For Angela Harders, one phone call of faith completely changed and altered her life, saving her daughter and would pave the way for her to someday launch Pax Ministries.
Sharing her story with Fox News, Harders says that after she became pregnant through sexual assault, making the decision to keep the child dramatically altered the course of her life. As a Christian, she had always believed in the right to life. However, this pivotal moment made her seriously consider getting an abortion.
“You can imagine my horror when I, the girl who had never dated before, the good Christian girl, found myself pregnant,” Harders said.
Because her father was the vice president of her local pregnancy center, Harders didn’t believe she could call any of the centers nearby. So, instead, she decided to reach out to a crisis pregnancy center in New York. While she never knew the name of the woman on the other end of the phone line, she credits the stranger for providing her with the comfort and the peace she needed to stay strong and go forward with her pregnancy.
The stranger on the other end of the line reminded her that God is the one who provides children, and for some reason, He had chosen her to become this baby’s mother.
“For some reason, God is choosing to give you a life out of this terrible circumstance,” Harders recounted.
When Harders canceled her appointment at Planned Parenthood, however, the person there decided to use Harders’ Christian faith as a way to lure her into getting an abortion.
“She knew that I was a Christian because it was something that I shared with her when I booked the appointment in the first place,” Harders said. “She said, ‘Angela, you know that if you go through with this you will never be able to travel again or be a missionary or be any of those other things you said that you wanted to do. We can take care of this problem for you so you can live your life and fulfill all the dreams that God has given you.'”
Harders decided that instead of limiting what God is capable of, she would press into Him and fulfill her calling while also becoming a mother. Today, she is a co-founder of Pax Ministries as she advocates for homeschooling and for biblical womanhood.
While Harders saw her daughter as a blessing and not a hindrance to the plans and purposes that God had for her, there is little question that today many women feel pressured to go through with abortions, whether procedural or chemically induced. Dr. Ingrid Skop shared with Charisma News that human traffickers and abusers are frequently the ones to provide women with abortion pills to keep their charades of darkness.
“We know that sex traffickers are getting these pills, incestuous abusers, coercive boyfriends, we know there’s already an epidemic of unwanted abortions in our country,” Skop said.
In a world where abortion has even been normalized even by the church, it’s stories like Harders’ that provide hope that God created people to do great things for His glory, and that families and children are included in this plan.
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Abby Trivett is a marketing copywriter and coordinator for Charisma Media.
Stephen Strang