Woman Faces Online Bullying for Keeping Baby Conceived in Rape: 'The Other Side Just Finds It Abhorrent'
In 2014, what was supposed to be a routine business trip for Jennifer Christie, turned into a nightmare.
She had been on a two-week assignment out of town, but when the weather turned bad, she decided to stay a little longer until the roads cleared.
"The last day of this assignment, work let out early and I went back to my hotel," she told CBN News. "It was not a place that got a lot of bad weather, so it was kind of a ghost town and I head back up to my room and I had my hood up, scarf wrapped around my face. I wasn't really paying attention to what was around me and I didn't know I was being followed."
"I get to my room and I open the door and I kind of throw everything on the floor and I turn around to shut the door and there was a man in my doorway," she recalled.
The man pushed his way into Christie's room, hit her over the head and violently raped her.
She passed out in the struggle, suffering a brain bleed, broken bones and serious internal injuries.
When she regained consciousness, she was no longer in her hotel room.
Her rapist had left her for dead.
"I was in the back of the hotel in the stairwell outside that led to the dumpsters," said Christie. "I was wearing a scrap of clothing."
Six weeks later, while on a cruise for work, Christie felt ill. She soon learned she was pregnant with her rapist's child.
"They gave me the little stick test first and it was an interesting dichotomy of feeling completely shocked and also not shocked at all," she explained.
Christie, who already had four children, recounted her husband's unexpectedly touching reaction when she told him the news.
"He just said, 'Sweetheart, this is a gift,'' said Christie. "'This is something beautiful from something terrible and painful. This is going to be awesome. We love babies.' And I said, 'Yeah, we love babies. We can do this.'"
Since the attack, Christie, a pro-life advocate, has been sharing her painful but redemptive story.
Earlier this year, video of her testimony went viral and she began receiving threatening messages from abortion activists.
Someone even sent a video to her Facebook account depicting a woman being raped.
"The other side just finds it abhorrent that I am 'forcing women to carry a rapist's spawn.' Don't I understand that this is something that's going to be a horrible reminder?" said Christie.
Kristin Hawkins of Students for Life says she is not surprised and pointed out the increase in attacks aimed at pro-life women.
"We've seen this on college campuses," said Hawkins. "We had a case just a couple of years ago where a university staff member, Perdue University, started cyberbullying our Students for Life group and then threatened in online comments to rape pro-life women."
Meanwhile, Christie says her son is a beautiful reminder that good can come from evil.
"He's just a wonderful, a wonderful kid," she said. "And he's been such a light. He's been such a joy in our family."
She said looking back, she can see that God has been with her every step of her journey.
"God is in all of this," she said. "It's a story of beauty for ashes and hope and healing and grace and I'm so grateful for everything that has happened."
Christie learned in 2017 that the man who attacked her had been found dead.