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Happening ... in the Local Church
 Melissa
Ohden: “My life was supposed to be over before it ever began.” (Photo by
Kevin Cullen) |
By Kevin Cullen
The
Catholic Moment
KOKOMO — Melissa Ohden’s mother was 19 and single when she entered a hospital in Sioux City, Iowa, for an abortion.
The “saline infusion” method was used. A salt solution was injected into the fluid that surrounded the six-month-old fetus. That was supposed to scald the skin and vital organs, causing death. Labor was induced to expel the body.
The baby weighed less than three pounds and the nurse who delivered her thought she was dead. But when the newborn grunted, rescue procedures began. Three months later, she was adopted by a local couple.
Today, that baby is Melissa Ohden. She is 32, married, the mother of a bright-eyed 2-year-old named Olivia, and a popular pro-life speaker. She told her story to more than 100 people at the “Legacy of Life” banquet held at St. Joan of Arc Church on April 26. It was sponsored by Indiana Right to Life and Howard County Right to Life.
“Abortion isn’t just about unborn children like me and it isn’t just about biological parents like mine,” Ohden said. “It is about children like Olivia, and grandparents like mine, my siblings, my cousins, my friends, all of whom miss out because of an abortion.”
She provides a voice for the 52 million babies aborted since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in 1973, and for the hundreds of millions of lives diminished by those killings.
“We need to see many more people like her,” said Carol Grabow, of Kokomo, a parishioner at St. Joan of Arc Church. “People don’t realize the real impact that abortion has on families and friends. It just ripples everywhere.”
“It was a very inspiring talk,” said Father Dan Duff, associate pastor at St. Joan of Arc and St. Patrick parishes. “To hear the story of an abortion survivor touches you in a different way than other pro-life speakers I’ve heard. It lets you see the face (of abortion).”
Ohden still lives in Sioux City. She holds a master’s degree in social work, and is a social work supervisor in the Department of Human Services office. She started making regular public appearances two years ago. She has addressed pro-life groups in several states and Canada. She will speak in Australia in 2011.
“It took me a long time to get to this point in my life, to share my story publicly,” she said. “… For a long time I didn’t come forth with my story, because I felt like I shouldn’t complain. I shouldn’t have anything to say to the world when I have been given the gifts of life and health, and all the other blessings.”
Abortion survivors are rare and many have permanent disabilities. Ohden is one of the exceptions. Her prematurity kept her hospitalized for three months with breathing problems and jaundice, but she was judged healthy at age 5.
“I am truly one of the blessed ones,” she said. “… My adoptive parents opened their hearts and home to me, and took a chance on a baby that the doctors said would probably not live beyond infancy.
“There are millions of families, like my adoptive parents, who are willing to open their homes to children and take a chance on them,” Ohden said. “People on the pro-abortion side often underestimate the power of human potential, the power of love and acceptance.”
Her adoptive parents had earlier adopted another baby, then had a son of their own. When Ohden was 14, her adoptive mother finally told her about the 1977 abortion attempt.
“It was a lot like when you are a little kid and you fall down and get the wind knocked out of you and you think you might have broken something inside,” she said.
The revelation “rocked me to the core,” she said, but it reinforced her pro-life convictions. More than ever, she appreciated her Christian upbringing and her loving, supportive adoptive family.
She said she came to see that everyone “was once just one choice away from being aborted, just like me.” She felt that the Lord was calling her to share that story.
In 1997, she started using the Internet to try to find her biological parents and her medical history. She did research, petitioned the courts, talked to hospital officials, scoured old newspapers and yearbooks, made formal requests … and waited.
A decade later, in May 2007, she finally obtained her birth records, and the names of her birth parents. She also was able to document the fact that she had indeed survived an abortion attempt.
She hoped to contact her biological parents before going public with her story.
She sent a letter to her father at his office in July 2007, introducing herself and forgiving him. He lived in the same city, but did not reply.
“I had forgiven him and my mother a long time ago,” Ohden said. “I think it was almost immediate, when I found out that I was a survivor. When you realize what the Lord has done for us to forgive us, and that we are forgiven every day, for me to forgive my parents was not a big deal.”
She could not find her mother, so Ohden contacted her mother’s parents, told them her story, and asked them to contact her mother.
A few days later, she received a letter from her maternal grandfather. He and his wife had been waiting for years for her to contact them, but her grandfather didn’t say why his daughter tried to abort her.
“After all those years I wanted somebody to say, ‘Here is why she came to that hospital to end your life,’” Ohden said. “I know that if I am supposed to know that, I will. I am just not supposed to know that right now.”
Her grandfather is estranged from her mother, and refused to forward Ohden’s letter to her.
In early 2008, Ohden learned that her father had just died at age 51. At about the same time, her father’s family found her letter in his desk.
“I can’t tell you how painful it was for me to lose my father before I had ever known him,” Ohden said. “I felt like with his passing, everything I would know about my life and about the abortion attempt went out the window.”
Her own baby, Olivia, was born on April 26, 2008, in the same hospital where her own life was nearly snuffed out.
Ohden has grown close to some members of her father’s family. Through them, she learned that her parents dated for four years before her mother became pregnant. Ohden’s father wanted to marry her, but the relationship ended.
Some family members still feel shame and guilt over what happened.
“It was very hard for them,” Ohden said. “I didn’t know it, but they were struggling internally as a family unit as to what to do about me. At the same time, I was in the same city, wondering what to do about them.”
After becoming a mother herself, Ohden grew more determined than ever to tell her story and show how devastating abortion is to families and society.
“I am absolutely the person to come forward. That is the Lord’s plan for me,” she said.
She has created a foundation, “For Olivia’s Sake,” to raise awareness of the impact of abortion on men, women, children, families and communities.
“I feel my faith to the tips of my toes,” Ohden said. “Every day it gets stronger and stronger, and my voice gets louder and louder. I knew that my life was supposed to be over before it ever began, but rocking my vulnerable little child, I realized that (if it had succeeded), she would have never entered this world.”