On October 23, 2023, Angela Harders posted a TikTok video answering the question, “What’s one small unimportant decision that you made that changed the whole trajectory of your life?” In this nearly five-minute video, Angela describes how one call to a pregnancy center in another state changed her life for the better. Surprisingly, her video went viral with over 60,000 reactions and 4,000 comments as others shared their similar situations.
In her video, Angela describes how she was raised in a devout Christian family and her dad was the Vice President of their local pregnancy center. She attended youth group during the height of the 90’s purity movement and her pastor was Joshua Harris (author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye). As a teenager, she vowed to herself that her first kiss would be on her wedding day. Imagine her shock and shame when she discovered she was pregnant because of rape.
Angela shared in her video how she called both a Planned Parenthood and an out-of-state pregnancy center. We were able to catch up with Angela and have her share more details about what happened with each phone call. Because of her family’s devout faith and her involvement in church, her shame caused her to call Planned Parenthood initially. On that call, she shared about her faith and her dreams of traveling and being a missionary when she scheduled her abortion appointment.
But, Angela wasn’t at peace and she was struggling with the decision to go through with the abortion. She said, “I knew this was a life-changing decision, and because of the work my dad did, I had seen women with regret.” This is why she decided to call a pregnancy center, but it had to be a center out of state because she feared if she called a local center, her voice would give her away since her father worked at their local one. Angela called a pregnancy center in New York, and to this day she doesn’t know the woman’s name who answered the phone, but that phone call changed the trajectory of Angela’s decision.
On the phone with the New York pregnancy center, Angela explained her background, what had happened, and how she was now pregnant. To her surprise, this woman on the other end of the phone began to speak life into her. Angela shared, “One of the biggest differences between my phone call with Planned Parenthood and the pregnancy center is that the pregnancy center listened, was empathetic, encouraging, and the woman shared that good will come from this. She told me that sex doesn’t make babies. God does. Many people try for a baby, but can’t have one. God was giving me something good that came from a bad situation.” Angela went on to say, “I was at a point where I just needed someone to say what I already knew in my heart, and she did that.”
Once Angela heard the encouragement she needed, she was very surprised at how the phone call with Planned Parenthood went when she called to cancel her abortion appointment “” but surprised in a not-as-pleasant way. “They were feeding into my fears. Yes, I had fears, and they said aloud everything I feared inside. I talked to the same woman when I canceled the appointment who I made the appointment with. Because she remembered that I was a Christian, she began to use that against me by saying I couldn’t be a missionary as a single mother because some countries wouldn’t allow that. She said, ‘How are you going to tell your friends and family? We can take care of this and no one has to know.” Angela shared that the woman made her feel like her baby was some dirty secret that she could just get rid of and nobody ever had to know. “I would know and God would know,'” she stated.
Angela went on to choose life for her child. In her video she shared, “And because I canceled the appointment, nine years ago today, not only am I still able to travel the world and do all the things the lady at Planned Parenthood said I would never be able to do — now I get to do it with the most increadible human being that I’ve ever known. My daughter is now problem. She is the greatest joy of my life, and I will forever be grateful to the stranger on the other end of the line from a random pregnancy center in New York who told me I could do it.”
When asked what Angela wanted to let the frontline workers at pregnancy centers to know, she began to tear up in her response.
“Scripture says that perfect love casts out all fear. That’s what they do. They embody God’s perfect love to speak life into others. They empower her with their words and actions “” introducing her to the Love of God that casts out all of her fears.” Angela wants to encourage everyone who answers the phone at pregnany centers, “They never know the results of some of the calls, and because of this, they may not grasp the magnitude of their impact, but God knows.”
Angela went on through her tears to say to everyone involved with a local pregnancy center, “I want them to know that their labor is not in vain. I am a homeschool advocate, and I get to see the fruit of the work I do when someone tells me I helped them become a homeschool mom. I know they don’t get to always see the fruit of their labor like I do, but life is so important. So, literally life or death decisions are being made, and they may not know their impact. This includes the impact that is being made by those who are investing money, running the boutique, and the ones praying from home for the center. Don’t underestimate the magnitude of that.“
Angela wants women who find themselves in a situation like she was in to know that “You CAN be brave and strong in an unplanned pregnancy.”
“Women deserve to know and hear the truth,” Angela concluded in our conversation together. That’s what she did, and she could have never guessed this TikTok video would go viral or would have her featured in a national Fox News article. Her dad passed away last year, and by sharing her story, she feels as though this is a way that God is allowing her to preserve his legacy because the pro-life cause was so special to him.
Angela graduated from Liberty University in 2009 and began her career as a public school Spanish and ESOL teacher. She got her Master’s of Education in Bilingual Curriculum and Instruction in 2012 and obtained her third certification in Special Education in 2019. Angela left compulsory schools in 2021 in order to found PAX Ministries and to spread God’s message of faith and freedom in every area of life and for every age of life. She currently serves as Director and Founder of PAX Academy.