On Tuesday, Melissa Ohden, founder of the Abortion Survivors Network, testified in support of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. When she was 31-weeks-old in her mother’s womb, an abortionist attempted to end her life with a saline solution. She survived, and now she advocates for the rights of the unborn. She slammed pro-abortion advocates who claim to support women’s rights.
“We hear all this talk about women’s rights, but I beg the question, where were my rights in the womb?” Ohden asked. “Where are the rights of the little girls who are going to lose their lives to abortion every single day? Where are my rights now as a woman who survived an abortion? Where are the rights of my daughters who never would have lived if that abortion would have succeeded in ending my life?”
“I do believe if I would have been born accidentally at Planned Parenthood or another abortion clinic, they would not have done what they needed to do to get to a place where medical care would be provided,” the abortion survivor added. “I am blessed indeed” to have been born in a hospital.
Ohden also recounted the story of learning about her birth. When her adopted sister got pregnant and considered an abortion. The sister made a comment about Ohden’s real mother, and that drove the abortion survivor to ask her adopted mother a question.
“Missy, your biological mother had an abortion during her pregnancy with you, and you survived it,” her adopted mother said.
Her adopted parents described Ohden’s survival, convincing her adopted sister not to kill the life within her.
“Those words change your life forever,” Ohden testified.
The abortion survivor described the saline solution abortion that nearly took her life. “You’ll find that children like me are actually called the red-skinned or candy-apples babies because that toxic salt solution,” she said. “I wonder how much I thrashed about in the womb as it attacked my body.”
Ohden recalled speaking with mothers whose children were killed by a saline abortion. “They have actually felt their baby thrashing about in their womb after the delivery of that toxic salt solution,” she said. “My arrival into this world was not so much birth but an accident, a live birth after a saline infusion abortion.”
She cited her medical record, which states, “A saline infusion for an abortion was done, but was unsuccessful.”
“A nurse said, ‘I couldn’t just leave her there to die,'” Ohden added. She referenced polls showing widespread popular support for abortion restrictions.
Donna Harrison, executive director at the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, testified that “there are small human beings in the womb who are being pulled apart in pieces or having their skin burned off or partially delivered through their mother’s vagina and having their brains pierced and sucked out through a suction catheter. The pain-capable unborn child protection act will protect unborn children in the United States from being killed in these brutal ways.”
She noted that anesthesiologists give unborn babies anesthesia in fetal surgeries, yet abortionists still perform dismemberment abortions on babies that can feel pain.
“It is hard to imagine a more gruesome way to die,” Harrison testified. “If veterinarians ripped apart living dogs and cats to kill them in the same way that living human beings are ripped apart in the D&E procedure, the outcry would be defining.”
At the end of her testimony, Ohden asked senators, “Will you commit to preventing what happened to me from happening to other children?” It seems Democrats will not, in the name of protecting women’s rights.
Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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