Who Is An Abortion Survivor
- If your mother attempted to abort you, and you did not die from the abortion attempt, you are an abortion survivor.
- If your mother was carrying twins, did not know it, and the abortion only killed your brother or sister but not you, you are an abortion survivor.
The resulting impact on these abortion survivors can be both physical and emotional, but they have overwhelmingly testified that they are glad to be alive and have forgiven their birth mothers for the abortions.
The physical scars from the abortions can be anything from lost limbs to birth defects, to dislocated limbs, to cerebral palsy, and other physical damage.
The emotional scars come from the many questions about why my mother tried to abort me. Why did I survive and my sibling did not? How can I forgive my birth mother? And then there is the issue of survivor guilt.
Survivor guilt was first recognized back in the 1960s when Holocaust survivors all displayed similar symptoms of feeling guilty that they were alive and other family members were not. Survivor guilt is now identified among survivors of many tragic events like terrorism, combat, natural disasters, etc.
If you are an abortion survivor, we want to hear your story. Please visit this page and leave your story.
Abortion Survivors Tell Their Stories
Abortion supporters have claimed that many of the things said about late term abortions and babies surviving abortions are simply myths and not true. They also contend that in the rare instance of a late-term abortion, it is always performed because of a danger to the mother or because the baby is severely deformed.
Melissa Ohden counters these claims as she is born alive in abortion of an unsuccessful saline abortion when her birth mother was 31 weeks pregnant and forced into an abortion. There was no life-threatening danger to her mother, and Melissa was not deformed in any way.
Now as the founder of The Abortion Survivors Network, Melissa has connected with 269 abortion survivors, and the number is growing. Melissa has become a spokesperson for these survivors and on February 14 met at the White House with President Trump and thanked him for all he is doing to support them and the preborn.
Click Here for Melissa Ohden’s testimony.
Watch her story on YouTube.
Josiah is the survivor of a D & C (dilation & curettage) abortion when his Korean birth mother was 8 weeks along in her pregnancy. After a few months, she realized that she was still pregnant and decided to give birth and put the baby up for adoption. Josiah was a healthy baby but had suffered a disfigured arm most likely from the abortion as a curette is used to cut the baby into pieces.
At 13 months Josiah was adopted by a family in Oklahoma where he joined ten other adopted and two biological children. Josiah was told of the abortion when he was 13 and for a time felt malice toward his birth mother. However, he has since forgiven her with the help of his strong religious convictions. He is now a college student with hopes of becoming a pastor.
Josiah is a strong and vocal advocate of adoption and speaks out for the adoption option, saying he feels a burden and responsibility to be a voice for those who do not have one due to their dying from abortion.
Watch his story on YouTube.
Claire survived a surgical abortion, but her twin did not. Her birth mother was only 13 years old when she became pregnant, and her mother took her straight to the abortion clinic to get rid of the problem. When Claire continued to grow in her womb, her mother realized she was still pregnant.
Claire was born 2 1/2 months early and had dislocated hips and club feet. Although the abortion still affects her today, she has forgiven her birth mother and says she will not be silent because she can relate to the other birth mothers and where she and her twin were at that time. She wants to tell them all there is hope and there are options.
Claire now testifies to legislators and even went to Ireland to testify that every child deserves a chance at life.
Watch her story on YouTube.
My name is Gianna Jessen… I was aborted, and I did not die. My biological mother was 7 months pregnant when she went to Planned Parenthood in southern California, and they advised her to have a late-term saline abortion.
A saline abortion is a solution of salt saline that is injected into the mother’s womb. The baby then gulps the solution. It burns the baby inside and out, and then the mother is to deliver a dead baby within 24 hours.
This happened to me! I remained in the solution for approximately 18 hours and was delivered ALIVE… in a California abortion clinic. There were young women in the room who had already been given their injections and were waiting to deliver dead babies. When they saw me the abortionist was not yet on duty and had me transferred to the hospital.
I should be blind, burned… I should be dead! And yet, I live! Due to a lack of oxygen supply during the abortion, I live with cerebral palsy.
When I was diagnosed with this, all I could do was lie there. They said that was all I would ever do! Through prayer and hard work by my foster mother, I was walking at age 3 ½ with the help of a walker and leg braces. At that time I was also adopted into a wonderful family. Today I am left only with a slight limp. I no longer have need of a walker or leg braces.
…Death did not prevail over me… and I am so thankful!
Click here for Gianna Jesssens Testimony
Watch her story on YouTube.
My mother’s choice was my death sentence. My mother, Betty, had an abortion… A few weeks after that she was sitting at home reading when the book on her stomach began to bounce up and down. That’s when she knew she was still pregnant… with ME!
“I’m so sorry, Betty,” the doctor told her when she went back to him, “You were carrying twins.”
Although a second abortion was suggested, my mother refused and instead brought me to term. I was born with bilateral congenital dislocated hips, a condition for which I’ve had dozens of operations. It hasn’t stopped me from pursuing my medical studies, though, or from speaking out whenever I can for the right to life.
I have forgiven my parents for trying to abort me, and I forgive the abortionist who killed my twin brother and who almost killed me. I often think of my brother, Andrew James, whom nobody can replace.
I believe that the way of truth, love, and God’s grace is the only way to deal with the abortion tragedy. I would like to call all people to stand with me to defend the right to life of all persons. There are many alternatives to abortion. Nobody needs to sacrifice her child, no matter what anyone says.
I thank God I’m alive. I’m still sad to know I have an older brother or sister who was denied the chance to LIVE – something we all take for granted. I hope someday we will meet. That’s why I do what I do.
Abortion Legal Through Birth
New York Legalizes Abortion Up to Birth
In a shocking move, the New York state legislature passed a bill to legalize abortion in New York State up to birth, and Governor Cuomo quickly signed it. The Governor celebrated this passage by lighting up the World Trade Center in pink.
This was not called an abortion bill but went under the guise of the Reproductive Health Act.
This new law erases the previous law, which allowed abortion up to the 24th week of pregnancy, and now allows abortion at any time to the moment of birth under the pretext of health.
In addition, safeguards were previously in place requiring that abortions be performed by physicians. This is no longer the case. Abortions can now be performed by a variety of medical professionals.
Finally, the laws protecting the unborn babies of pregnant women in domestic violence cases are gone. Previous New York law treated the murder of an unborn child in the third trimester of pregnancy as a felony with a punishment of up to seven years in prison. Now, however, unborn children are not considered to be persons, so there can be no punishment.
New York State now has the most extreme abortion laws in the country with no protection whatsoever for any child before birth.
Abortion Legal Through Birth & Infanticide
Recent news has covered the new abortion law in New York state allowing abortion up to the point of birth and legislation in Virginia which the Governor said would allow the fate of babies born alive in a late term abortion to be decided by the mother whether they would be treated as a newborn or left to die.
This flies in the face of OBGYN Dr. Roger Marshall who has been in practice for 25 years and delivered over 5,000 babies. Dr. Marshall has testified that he cannot think of a single scenario where a late term abortion was necessary for a woman’s health.
In essence, these types of laws would legalize what Dr. Kermit Gosnell was just given three life sentences for doing. Dr. Gosnell was an abortionist in Philadelphia who was convicted of killing live-born infants by snipping their spinal cords after they were born through late-term abortions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Gosnell
A film film about Dr. Gosnell promoted him as America’s Biggest Serial Killer.
The question now becomes – what do we do with abortion survivors? Do we allow them to live and be adopted, or do we allow doctors to do what Dr. Gosnell did? Right now it all depends upon where they are born. This is why the abortion survivors are speaking out.
Abortion Survivors Testify to Congress
Abortion survivors who were born alive in an abortion have become vocal spokespersons for laws to protect other babies in similar circumstances. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, approximately 12,000 late term abortions are performed annually. Consequently, an unknown number of these abortions result in babies aborted alive.
How these babies are treated is now up for grabs. Most are just left to die in a petri dish, or tossed into a bucket of water, or strangled by the abortionist, since a live birth as a result of a failed abortion is a complication. They only survive when brave nurses intervene to save their lives.
Legislation has repeatedly come before Congress called the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Although a majority of 53 Senators are in favor of this legislation, because the Democrats hold the majority in the Senate they have the ability to require 60 votes for this bill to be voted on. As a result, there is no vote.
Following is partial testimony provided by two abortion survivors urging legislators to support this act.
In August of 1977, that’s when the attack on my human rights began. My biological mother, as a 19-year-old college student, had a saline infusion abortion forced upon her by her own mother – a prominent nurse in their community – with the help of her colleague, the local abortionist, Dr. Kelberg.
That abortion procedure involved injecting a toxic salt solution into the amniotic fluid surrounding me in the womb. It was meant to poison and scald me to death. I soaked in that toxic solution over a five-day period as they tried time and time again to induce my birth mother’s labor with me.
When I was finally expelled from the womb on that fifth day of the abortion procedure, my arrival into this world was not so much as a birth, but an accident, a “live birth” after a saline infusion abortion. My medical records actually state, “a saline infusion for an abortion was done, but was unsuccessful.” This record is available to you to review, along with some other records that talk about how a complication of my birth mother’s pregnancy was a saline infusion.
Despite the arguments being made that people like me don’t exist or that children aren’t left to die after failed abortions, I need you to listen to the words of a nurse who I’ve been connected with who was there that day.
I was initially “laid aside,” after my grandmother instructed the nurses to leave me to die, and arguments ensued about whether I would be provided medical care. In the words of Nurse Jan, who received me in the NICU that day, “a tall blond nurse,” courageously rushed me off to the NICU, shouting out, “she just kept gasping for breath, and so I couldn’t just leave her there to die!”
My medical records state that when I was delivered alive in that abortion procedure, I suffered from severe respiratory problems, jaundice, seizures. I weighed a little less than 3 pounds. I was 2 pounds, 14 ounces, which led a neonatologist to remark in my medical records that I was approximately 31 weeks gestation, as opposed to the 18-20 weeks that the abortionist had written on my medical records. Her complete testimony can be found at https://republicans-judiciary.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Jessen-Testimony-09.23.2016.pdf
Many Americans have no idea that babies can even live through abortions and are often left to die. But this does happen. I know this because I was born alive in an abortion clinic after being burned in my mother’s womb for 18 hours.
My medical records clearly state the following: Born during saline abortion/April 6, 1977/6am/ 2/1/2 pounds. Apart from Jesus himself, the only reason I am alive is the fact that the abortionist had not yet arrived at work that morning. Had he been there, he would have ended my life by strangulation, suffocation or simply leaving me there to die.
Instead, I lived and have the gift of cerebral palsy as a direct result of lack of oxygen to my brain while surviving an abortion. By the grace of God, in my case, a nurse called an ambulance and had me transferred to a hospital. That nurse saved my life and I am profoundly grateful to her for this.
Those who wish to justify such unspeakable evil, such as leaving a baby without proper medical care to die, have become masters of the manipulation of language, intimidation and defaming their opponents to achieve their wicked aims. As a nation, we are continuously exchanging the truth for a lie. We have neglected our soul.
What will it take for us to awaken from our numbness and indifference regarding this? Will we ever wake? I am confounded as well by the passivity so often demonstrated by otherwise good and just men; by the fact that we must plead with those in power to give the most vulnerable infants among us, even one moment of their attention. Her complete testimony can be found at https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Ohden%20Testimony.pdf