Late-term abortion survivor busts left’s abortion myths

(The Daily Signal) – A survivor of a late-term abortion, Melissa Ohden, shared her story in an interview with The Daily Signal. 

“I survived a failed saline-infusion abortion,” Ohden told senior reporter Mary Margaret Olohan on Thursday, “about four years after [1973’s] Roe v. Wade.” 

“The intent of that toxic salt solution was to poison and scald me to death,” she said. “It was the most common procedure back in the ’70s … [it] involved injecting a toxic salt solution into the amniotic fluid surrounding me in the womb.” 

Ohden was born in 1977, during which 1.32 million abortions occurred in the United States, in the aftermath of the Roe V. Wade ruling by the Supreme Court that made abortion legal nationwide. 

Elaborating upon the saline-infusion abortion process, the survivor said, “It typically lasted about 72 hours. If the child was fortunate enough, their life was ended within about the first 24 hours.”  

“I actually soaked in it for five days,” she said.  

According to Ohden, her mother was 19 when she conceived her daughter. Ohden’s parents were engaged at the time. “Abortion was forced upon my birth mom,” she said.  

Referring to the failed abortion, Ohden said, “I now know that during those five days they started to think that my birth mom might lose her life, because the abortion was taking too long.” 

“This is one of those stubborn facts,” she said, “that the abortion industry doesn’t like to talk about … . Abortion is intending to take a child’s life, and it puts the women’s life at risk as well.”  

“On the fifth day of that abortion procedure, they induced her to labor,” Ohden said, “that’s when I was accidentally born alive.”  

Reporter Olohan asked the abortion survivor: “How is it affecting your quality of life?” 

“I am not who people think I am, and that’s OK,” Ohden responded. “Most of us, if you passed us on the street, you wouldn’t know the things that we’ve survived.”  

“Most of us carry very internal scars … the emotional, the mental, the spiritual,” she said.  

Olohan asked, “As an abortion survivor, how do you feel when you see this kind of rhetoric, ‘This choice matters,’ or ‘It’s up to the woman’?” 

“My greatest pain came from knowing what our culture said about abortion,” Ohden said.