Rebekah Hagan is grateful for the life of her six-year-old son, and she wants to give back by helping other moms facing adversity in pregnancy.
After making a courageous decision in the spring of 2013 to try and save her son’s life through Abortion Pill Reversal, the California mom of three speaks to audiences about her experiences, works to raise awareness about APR (see Editor’s note below), and she helps other young women make their own brave choices.
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Nearly seven years ago, Hagan began the Abortion Pill Reversal protocol after she had taken mifepristone, the first pill of the two-pill chemical abortion process, at a Planned Parenthood facility in Sacramento.
“I thought of all the reasons to abort,” she said. “I already had a child and was newly single. I was afraid of losing my home with my parents. I had a fear mind-set, and I didn’t plan to tell anyone.”
She’d had her first son, Eli, when she was 18 and still in high school. The father of this child was also Eli’s father. However, “it was a toxic relationship,” she recalled. She had left the man and returned to her parents’ home.
“I knew Eli and I were not safe (with him),” Hagan said.
Because of these circumstances, she thought abortion was her only option.
“Sometimes abortion looks like hope,” she said.
After taking that first abortion pill, however, she immediately experienced regret.
“I thought to myself, ‘Oh, my gosh, what did I just do?’” she recalled. “You don’t know how to advocate for yourself. I didn’t think to ask questions. You are sent on your way with a little brown bag and are told, ‘There’s no going back.’”
This was March 13, 2013, and Eli had been born on March 14. The coincidence with the dates hit her hard.
“I prayed for forgiveness and then began searching online for how the abortion might be stopped,” she said.
She discovered information about Abortion Pill Reversal, originally spearheaded by Dr. George Delgado. With the help of a doctor in her area, she began the progesterone regimen.
Somehow, the Planned Parenthood facility found out; the staff contacted her and told her the baby would have birth defects if it survived the treatment, Hagan said.
They were proven wrong.
“I have a healthy and active six-year-old boy,” she said.
She named him Zechariah. “I liked the meaning of the name,” Hagan said.
The Hebrew meaning is ‘The Lord has remembered.’
“I see God’s hand in it all,” she said.
Hagan recently had her third child, a girl whom she and husband Kramer named Lydia.
Serving and raising awareness
Hagan was raised in a Christian home, however, like some young people raised in a faith-based family, she made choices that went against her family’s beliefs. After finding hope and redemption with the assistance of Abortion Pill Reversal, she began sharing her experience with others. Public speaking opportunities came, and she responded with enthusiasm.
“I wanted to give back,” she said. “The public speaking has grown. It was a natural progression because of the relationship with people involved.”
Hagan speaks between 15 and 20 times a year, in churches, pregnancy centers and schools. She has also testified before state legislators regarding informed consent bills.
She is also able to personally connect with women who find her on Facebook, and she’s able to provide them encouragement.
For example, 25-year-old “Samantha”* was in an emotionally abusive relationship and though she started a medical abortion, she changed her mind.
“Although she wasn’t with the guy anymore, he still controlled her,” Hagan said. “I’d recite truth to her. She delivered a baby boy at the end of November. Even when you choose life, things don’t just go away. (But) she is grateful she didn’t go through with the abortion.”
Additionally, 17-year-old “Jessica”* who had gotten involved with the “hook-up culture” on the East Coast, according to Hagan, was put in contact with her.
“Her main concern was disabilities,” Hagan said. “There is so little information, truthful information, out there online. Women wonder if they will be okay and if the baby will be okay. I want to help them.”
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Hagan said she is grateful to help women like Samantha and Jessica.
“These moms have been spared the trauma of abortion,” she said.
Hagan also serves at a California pregnancy center.
For the past three years, she has worked as the community outreach coordinator for Sierra Pregnancy & Health in Roseville, near Sacramento. This year, the center plans to add Abortion Pill Reversal to their services offered to women.
As a decade dawns, more than 900 babies’ lives have been saved thanks to APR and courageous women like Hagan.
The Abortion Pill Rescue Network is now coordinated by Heartbeat International, with support from Dr. Delgado and many other medical professionals.
Hagan continues to advocate for APR, saving women and babies from the horror of abortion, giving women another choice and a second chance for themselves and their unborn children.
“The reality is the majority of women are conflicted … in this decision. APR gives women another choice and a second chance,” Hagan said. “It’s life-changing and life-saving.”
Tweet This: "APR gives women another choice and a second chance,” Hagan said. “It’s life-changing and life-saving.”
Editor’s note: Rebekah Hagan will speak for Heartbeat International’s Babies Go to Congress campaign later this month in Washington D.C.. **Watch PHN for Babies Go to Congress coverage.**
Heartbeat International, which manages the Abortion Pill Rescue Network, also manages Pregnancy Help News.
*Samantha and Jessica are pseudonyms
