By Gudrun Schultz
VANCOUVER, Canada, January 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A small kick from an unborn child was enough to save his mother’s life, and his own.
Justin Pogge, star goalie for the Canadian junior men’s hockey team, and newly signed to the Toronto Maple Leafs made a move 19 years ago that stopped his mother from throwing herself off a bridge into the river in Fort McMurray, Alta.
Annet Pogge was 22 when her boyfriend walked out on her at their engagement party, after she told him she was four months pregnant. After dealing with 126 confused guests, she walked onto the bridge that night and thought about ending her life.
“Just when I was thinking of doing it,” she told the Globe and Mail last week, “when I was thinking of terminating everything, not just the pregnancy, but me, I felt a kick. It was light but I felt it. “
That tiny motion of her baby shocked her out of her despair.
“It was the first real sign of life,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, my God. This is a sign. God wants me to live.’ I couldn’t end my life then. I couldn’t.”
Ms. Pogge underwent financial hardship and sacrifice to raise her son and keep him in hockey. She told him the story of that moment on the bridge, years before anyone else heard about it. She wanted him to know he was born out of love, she told the Edmonton Sun, and that it was his action that had saved her from ending their lives.