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Terry Beatley fulfills promise to former abortion doctor

Katie Scott | Catholic Herald

Terry Beatley, founder and president of the Hosea Initiative, an organization dedicated to educating women about deception in the abortion industry, sits at her desk in Vienna.

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“Go-getter” only comes close to capturing Terry Beatley,
whose unyielding drive springs not from personal ambition but
from an even more powerful motivator: a love of life and a
relentless quest for truth.

The 51-year-old founder and president of the Vienna-based
Hosea Initiative, an organization dedicated to educating
women about deception in the abortion industry, Beatley hopes
to reach 1 million women a year with her message.

Her colleagues affectionately call her a tugboat, because
“nothing is going to stop me,” said Beatley, laughing.

Such spunk led the home-schooling mom from political activism
to pro-life advocacy. Along the way, she discovered a
spiritual home where truth and love of life coalesce.

A fire is lit

Beatley grew up in Fairfax with a Catholic mother and
nonpracticing Episcopalian father. Although baptized
Catholic, her faith background essentially was “nonexistent,”
she said, and she ended up in the Church of the Nazarene as
an adult.

Married and with two children, Beatley decided to
home-school, not realizing it would be a catalyst for her own
transformative educational journey.

As she studied the Civil War with her two daughters, she said
it struck her as tragic and nonsensical that Americans went
from categorizing blacks as subhuman to doing so with unborn
babies.

Around that time, a Catholic friend invited her to the March
for Life in Washington. Seeing so many people publicly
defending life, combined with her realization that history
had taken a step backward with human rights, “lit something
in me,” said Beatley.

She devoured every piece of information she could about what
led to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision
legalizing abortion. Poring over The Grand Illusion: The
Legacy of Planned Parenthood, by George Grant, she learned
about Margaret Sanger, a sex educator and birth control
activist whose organization later became Planned Parenthood.
Sanger endorsed eugenics and started the Negro Project,
which, according to Beatley, sought to eliminate undesired
people – the mentally and physically disabled and the
racially unwanted.

When she learned how “the abortion industry is currently
trying to undermine and usurp parental rights” with laws
allowing children to obtain birth control and abortions
without parental consent, she felt compelled to act.

Her first step was to form a small pro-life ministry, and in
doing so she came across a documentary called “Maafa 21,” a
film “that depicts Margaret Sanger’s project to reduce the
black race,” said Beatley.

She shared the movie with a black minister, who was deeply
moved.

“I knew right then that the dignity of life is what can unite
Americans,” Beatley said. “Because if we don’t preserve the
gift of life, what do we have?”

Unsure of how best to continue her pro-life efforts, she
turned to God in prayer.

“All I could hear was, ‘You need to go interview Dr. Bernard
Nathanson.'”

Nathanson was an obstetrician-gynecologist who co-founded
NARAL Pro-Choice America, formerly the National Association
for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. He personally aborted more
than 5,000 babies, and his abortion facilities were
responsible for around 60,000 abortions. In the 1970s, he had
a change of heart and became a prominent opponent of
abortion. Formerly an atheist, Nathanson was baptized
Catholic in 1996.

When Beatley heard God’s words in prayer she thought, “Why
would this man agree to be interviewed by some home-schooling
mom he doesn’t know?”

Yet as a home-schooler, she’d told her children to turn to
the original source whenever possible. And here was a man who
was in the very center of the nation’s abortion story.

To her surprise, Nathanson accepted her request for an
interview, and Dec. 1, 2009, Beatley stepped into his modest
New York City apartment.

Toward the end of the in-depth interview, Beatley found
herself unexpectedly saying: “If you have a message for
America, I will gladly deliver it for you. … I will
tell your story, the story of deception but also the story of
personal redemption.”

Beatley recalled how Nathanson paused for a moment before
replying, “Teach of the strategy of how I deceived America
and that the cofounder of NARAL says, ‘Love one another;
abortion’s not love. Stop the killing; the world needs more
love.'”

The promise was sealed with “a true covenant kind of
handshake,” said Beatley.

In his 80s, Nathanson had terminal cancer and would die a
little more than a year later.

Her first effort to fulfill the promise took shape
politically. Living in Fredericksburg at the time, she
partnered with the African-American community to defeat a
seven-term state senator who had a long history of killing
pro-life and parental rights legislation.

“God kept showing me that when people get the truth, the
people will change the direction of this country,” Beatley
said.

‘Terry, you’re home’

After helping defeat the senator, Beatley realized politics
was not where God wanted her. “He just wanted me to see that
we’ll be victorious,” she said.

Thinking her promise to Nathanson was fulfilled, she felt
“God’s nudge again.”

She said God told her there needed to be a movie about the
doctor’s life and she was the one to initiate it.

Weary but committed, she flew to Chicago to learn more about
Nathanson. There she met Father C. John McCloskey, an Opus
Dei priest who’d helped a number of famous individuals
convert to Catholicism, including the former abortionist.

During her visit, Father McCloskey invited her to pray with
him before the altar of a beautiful church.

Kneeling to pray, she heard, “Terry, you’re home. And from
this place is where we are going forward with the promise to
Dr. Nathanson.

“I just began to weep,” said Beatley. “There was mascara
dripping down my face.”

Wiping away tears and makeup smudges, Beatley then followed
Father McCloskey on a tour of the church. As she walked
behind him, watching his long strides and cassock billowing
outward, she said, ‘With all this research I’ve been doing
over the years, it just seems like the Catholic Church is the
one holding up the truth about life.'”

Father McCloskey stopped and turned. Winking he said, “Ah,
you’re going to be an easy case.”

And she was. Her head long ago had figured out that the
Catholic Church was where she was meant to be, but now her
heart had caught up.

“I had no idea God would lead me down this amazing journey
… with flying me out to Chicago to find that God wants
me to do this as a Catholic,” she said.

Back in Virginia and spurred by her Catholic faith, Beatley
went to work on the Hosea Initiative, an educational
organization whose mission is to fulfill the “promise to Dr.
Nathanson and liberate women with truth.”

Initially Beatley thought the nonprofit would be geared
toward minority communities, but after several months
realized the focus should be on women. “Women will make it a
multiethnic organization,” she said.

The Hosea Initiative – whose name was inspired by Hosea 4:6,
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” – offers
webinars, conferences and seminars, including this year’s
“Liberated with Truth: Shades of Deception” April 25. The
initiative teaches basic history and the fundamentals of
American liberty, “which also includes the first enumerated
right, the right to life,” Beatley said.

This spring, Beatley, who attends St. Francis de Sales Church
in Kilmarnock, hopes to publish her book about Nathanson,
“making his story one that every American would read –
pro-life and pro-abortion.” Her goal is to turn the book,
entitled Deceiving American Women, into a feature-length
film.

Beatley believes that while education eventually will affect
the political arena, “the victory is in loving people with
truth,” she said. “If we want to save America, we have to get
right on the truth about life; life is the key to everything
else.”

Scott can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @KScottACH.

Find out more

Go online to learn more about
the Hosea Initiative and its April 25 conference, “Liberated
with Truth: Shades of Deception.”

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