by Leslie Malek, Heartbeat International Editor

Human dignity and sexual wholeness are intimately linked. Today, the dignity of women is under heavy attack worldwide, especially when it comes to children and sexuality. Unfortunately, TV, movies, and music often portray a warped view of love, romance, and sexuality that robs women of dignity.

Decades ago, Peggy Hartshorn, Heartbeat International® President with over 40 years of experience helping pregnant women choose life, recognized that our highly sexualized culture leads women into a lifestyle of life-and-death choices. That recognition drove Peggy on a search to understand the cause and find a cure.

Disinformation about fertility, overpopulation, and sexuality, combined with lack of support for pregnancy and family, are prime factors in this crisis. In fact and contrary to media and “scientific” spin promoted by “overpopulation gurus,” declining birthrates and a warped view of love are now deeply embedded in cultures everywhere. This further contributes to the decline in families and devaluation of children and women.

Says Peggy, “For a culture to value women, children and families, women have to value their gift of fertility and their nurturing natures. The roles of wife and mother are intimately linked with womanhood just as the role of husband and father are intimately linked with manhood.”

Peggy is convinced that sexual wholeness is an important part of the cure in the process of reclaiming the dignity of women. The cure has a name: Heartbeat’s Sexual Integrity™ Program (SIP), a tool that affiliates can use to help the women who come into pregnancy help centers. This program helps women find new dignity in themselves by understanding God's plan for sexuality and fertility.

The Sexual Integrity Program draws inspiration from the “Theology of the Body,” Pope John Paul II's integrated vision of the human person, body, soul, and spirit. According to John Paul II, the physical human body has a specific meaning that answers fundamental questions about us and our lives.

The Sexual Integrity Program has become one of Heartbeat's most popular offerings. For details on the Sexual Integrity program, click here.

The dignity of women and Sexual Integrity

The need has never been greater for renewed efforts to restore the dignity of women. Organizations like Planned Parenthood, the most lucrative abortion provider in the United States, target students, young adults, and even children with campaigns designed to "liberate" young people sexually. Planned Parenthood even launched a Valentine's Day campaign proclaiming "National Condom Week." The campaign encourages youths to be sexually promiscuous and use "safe sex," a blatant contradiction of terms!

The HHS (U. S. Health and Human Services) mandate is another far-reaching assault on the dignity of women through the sexploitation of "healthcare." Bureaucrats have declared that pregnancy is a treatable disease that government must combat through preventive “healthcare.” Tragically, the HHS mandate actually undermines healthcare reform by inextricably linking it to the zealotry of pro-abortion bureaucrats. This mandate further institutionalizes, at the highest level of government and alongside abortion, the cultural attack on women.

Campaigns like this degrade the dignity of women and men, young and old. Instead of liberation, the people who fall into the trap of sexploitation find themselves emotionally wounded and sexually broken.  They also become highly vulnerable to contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

Heartbeat's SIP helps women learn how to respect their own body, know the ingredients for a healthy relationship, become sexually whole, and gain deeper understanding of the value of human life.

Through SIP, Heartbeat affiliated centers empower women by sharing the truth about who God created them to be. Centers also introduce women to the dignity of sexual wholeness with its freedom and peace.