Tens of millions of unborn babies have been killed in abortions across the United States in the past 40 years, but she is one of the rare few who survived.
Abortion survivor Melissa Ohden was born in 1977 after a failed saline infusion abortion. She shared her story recently with The Daily News ahead of her talk at an upcoming pregnancy center fundraiser in New York.
“I truly believe in the work of the pregnancy resource center,” Ohden said. “I do believe that if my birth mother would have had resources and support provided to her like those the center provides, maybe her life and mine could have been very different.”
The purpose of an abortion is to kill an unborn child, but Ohden did not die when her mother had the abortion. Ohden said she was born alive and gasping for air at about 31 weeks gestation. A nurse disobeyed orders to let Ohden die and began providing life-saving medical care instead, according to the report.
Ohden later was adopted. She said she did not learn the truth about her birth until she was about 14 years old. She said she struggled deeply with her own self-worth when she learned that her mother tried to abort her.
More recently, Ohden said she reconnected with her birth mother and learned that she had been pressured into the abortion.
“My mother wasn’t just coerced, she was forced to have an abortion that was meant to end my life and changed her forever,” Ohden said previously. “Her greatest regret as a woman in her fifties is that she never ran away from her own family. I always have to point that out to those who are pro-abortion. Where is the empowerment in that for a women, for that to be her greatest regret?”
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Ohden now shares her story with people across the world, with legislators and skeptics, and with the other rare few who also survived failed abortion attempts.
Here’s more from the report:
“No matter what people believe about abortion, my story hits home in many different ways,” Ohden said.
She said when she first started touring with her story, people believed she was lying, though Ohden said she doesn’t hear that as much anymore.
Ohden says she enjoys hearing other people’s stories the most as she tours the country. In 2012, she founded The Abortion Survivors Network, which seeks to educate the public about failed abortions and survivors while providing emotional, mental and spiritual support to abortion survivors. Since ASN’s inception, Ohden has been in contact with 217 survivors.
Approximately 60 million unborn babies have been killed in abortions since Roe v. Wade in 1973. Stories like Ohden’s shed light on the truth that these unborn babies were not just potential lives or blobs of tissue but unique, individual human beings who deserved to live.
