Born Alive - And Living To Tell

In 1976, a scared, 17-year-old pregnant woman went into a Los Angeles, California Planned Parenthood facility seeking an abortion. It was a late-term abortion, using a saline solution injected into the womb to drown the baby.

It failed. And Gianna Jessen was born.

On Thursday night, Jessen – now 32 years old – told her story to a giant crowd of pro-life activists, politicians and Christian leaders at the annual Texas Alliance for Life fundraising banquet.

“I should be blind. I should be burned. I should be dead, but obviously not, because I’m here,” Jessen told the audience, who listened with rapt attention.

Jessen, who suffers from cerebral palsy and has a noticeable limp – legacies of the failed abortion – is a pro-life activist and public speaker who now tours the country, putting a face on a procedure that most Americans do not – or are unwilling to – face as an issue affecting real human beings.

“We’re being taught in this country and in this world that all of our lives are about us, that they don’t affect others,” Jessen said, noting that the idea of ‘choice’ fails to recognize that there is another person involved in the process who does not have a voice.

“There are consequences to those decisions,” she said, “and every day I bear the mark of someone else’s decision.”

Americans “Need to Hear the Details”

Jessen is not one to mix words, and says she is too passionate about this issue to tone down her story. It’s her life, after all, and the lingering health effects she faces to this day mean that surviving an abortion is a never-ending process.

On that day in 1976, her mother was to receive an abortion through a procedure known as saline injection. Once common, the procedure now is more infrequent, but still legal. As Jessen explained, it involves injecting salt water into a womb, which the fetus swallows, burning out its insides and killing it.

At the description of the process, many in the crowd grew silent. Jessen said it was something they had to know.

“I say this for two reasons,” she said. “I survived this procedure, and Americans need to hear the details.”

In most cases, the fetus is killed within 24 hours by the procedure. But in Jessen’s case, her mother arrived at the clinic for a status check and Jessen was born – very premature and near to death.

At the time it would have been legal for the abortion doctor to kill a fetus born live during an abortion procedure. A common method was strangulation. Jessen, however, was spared by a coincidence – the doctor was not present in the facility and one of the nurses called an ambulance.

“Had he been there, he would have killed me,” Jessen said. “But a nurse called an emergency room. They took me to the hospital and put me in an incubator. I weighed 2 pounds and they said I would not live. But I just kept on living.”

Jessen was put up for adoption and was given to an adoptive mother, who was told that Gianna would probably never progress beyond a vegetative state. Yet, with physical therapy, the baby soon began to respond, and with the exception of cerebral palsy which has given her a noticeable limp, Jessen is a fully normal adult.

“I am not a victim,” Jessen said. “I have the gift of cerebral palsy because I survived an abortion.”

She said her handicap has been a source of strength, and overcoming it has led to great moments in her life. She has even run two marathons. She now travels around the country telling her story. At one event, her biological mother, attended. The woman, Jessen said, was scarred by the experience she endured 30 years ago. Jessen said she has forgiven her.

Born Alive Act

Jessen said that her greatest moment was finally ensuring that other children born as she was would be protected. The killing of fetuses born alive during an abortion procedure was still legal in America until 2002. But that year, Jessen stood next to President Bush as he signed the Born Alive Act, mandating that any fetus born alive as a result of a failed abortion be protected as a human being.

Jessen said that it is not fashionable to praise President Bush in this day and age, but she offered nothing but that for the 43^rd President. As he hugged her following the ceremony, he called her a “sweet girl.” She said she had never had a father figure in her entire life, but at that moment, he held her as a father would.

Jessen said that the current president “is very aware of me” since she starred in some campaign commercials against him. While he was in the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama voted four times against a version of the Born Alive Act there.

Nonetheless, Jessen led the crowd of 1,200 in Thursday night’s dinner to pray for the administration so that leaders would have a change of heart on the issue.

“Hate the sin,” she said. “Love the sinner.”