Antiabortion activist Gianna Jessen, who survived
her mother’s attempted abortion, testified before the House Committee on the
Judiciary Hearings Sept. 23,2016. (House Committee on the Judiciary Hearings)
Activist
speaks about surviving mother's botched abortion
Antiabortion activist Gianna Jessen,
who survived her mother’s attempted abortion, testified before the House
Committee on the Judiciary Hearings Sept. 23. (House Committee on the Judiciary
Hearings)
Twelve months ago, Gianna
Jessen testified against Planned Parenthood, saying during a congressional hearing that her biological
mother was seven and a half months pregnant when she was advised to
undergo an abortion by saline — which “burns the baby inside and out,
blinding and suffocating the child, who is then born dead, usually within 24
hours.”
“Instead of dying,” Jessen said on
Capitol Hill, “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.”
“Doctors,” she said, “did not expect
me to live.”
“I did.”
Jessen would become a leading
antiabortion advocate, speaking around the world and meeting with American
lawmakers about abortion policy. Her most recent activism has focused on
federal funding for abortion, which has become a central point of
contention during the presidential campaign.
She was even in Pennsylvania in 2002 when President George W. Bush signed the Born-Alive Infants
Protection Act, which confers legal
protection to premature babies born after failed abortions. “It’s
important that you’re here, to send a signal that you’re dedicated to the
protection of human life,” Bush said to Jessen and others who attended the
signing ceremony.
On Friday, the 39-year-old activist returned to the Hill for a subcommittee hearing on abortion. The focus of
the discussion: The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act — and the Hyde Amendment,
which, for the past 40 years, has generally barred the use
of federal Medicaid money to pay for abortions.
“Apart from Jesus himself, the only
reason I am alive is the fact that the abortionist had not yet arrived at work
that morning,” she said.
Jessen says she has cerebral palsy
due to a lack of oxygen to her brain during the abortion attempt.
“And cerebral palsy, make no
mistake, is a tremendous gift,” she said. “I don’t know if any of you
understand — maybe you do — what a tremendous honor it is to have to
lean on the strong arm of Jesus all the way to heaven.”
The Hyde Amendment, which first was
approved by Congress in 1976 and has since been attached as a rider to
annual appropriations bills, states that federal funds cannot be used
for abortion services, except in instances in which a woman’s life is in
danger, or in instances of rape and incest.
This year’s Democratic Party platform vows to “oppose — and seek to overturn — federal
and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion, including
by repealing the Hyde Amendment.” Democratic presidential nominee Hillary
Clinton has condemned it as
well as other policies for “making it harder for low-income women to
exercise their full rights.”
In a recent letter to anti-abortion
rights leaders, Republican presidential nominee
Donald Trump slammed his Democratic opponent for wanting to repeal the Hyde
Amendment and promised to make it “permanent law to protect
taxpayers from having to pay for abortions.”
Reproductive rights weren’t
discussed at the presidential debate Monday — but the topic was on the
minds of many voters: According to Google
Trends, “abortion” was the second
most-searched issues for both candidates.
Amid the contentious debate,
Jessen explained Friday in Washington how she lived through an attempted
abortion.
Here is her testimony, which
veers from her prepared statement at times:
Thank you, thank you very much for
giving me the opportunity to speak with you this morning.
I wish to appeal not only to those
present within this chamber today, but to my nation.
We are here to discuss infanticide.
I am greatly troubled that this hearing is even necessary, and that such a law
to prevent infanticide must be constructed in the United States of America at
all.
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, 6 a.m., two and a half
pounds. Triumphantly, I entered this world.
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.
And cerebral palsy, make no mistake,
is a tremendous gift. I don’t know if any of you understand — maybe you do
— what a tremendous honor it is to have to lean on the strong arm of Jesus
all the way to heaven. It is my honor, in a country that doesn’t wish to speak
his name, I will.
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.
This is a bipartisan issue, and I
think it’s important for the American people to weigh at this hour, whether or
not they wish to elect someone to the highest office in the land that favors
infanticide. Because that is what we are speaking of here, a child, exactly as
I was, that had the audacity to live through her mother’s abortion and needed
immediate and proper care.
So I would like to ask Mr. Trump to
tell me, and you, where he specifically stands on this issue, and I ask the
same of Mrs. Clinton.
I would also like to ask Senator
Mitch McConnell to force a vote on the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection
Act before the end of this September.
I have faced the consequences of our
choices as a nation (as evidenced by my cerebral palsy.) So if you choose to do
nothing, I believe I at least deserve to know why you find this abhorrent
practice tolerable, and I would respectfully ask that you tell me directly.
It seems in some ways, we have lost
our way in this beautiful nation. But it needn’t be so. We have only to
remember that we are lent each breath, that we are all engraved upon the hands
of God, and therefore, cannot for a single moment, be forgotten by him. We need
only to remember Jesus, who took me from my mother’s womb, to be his own.
Thank you.
Jessen, who was put into foster care
and later adopted, said earlier this year that she has been sharing her story despite
the fact that some won’t listen.
“They just try to ignore me,” Jessen
said, citing the media, according to LifeNews.com. “Because
I don’t think they can really say anything to me — so their strategy has been,
‘We’re just gonna not talk to her pretty much at all.’
“But I still get around.”
An earlier version of this story
incorrectly identified the recipients of a Trump campaign letter. It has been
updated.
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