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Gianna Jessen shares her story
of surviving abortion
By Jason Koshinskie
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Click here to find out how Gianna forgave her biological mother |
Gianna Jessen’s voice carries the raw emotion of Tears of the Saints, a song about the connection between people who are lost and those who are praying for them to find their way. Her soprano voice echoes deep within the church. And to think that the beauty of her voice might never have been heard.
After sharing her gift as a performer, her first words to the audience might seem like they were ripped from the headlines of a supermarket tabloid. “I was aborted and did not die.” Jessen, a singer who lives in Nashville, Tenn., shared her story with 600 people, mostly teens and young adults, Nov. 4 at Queen of the World in St. Marys. She has traveled the world singing and sharing her story of forgiveness, love and determination. “By the sheer power of Jesus Christ,” she says, “I survived.”
| “Here’s a question I often pose: If abortion is merely about women’s rights, then what were mine? Just something to consider.” |
In 1977, her biological mother was seven-and-a-half months pregnant when she went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Southern California. She was just 17 years old. As Gianna asks how many 17-year-olds are in the room, many hands are raised high. A saline solution was injected into her mother’s womb, where Gianna endured its effects for 18 hours. But the solution did not complete its intended job, and while the abortionist was off duty, Gianna was delivered alive.
“Thankfully he wasn’t there, otherwise he would have…ended my life,” she says. In 2002, Jessen witnessed President Bush sign into law the Born Alive Infants Protection Act to prevent that from happening in the United States today. Medical records state she was born during a saline solution abortion, and the abortion doctor was required to sign her birth certificate. “I love that,” she says proudly. “I absolutely love that. The very person who was planning to end my life had to acknowledge it in the end.”
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Because of the amount of time she was exposed to the saline, Jessen should be blind or burned. Medically, she’s a miracle. She has what she calls “the gift of cerebral palsy,” caused by the lack of oxygen to her brain during the abortion. “Here’s a question I often pose: If abortion is merely about women’s rights, then what were mine? Just something to consider.” Jessen, 30, admits that not a whole lot rattles her. She attributes that to her “gift.”
“When you fall down in front of people, you have to get up with grace, as much grace as you can. And you limp through the world. You just have other things to think about than just getting rattled,” she observes. Slowly she progressed and learned to walk with the aid of a walker and leg braces. Today she moves without either. And despite the cerebral palsy, she has completed two, 26.2-mile marathons on the balls of her feet.
While she shared her personal story, she also expounded on the joys and fears of not living for what the rest of the world thinks. Her message? Live life to the fullest and see what happens. One thing that has shocked her more than anything else, she says, is how shallow the world can be. She’s actually had a man say to her, “You’re beautiful, as long as you’re sitting down.”
“That’s the shallowness that I’m talking about,” she says. “As long as you don’t show us this, then you’ll be beautiful. But it isn’t true. And you experience that every day in your lives, just on a different level.” Our culture has the perception that if we can conform to its standards, Jessen says, then we’ll be worthy of love. “If I did that, I’d never do anything because I’d be bound my entire life by my own insecurities,” she says. “What will people think? Who cares? Because my worth and value is not based on what you think of me; it’s based in Jesus Christ. We’re all insecure. It’s the Lord who heals us of that.”
She advises that there is a price to pay for shirking society’s system of conformity and being who God made you to be. “It’s going to cost you something,” she says. “You will pay a price.” Young women need to understand what they are worth, she says, while young men who want an opportunity to be brave should realize they are made for greatness.
“You might say this doesn’t have to do with anything,” Gianna says. “It has everything to do with everything. Look at our culture. We’re a wreck. We don’t know who we are, we don’t take the time. We don’t want to suffer. We take the easy route every which way, every time we can. And the result is a life of pain because we can’t feel any more.”
Jessen also said that she does not condemn any woman who has had an abortion. But she told any girl listening who was pregnant to find counseling and support rather than an abortion clinic. “To the girls who have had abortions and nobody knows about it, I’m not here to condemn you,” she says. “You are not made to live life in shame. You are made for forgiveness and to be free from that experience.”
For more on Gianna’s story, visit www.giannajessen.com and check out the book Gianna by Jessica Shaver.