Rebekah Hagan, a writer and speaker on unplanned pregnancy and abortion pill reversal, recalled feeling hopeless and terrified by the prospect of having a second baby at age 18.
To an audience of almost 600 people, Hagan recounted finding out she was pregnant in a grocery store bathroom as a student in 2013, while she had an 11-month-old at home. She contemplated aborting the baby and began taking pills to do so.
“When you don’t value yourself, it’s really hard to value the life growing inside of you,” she said.
Hagan shared her story at the Greater Columbus Right to Life (GCRTL) banquet at Villa Milano in Columbus on Monday, June 12. GCRTL is a charitable educational foundation that seeks to promote a culture that protects human life from conception to natural death through prayer, education and community advocacy.
Hagan told the audience that she was born and raised in California, the youngest of her parents’ four daughters, in a “great and wholesome” family.
“I was raised Baptist, I attended church multiple times a week, I recited Bible verses and I could articulate my faith.”
Hagan said that, although she was a faithful Christian, she had “no idea what it meant to have a real relationship with God,” which became “problematic” in her teenage years.
In high school, Hagan began a relationship with a man who was several years older. At age 17, during her junior year, Hagan found out she was pregnant.
She told her parents, and her father was devastated. Hagan, nonetheless, was determined to have the baby and finish high school.
“I need to be responsible and take care of the child I had a part in creating,” she said, recalling her initial reaction. “I can do this; I have to do this.”
Hagan graduated from high school six months early, gave birth to her baby, a son she named Eli, got her driver’s license and began college classes.
“I was proud; my parents were proud,” she said. “I was the hero of my own story, but the Bible says pride comes before the fall.”
She continued a relationship with Eli’s father, which included domestic abuse and violence.
“It got to the point where I said, ‘No good is going to come of this,’” she recalled. “I have to get out, and my parents responded with grace.”
They parents offered her “a fresh start to live at home.” She and Eli could live at their house until she finished college, although she was not permitted much of a social life, Hagan said. After four years, she was expected to provide for herself and the baby.
Hagan’s parents also told their daughter that if she were to get pregnant again, she couldn’t live at home or receive their financial support.
Hagan accepted her parents’ offer, ended her relationship with Eli’s father and moved home. Shortly afterward, Hagan said, she began to feel off physically.
Hagan went to the grocery store to buy a pregnancy test and took the test in the store bathroom. The test was positive.
Hagan said she panicked. She felt anxious, afraid and doubted she could provide for a second baby.
“There is no silver lining,” she recalled thinking. “This is going to cost Eli everything. I am going to be homeless; I will have to live on the (government) system. There is no way I can have a baby. I cannot bring my parents shame.
“In a moment of crisis, abortion looked a lot like hope.”
In desperation, Hagan searched “abortion clinics near me.” She found two options for abortion. One was a surgical procedure, which would cost $1,000 and require a support person to drive her to and from the clinic. Hagan said the surgical option seemed “traumatizing.”
The other option, a chemical abortion, also known as a “pill abortion” or a “medical abortion,” Hagan said, was described online as a “DIY drug-induced abortion” with pills that could be taken as far along as 2 1/2 months gestation. The pill was marketed as the Plan C “10-week-after pill.”
There were 72 online distributors listed that would provide abortion pills without needing to know the name of her doctor or if she had had a previous abortion, Hagan said.
The distributors marketed their products with photos of young women in their bedrooms, she said, which were decorated to be “cozy and comfy” and “looked better than a clinic.”
She said 50% to 60% of women in the U.S. abort their babies with the abortion pill, and 80% of abortions in central Ohio are done with the abortion pill.
At about seven weeks’ pregnant, Hagan made an appointment at a Planned Parenthood clinic to begin the chemical abortion. She described the mood of the clinic that day as somber and silent. She said the clinicians were “shady, rude and not professional.”
“Desperate people will put their faith in anything,” Hagan said.
A clinician advised that Hagan would take the first abortion pills at the clinic that day. The second set of pills were to be taken at home on an assigned date. The clinician told Hagan that the pill would “expel pregnancy” but did not say how.
Hagan said many girls and women are not told how the abortion pill works. The pill cuts off the hormone progesterone that prepares a fertilized egg to implant and grow in the uterus. The hormone increases to support a pregnancy. A developing baby will die if progesterone is removed, which is similar to a person being cut off from oxygen.
The pills then cause the woman to go into labor and deliver the baby. Hagan said she had been told it was best to take the second set of pills in a bathroom, flush the toilet and not look.
Hagan’s appointment at Planned Parenthood was delayed, which pushed back the date for her to take the second set of pills. After some time, she was given the date to take the pills to begin labor, which would kill the baby – it would be Eli’s first birthday.
“I knew I could not take a baby out of this world on the day that I brought a baby into this world,” she said. “Eli’s birthday would always be marked by that.”
After the appointment at Planned Parenthood, Hagan said, she sat in her car with the pills, and she began to feel scared.
“What am I doing?” Hagan said she thought to herself.
She searched “how to reverse a chemical abortion after taking abortion pills.” On the second page of search results she found a website that said, “If you have started a chemical abortion, call this number.”
Hagan called, and a woman answered. Unlike at Planned Parenthood, Hagan said, this woman asked her questions about who she was, her family situation and what led her to consider an abortion.
The woman told Hagan about the abortion pill reversal – a pill that Hagan could take, which increases progesterone and could possibly save the baby. Hagan began taking the abortion pill reversal.
In the following days, she missed several calls from Planned Parenthood. She returned the calls, and, to her surprise, the clinicians were “really upset” by her choice, she said. They told Hagan that, by taking the reversal pill, her baby likely would be born with birth defects.
Hagan’s parents learned about her pregnancy from her doctor who called the house. Hagan told her parents about the chemical abortion and abortion pill reversal that she was taking. Hagan said her father was more angered that a pill abortion existed, which he was unaware of, and that it was killing his grandchild, than he was angered by his daughter being pregnant again.
“Well, you’re probably wondering what happened,” Hagan said to the audience. “Did the abortion pill reversal work?”
Hagan displayed a photo of a 10-year-old boy wearing a football jersey on the screen behind her.
“This is my son,” she said.
Hagan gave birth to her second child, who was born without a birth defect, and named him Zechariah, meaning “God remembers.” She said the name was a reminder that God told her to “just say, ‘Yes,’ to Me, and just say, ‘Yes,’” to the child in her womb.
Hagan recognized the pregnancy center that offered her the abortion pill reversal. “Their ‘yes’ to help me enabled my ‘yes’ to choosing life.”
Years after giving birth to Zechariah, Hagan graduated from college, married her husband, Kramer, and gave birth to two more children, Lydia and Jonah.
“Moms and dads don’t have to choose between their babies or their dreams,” she said.
After Hagan’s talk, Beth Vanderkooi, GCRTL executive director, addressed a proposed Ohio constitutional amendment that would allow abortion through all nine months of pregnancy in the state and remove parental rights in decisions on abortion.
Abortion rights advocacy groups are gathering signatures to get the proposed amendment on the statewide ballot in November. They need more than 413,000 valid-voter signatures, which is 10% of the votes cast in the most recent governor election, from 44 Ohio counties by July 5.
Another issue, Issue 1, will be on the ballot in a special statewide election Aug. 8. The issue seeks to change the number of votes needed to amend the state constitution from 50% to 60%, require signatures of eligible voters be collected from all 88 Ohio counties and eliminate the 10-day redo period to collect the needed signatures. Early voting for the issue beings July 11.
Vanderkooi encouraged the audience to pray, fast and vote yes on Aug. 8 and no in the November election to uphold the dignity of human life.