A 38-year-old woman who survived a saline abortion in 1977 shared her story before Congress on Wednesday, speaking out against abortion and Planned Parenthood’s continued slaughter of unborn children.
Gianna Jessen was miraculously born alive at a Los Angeles hospital after her mother sought an abortion while seven months pregnant. Her mother had been advised to have a saline abortion, which burns the child with a caustic chemical and then suffocates them to death. The dead child is then removed the following day.
“Instead of dying, after 18 hours of being burned in my mother’s womb, I was delivered alive in an abortion clinic in Los Angeles on April the 6th, 1977,” Jessen told those gathered. “Thankfully, the abortionist was not at work yet. Had he been there, he would have ended my life with strangulation, suffocation, or leaving me there to die. Instead, a nurse called an ambulance, and I was rushed to a hospital.”
It was soon declared that Jessen had cerebral palsy, suffered from the lack of oxygen to her brain during the abortion.
“I was never supposed to hold my head up or walk,” she said. “I do.”
Jessen was placed in foster care and soon adopted, and now works to save lives by telling her story nationwide.
“Within the first year after my birth, I was used as an expert witness in a case where an abortionist had been caught strangling a child to death after being born alive,” she shared.
Jessen also spoke about the need for Americans to end abortion, and to protect the rights of unborn children from organizations like Planned Parenthood who shed innocent blood.
“Planned Parenthood is not ashamed of what they have done or continue to do. But we will have to give an account as a nation, before God, for our apathy and for the murder of over 50 million children in the womb,” she said.
“Every time we falter in courage as individuals and fail to confront this evil, I wonder how many lives have been lost in our silence, while we make sure we are lauded among men and do not offend anyone?” Jessen continued. “How many children have died, and been dismembered, and their parts sold, for our ego, our convenience, and our promiscuity?”
“How many Lamborghini’s were purchased with the blood of innocent children?” she declared. “The blood that cries to the Lord from the ground like that of the blood of Abel. Not one of them … is forgotten by Him.”
Jessen then pointed to her own life story in her plea to save the children.
“I would ask Planned Parenthood the following questions: If abortion is about women’s rights, then what were mine?” she asked. “You continuously use the argument, ‘If the baby is disabled, we need to terminate the pregnancy,’ as if you can determine the quality of someone’s life. Is my life less valuable due to my Cerebral Palsy?”
“You have failed, in your arrogance and greed, to see one thing: it is often from the weakest among us that we learn wisdom—something sorely lacking in our nation today. And it is both our folly and our shame that blinds us to the beauty of adversity,” Jessen continued.
“I am alive because of the power of Jesus Christ alone, in whom I live, move and have my being,” she declared. “Without Him I would have nothing, and with Him I have all.”
