluck for couples involved in marriage preparation ministry at their church.
One young couple, David and Monica, attended that night, and David proposed an idea to pray for an end to abortion 24 hours a day in front of a Planned Parenthood abortion facility that had recently opened in College Station.
Bereit said that idea would help to “galvanize an international movement that has saved more than 24,000 lives, closed abortion centers, spread to Columbus, Ohio, and helped people to leave the abortion industry because one young man heard and answered the call.”
Shortly after hearing David’s idea, Bereit discussed it at the local pro-life organization office. He and three others prayed around a table together and were inspired with an idea to pray and fast for 40 days (a biblically significant number), keep a constant vigil by peacefully gathering outside of Planned Parenthood for 24 hours each of the 40 days, and engage in community outreach to get as many people involved as possible.
“I was terrified,” Bereit recalled. “I didn’t think we could pull this off. I was so scared about what will people think? What will it look like? What if it fails?
“But we thought to ourselves, if we fail to do this, we have to be accountable to God for those women who, next week, will be going into that abortion center. We have to be accountable to God for those children who will perish on our watch in our town.
“We said we have to try. And so, we decided to hold the first-ever 40 Days for Life.”
The campaign was a success. Day and night, individuals prayed in front of the local Planned Parenthood every hour for 40 days.
Crediting the young man, David, for his original idea, Bereit said, “Because of that man’s determination, his idea, his passion, he awoke something in our community.
“Because he was saying, ‘Here am I. Send me,’ that sparked over 1,000 people getting involved in our local 40 Days for Life campaign. And by the end of that campaign, abortions went down in our town by 28 percent, more than 100 lives saved.”
The idea spread quickly. It was soon adopted in Dallas; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Houston; Kitsap County, Washington; and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Individuals leading the various campaigns felt called to organize a nationally coordinated 40 Days for Life campaign. Bereit said his “biggest vision at that time” was maybe 10 or 12 cities.
The leaders began spreading the word. Their efforts resulted in 89 cities, including in Columbus, across 33 states joining the first nationally coordinated 40 Days for Life campaign.
“My family hit the road, and we visited many of them, and I remember driving through Columbus and visiting that 40 Days for Life back in 2007,” Bereit said. “Here we are, 17 years later, and look what God has done.”
The campaign has since reached about 1,000 cities across every U.S. state and 64 countries. Bereit said, to his knowledge, it has spared 24,853 lives from scheduled abortions.
Because of the prayers of the faithful in the campaign, 155 abortion clinics closed, and 263 workers left the abortion industry.
“In every city where 40 Days for Life happens, the most important connection is with the pregnancy center,” Bereit said. “That’s why I’ve worked so closely with Peggy (Hartshorn) and Heartbeat (International) and so many other pregnancy centers around the country and also with PDHC and other pregnancy centers because it’s not enough for us to just say ‘no’ to abortion.
“We have to have a place where we can send someone, where they can say ‘yes’ to life and have the support, the love and help that they need to carry through the pregnancy and then to be with them even after the child is born.”
About seven or eight years after 40 Days for Life took off, Bereit said, he heard from his friend David. He learned why David was so passionate about praying for 24 hours a day outside of Planned Parenthood.
When David proposed the idea, his father was dying of cancer, and he had asked his son to pray with him for an end to abortion. His father then shared that he had wanted to abort him.
David’s mother and father conceived him out of wedlock, and his father paid cash for his mother to get an abortion. However, she never showed up for the scheduled appointment.
Bereit recalled David’s father telling him, “‘The person I wanted to get rid of in the dumpster at that abortion’s facility,’ he said, ‘David, that was you.’ He said, ‘Little did I know, on that morning, when I was so angry, that the person I wanted to get rid of would be the only person standing at my side as I lay here dying.’”
He encouraged the audience to imitate David in making abortion a personal issue.
“This affects all of us,” he explained. “There are people in our church congregations who are right now facing unexpected pregnancies. There are people in our neighborhoods who are right now at risk. There are people in our children’s schools. There are people in our families who are carrying the pain or regret of an abortion that they’ve never told anybody about.
“We need to make this personal, and then, we need to say, ‘God, who do You want to send?’ And He will say, ‘I want you.’”
Addressing the status of abortion nationwide, Bereit shared statistics demonstrating that abortions have increased since in 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade (1973), which held that a right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment included abortion.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) decision returned abortion regulation to elected branches. Bereit shared that of the seven states that put abortion on the ballot – California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and Vermont – the pro-life movement lost in each state.
This year, 10 additional U.S. states will vote on abortion.
“What was already an open Pandora’s box has been blown wide open, and things are only going to get worse in the short term, unless we answer the call,” Bereit said.
“Think about a woman who is facing an unexpected pregnancy; she’s scared: all the fear mongering in the media, all of these headlines right here in Ohio as well as the national political debates. Right now, she is more at risk of abortion than ever before. That child within her womb is at greater risk than ever before.”
The evening included a message from PDHC president Kathy Scanlon.
She shared that, as of August, PDHC has served more than 1,500 individuals among its four locations in the past year, providing upward of 1,000 pregnancy tests and 830 ultrasounds.
More than 90 percent of mothers assessed as “abortion vulnerable” or “abortion-minded” choose life, Scanlon said, after seeing their baby and hearing the heartbeat on an ultrasound. A total of 671 life decisions have been made this year, she shared.
PDHC also offers a parenting education program. So far this year, more than 800 new mothers and fathers participated in the program through more than 11,000 online and 620 in-person classes offered to them.
“Due to the growing need, PDHC has also added interpretation and translation services, mental health counseling and a community health advocate to provide one-on-one support to moms,” Scanlon said.
Since 2019, PDHC has provided Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) services under the direction of a medical doctor. Scanlon shared that chemical abortions via the abortion pill account for at least 87 percent of abortions in Franklin County.
The audience heard from Sierra, a local woman whose daughter, Sawyer, was saved by APR services after Sierra was connected to PDHC.
Using the natural hormone progesterone, the APR has enabled medical professionals to save between 64 percent to 68 percent of pregnancies with no increase in birth defects, Scanlon said.
“PDHC has continued to adapt and adjust our programs and services over the last 43 years to make sure that we continue to be there for women and families, providing the love, hope and ongoing support they need to choose life for their babies despite what others may be telling them or what is going on in the world around them,” she said.
With voters passing state Issue 1 in Ohio last November, enshrining abortion in the state’s constitution through all nine months of pregnancy, several of Ohio’s pro-life laws are being challenged in court.
A Franklin County Court of Common Pleas judge issued a preliminary injunction in August against enforcing a state law requiring a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking abortion. The injunction also blocked an informed consent requirement, which informed women of options available to them regarding their pregnancy before obtaining an abortion.
“The 24-hour waiting period has saved countless lives from abortion, and many of the women coming into our centers are in crisis, and they benefit from this time of reflection,” Scanlon said. “They receive education on their developing baby, discover all the options and community resources available to them, and receive an ultrasound to see their baby’s heartbeat and the life of their baby growing inside them before making a life-altering decision that they later regret.”
Also in August, a Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas judge issued a preliminary injunction against laws governing distribution of the abortion pill mifepristone.
The ruling opened the door for non-doctors, including advanced practicing nurses, physician assistants and midwives, to prescribe and provide the abortion pill.
It also challenged a requirement that the abortion pill be distributed in accordance with FDA health and safety guidelines. The change means doctors and advanced practitioners can now prescribe drugs off label after 10 weeks’ gestation, which can cause a higher risk of severe side effects and complications.
“Our Ohio State University campus center is located right next door to Planned Parenthood at 17th and High, and we are starting to see Planned Parenthood making changes to their website stating the abortion pill can now be used up to 11 and 12 weeks,” Scanlon said. “We verified with a supervisor that said changes are probably coming soon.”
