She planned to serve in missions overseas, but God used her unplanned pregnancy to lead her to serve in different mission fields within her family and within the pro-life movement. 

In the heart of Mother’s Day 2010, 21-year-old Erin Ortega was surprised with the news of an unexpected pregnancy.

Erin was in college at the time working toward obtaining a degree in missions and anthropology. She had dreams of serving in the mission field overseas, the same way her missionary grandparents did. She was worried that an unplanned pregnancy would ruin her plans and stop her from getting a college degree.

Growing up, Erin was advised by her mom to invest in her education. Her mom was a single mom, but a college degree helped her get out of poverty and find a job that allowed her to provide for her family. Erin did not want to sacrifice the college education she fought so hard to get.

“My mother instilled in me that you need to go to college. You can’t get knocked up … She instilled a love of education, the love of intelligence, and a desire to learn,” Erin says.

‘NOWHERE IN THE CARDS’

Erin Ortega with her daughter.

Even though Erin had been married for a little over a year, she was not ready to be a mom yet. She was content with her life and wanted to focus on her marriage and her schooling.

On top of being a newlywed couple, Erin and her husband had just moved to Philadelphia. They didn’t have a support system. Erin was worried about their finances since they were both in school while working full-time jobs.

“I didn’t even factor in that I could get pregnant. It was nowhere in the cards,” Erin says.

In March 2010, Erin remembers calling her mom and telling her about the smell of the flowers in her community. Her mom ended up asking her about her period. Since Erin wasn’t keeping track of her cycle, her mom encouraged her to take a pregnancy test.

“Believe it or not, the timing of it all, it turned out that I took that test on Mother’s Day of 2010, and it turned out positive,” Erin recalls. “I remember standing in my apartment with my husband next to me, and we’re staring at these two little pink lines that were so dark.”

Erin was overwhelmed with mixed emotions. She was afraid and devastated. She didn’t know how she and her husband would be able to make it through.

But God was faithful and provided for them during a time of uncertainty. God led Erin and her husband to a church about an hour away that went above and beyond to support them.

“Once they started to find out that we were pregnant and that we didn’t have any family in the area, they surrounded us with love and support and encouragement and all sorts of baby stuff,” Erin says. “That was really the first time either of us had really seen the church be the church in the way that they were supposed to protect and care for young families.”

Erin and her husband both took a semester off to figure out their situation and work as much as they could to financially prepare for a baby. Since her husband was closer to finishing his seminary degree, Erin encouraged him to go back to college while she focused on her pregnancy.

In the meantime, their church family visited them often and blessed them with so much grace and generosity. They did not expect their church to show up in that way. This was a healing experience for Erin’s husband, who was hurt by the church when his parents divorced.

“My husband will tell you to this day that this experience was what turned him back into considering ministry … That’s when he finally acknowledged that he felt like he was being called to be a pastor,” Erin says.

SACRIFICE 

Erin felt convicted to pause her college endeavors to focus on her two children while working a full-time job. She also supported her husband’s ministry over the years as a pastor. Sacrificing during that season of her life was extremely difficult.

“At the end of the day, motherhood is not perfect,” Erin says. “It is the hardest, most sacrificial thing in your entire life. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to fully understanding what God went through when He sacrificed His son  — the pain of that … It’s undervalued and the hardest job that’s ever been created.”

Moms and dads sacrifice in different ways, but moms tend to sacrifice more because pregnancy requires a woman’s body. 

“The minute you find out you’re pregnant, your entire worldview changes because everything you do affects that child,” Erin says.

Even though sacrifices are painful and difficult to make, Erin is thankful that God helped her persevere through challenging circumstances. She’s proud of her strength and what she has been able to do in motherhood.

“I would not be the person I would be if I had not had that sacrifice because it’s very easy to be selfish. But it is really, really hard to sacrifice. It is the hardest because you have to pull yourself out of your own desire, out of your own loss, out of your own needs. You have to put all of that aside to care for someone else,” Erin says.

RIPPLE EFFECT

Erin Ortega’s daughter is now 13 years old.

Erin believes she is stronger as a mom and as a wife because of everything that she has gone through. Most importantly, she is able to walk alongside women who are facing unplanned pregnancies because she can personally speak into that experience.

“It’s a ripple effect just like everything … My story is now for other people, including my own kids,” Erin says.

For almost six years, Erin worked at a pregnancy crisis center in New York where she counseled and encouraged women who were considering abortion to choose life. 

“I just loved the idea of helping with unplanned pregnancies. God had still not fully healed me, so looking back, that’s exactly what I needed,” Erin says.

Erin can remember how convicted she felt when she started working at the center. She was trying to convince expectant moms to choose life and that they were going to be OK, even though she was struggling to embrace her own experience with her unplanned pregnancy. God wanted her to dig deeper into her belief system so she didn’t appear as inauthentic to the moms who were coming into the center.

“It was such a whiplash, such a learning curve for me. It was such a spiritual journey in the first six to nine months because God was really working on me,” Erin says.

Aside from her involvement working with pregnancy crisis centers, Erin has served as a member for Feminists Choosing Life of New York and the national Whole Life Committee at the AND Campaign.

EMPOWER MOMS

In 2021, Erin went back to college to finish her bachelor’s degree in psychology and just graduated in December 2023. She is working toward getting her master’s to get licensed as a mental health professional, specializing in maternal mental health.

“I want to work with moms during preconception, pregnancy and postpartum,” Erin says. “I want to talk to them about their identities. I want to be a safe place for them where they can vent about all the mixed emotions that come with motherhood. I want to be there to encourage them. I want to build them up.”

Erin’s personal experience with motherhood and her involvement in the pro-life movement have shown her how important it is to not only value life, but to empower the moms who are having to make difficult choices during their unplanned pregnancies.

“The pro-life stance actually spends a lot of time talking about the life of the baby and it’s always sat with me, because at the end of the day, the baby has no choice. It’s the mom who has the choice. So if you’re really going to do work in the pro-life movement, wouldn’t you want to spend time working on her and empowering her?” Erin says.

During her years of counseling, Erin has not met a mom who wanted an abortion. The women coming into the pregnancy crisis centers are feeling overwhelmed, stressed and unsupported. They feel like they don’t have any other choice.

“I don’t have to convince them it’s a baby. They know it’s a baby. That’s why they’re so overwhelmed because they know how much they’re going to have to  sacrifice to be a mom. From money to their bodies, to their relationships … it all takes sacrifice to raise that child. I have to empower her to know that she can do it, to know that there’s resources, to know that there is help,” Erin says. “She’s not having an abortion because it’s legal. She’s having an abortion because she’s freakin’ stressed out, and she needs somebody to come into her life and sit with her and hug her and tell her that it’s gonna be OK.”

Whenever expectant moms visit the pregnancy crisis center, Erin loved to encourage them that they’re going to be the “freakin’ best” mom they can be for their child.

Erin says, “There’s times where you’re not going to feel like you’re strong enough. Of course there’s days where you’re not going to feel you have the strength to do it. Of course it seems like the much easier decision is to not do this really hard thing. But from my own experience, it doesn’t last forever. It may last a long time. Your journey may look very different from everybody else’s journey, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t have to look that way. It doesn’t have to be full of sadness and grief and hatred. Motherhood can be embraced. And wait until you see yourself in 10 years. You’ll be shocked at who you have become, all because of this child you didn’t ask for.”