“If Barack Obama had his way, I wouldn’t be here.”
L.A. Williams, Correspondent
Christian Action League of North Carolina
What would it feel like to know that your native country’s highest leader wished you had never been born? What would it feel like to know that given the chance, he would have kept you from getting the very medical care that, without a doubt, saved your life?
Come November these questions could go far beyond the hypothetical for Gianna Jessen and others like her who have survived abortion and lived to tell their stories.
A 31-year-old singer and songwriter, Jessen has traveled the United States and beyond sharing the pro-life message and challenging abortion promoters like presidential candidate Barack Obama with her vibrant and joyful presence.
“If Barack Obama had his way, I wouldn’t be here,” Jessen says in a recent television ad revealing the Democratic Senator’s extreme position on abortion and the rights of newborns.
“Can you imagine not giving babies their basic human rights, no matter how they entered our world?,” she asked. ” …I am living proof that these babies have a right to live, and I invite you to learn more about Senator Obama’s record on this important issue.”
That record shows that Obama voted four times in three years against the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act, a law that would have saved the lives of babies who managed to survive the abortion process and were being left to die in hospital closets or abortion clinic trash bins. He was the only senator to speak against this bill on the Illinois Senate floor in 2001 and 2002 and voted against it again in 2003, a year after the federal version of the bill passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate and with overwhelming support in the House.
“Obama’s position goes way beyond being pro-choice. In his view, these babies – who prove they can survive outside the mother’s womb by actually surviving a murder attempt – still don’t deserve medical care,” said the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina. “In fact, in his view they deserve no legal protection and abortionists should be allowed to kill them.”
That’s exactly what would have happened to Jessen had the abortionist been on duty when she came into the world, the daughter of a 17-year-old who was seven and a half months pregnant when she went into a Planned Parenthood office in Los Angeles County. Instead, after being burned for some 18 hours from the saline solution being injected into her mother’s womb, Jessen showed up alive, and a nurse called an ambulance that took the two-pound preemie to the hospital.
In an ironic twist, Jessen notes, the abortionist, who arrived later, had to sign her birth certificate. Facing a host of complications as a result of cerebral palsy caused by the abortion attempt, Jessen was not expected to even walk. Now, she runs marathons.
“I don’t believe in just signing up for a mediocre life,” Jessen said in a teleconference interview last month with BornAliveTruth.org. “I want to live well and glorify God. I consider it an absolute honor to stand up for children and for the true empowerment of women… We are all valuable and worthy of love.”
Though her situation is unusual, it is not unique. In 2001, after a nurse at Christ Hospital in Chicago went public with her story of seeing and holding babies that had survived abortion but were being put aside to die, a hospital spokesman told the Chicago Sun-Times that an estimated 10 to 20 percent of babies aborted at the facility survive for short periods of time outside the womb.
Next week, pro-life advocates from across the nation will attend a funeral for a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., baby, who like Jessen, was born alive during an abortion just over two years ago.
Police records show newborn Shanice Denise Osbourne was moving and gasping for air after being delivered at a clinic where her mother sought help a day after beginning the abortion process. As in Jessen’s case, the abortionist was not on site. But rather than rush the infant to the hospital, the clinic owner cut the umbilical cord and put the baby into a biohazard bag with medical waste, later tossing the bag onto the clinic’s roof to hide her body from police.
With the help of a clinic worker, investigators found the body and a subsequent autopsy proved that Shanice was alive and breathing at birth. Former presidential candidate Dr. Alan Keyes will deliver the baby’s eulogy as she is laid to rest in a service set for Oct. 14. The clinic has since closed and the owner remains the subject of a grand jury probe.
It is for the Shanices of the world that Jessen speaks out, those who will be deemed expendable, especially if Obama heads to the White House.
Far to the left of NARAL Pro-Choice America (formerly the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) which remained neutral on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, Obama has said that the first thing he will do if elected is to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would overturn nearly every local, state and federal anti-abortion law passed in the last four decades.
“I truly hope that Americans will see past the rhetoric this election season and get a glimpse of those like Jessen who truly put a face on the abortion issue,” said the Rev. Creech. “She is living, walking, talking proof of what we lose when we allow babies to be killed.
“We cannot underestimate the importance of this election.”
To find out more about Gianna Jessen, log on to www.giannajessen.com. To see the Jessen television ad, go to www.bornalivetruth.org.