Melissa Ohden's mother was 31 weeks pregnant when she decided to abort her daughter. For five days, she underwent a saline drip which slowly poisons the baby. Afterwards, the abortionist would induce labor, and the dead fetus would be delivered.
She wasn't meant to die that day
But Melissa wasn't meant to die that day. She survived the saline drip and was supposed to be placed in a bucket of formaldehyde until she died. But 2 nurses decided that she didn't deserve to die, and immediately took her to medical care.
She survived the abortion, but the saline drip caused a lot of damage to her fragile body. "I had severe respiratory and liver problems... I suffered from seizures for an extended period of time. The doctors just really made it clear early on they didn't think I would live," she shared.
She was soon adopted and when she was 5 years old, she was given a clean bill of health, without any complications or mental disabilities.
She was devastated when she found out about the abortion
Melissa grew up knowing that she was adopted. However, it was only when Melissa was a teenager that she found out the truth about the circumstances of her birth.
She was devastated when she found out about the circumstances of her birth. For her, it was painful to know that her biological mother tried to abort her, and she was deteriorating inside.
She shares, "The world felt like it stopped spinning the night I learned that I was an abortion survivor. I was angry and scared, and I felt ashamed and guilty for living. Every little emotion you can feel, I felt that night. I was in pain for many years after that. As a teenager, I developed bulimia and turned to sex and alcohol to cope with the pain. My parents never realized how much I was hurting, though, because I was great at hiding it. From an outsider's perspective, I was the perfect kid."
Eventually, she realized that the only way for her to recover from the pain was to forgive her birth mother, the mother who didn't even know she existed.
Her mother didn't want to abort her
She found out about her birth parents by accident; usually, the names of an aborted child's birth parents are blacked out, but in her case, the hospital sent her a copy of her records with her parents' names visible.
She tried to look for her father, but sadly he had passed away before they were able to make any contact. And after years of looking for her mother, she was finally able to track her down.
She shares, "It was better than anything I ever expected, but at the same time it was probably more difficult than I expected - only in the circumstance that I knew she was hurt by what was done to her. But to look in her eyes and to see how much pain it caused her... I don't think I was prepared for that look in her eyes."
Melissa shared that her biological mother didn't want to abort her child. She was forced by her parents, Melissa's grandparents, to abort her child. She even saw that the signatures on the consent forms were forged, and not her mother's real signatures.
Today, Melissa is now spreading awareness and teaching people about failed abortions, and she also provides support for abortion survivors.
Source: familyshare.com
READ: An open letter to my unplanned child: You are the best thing that happened to me
