AAPLOG would like to congratulate Dr.’s Catherine Stark and Dermot Kearney for being among the four pro-life leaders who received the 2024 Peggy Hartshorn Servant Leader Award. This annual award, offered by Heartbeat International at their 53rd annual conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, “recognizes individuals in the pregnancy help movement who have given of themselves sacrificially in the service of life, as both servants of others and leaders in their own right.” This year, AAPLOG members Dr. Stark and Dr. Kearney were honored onstage during the conference.
We want to echo the sentiments expressed by Heartbeat International President Jor-El Godsey, who emphasized the importance of Dr.’s Stark and Kearney’s medical work as he gave them the award. These physicians have truly gone above and beyond in their defense of their pregnant and preborn patients. Dr. Stark is currently the medical director for three pregnancy resource centers in Michigan. Her main center is Crossroads Care Center, where she runs a prenatal care clinic for uninsured women; the other two are Compassion Pregnancy Center in Clinton Township and Birthchoice/Mobile ICU, a mobile unit in Detroit.
Dr. Stark told us the following:
AAPLOG has been a huge help to me as I practice medicine as a pro-life OB/GYN. I have used the educational resources and position statements to help me better understand the issues and supporting research. The media training was very impactful. It was Donna Harrison who first made me aware of APR, and motivated me to become involved. AAPLOG’s advocacy is critical to protect the conscience rights of those of us opposed to being forced to participate in abortion. I firmly believe that were it not for AAPLOG, this battle would have been lost long ago.
-Dr. Stark
We are also impressed by and thankful for Dr. Kearney’s work offering pro-life healthcare in the United Kingdom. Dr. Kearney has personally saved over 30 babies from abortion by providing abortion pill reversal therapy to women who began an abortion drug regimen but changed their minds. Due to this lifesaving work, he has been the target of attacks on his medical license. In 2021, he was banned from providing this lifesaving therapy pending a hearing for professional misconduct. Fortunately, this ban only lasted 10 months as the charges against him were dropped in early 2022 due to lack of evidence (as he explained at our 2022 national conference). Dr. Kearney’s case is just one of many examples of unscientific pro-abortion attempts to block medical professionals from providing APR to women who need it. We are proud of Dr. Kearney’s tenacity in fighting for his pregnant and preborn patients. According to Heartbeat International, “the crowd of over 1200 people greeted this announcement [of Dr. Kearney’s award] with a standing ovation.”
Above: Member Dr. Catherine Stark receives the Servant Leader award at the Heartbeat International Conference
Above: Dr. Dermot Kearney (center) accepts his servant leader award from Jor-El Godsey (left) and Heartbeat International Director of Medical Impact Christa Brown (right)
