A voice from the womb you were not meant to hear

Posted by Lyle Shelton, Chief of Staff on September 23rd, 2010

They live among us but they weren’t meant to.

Of the one billion unborn babies killed since society decided abortion was a better choice than supporting women in pregnancy, a handful survive to speak beyond the womb.

Melissa Ohden is one of them and listening to her is spooky.

“We know there are far more of us – people like us,” Melissa told a small gathering in Canberra last week.

Sometime in the fifth month of pregnancy, a doctor injected a toxic saline solution into her 19-year-old mother’s amniotic fluid.

Five days later she was delivered and a nurse left her beside the bed.

Upon hearing grunting noises from the 3lb ‘corpse’, doctors were alerted and her life was saved.

Her medical records explain her existence this way: “Saline abortion that was unsuccessful”.

Melissa has met around 10 other survivors and says because of the ‘failure rate’ saline abortions have been ditched for more effective methods.

Chillingly, she told of meeting a man who showed her his partially crushed skull from a failed late term abortion attempt.

“For some women out there to have a choice would mean that I would never have a choice.”

Melissa was adopted into a loving family and had a happy and normal childhood, unaware of the circumstances of her birth until her older sister became pregnant in grade 11.

In a bid to encourage her to choose life, Melissa’s adoptive parents told their grade 11 daughter of Melissa’s birth.

In the process, the teenaged Melissa found out.

“To say that it was devastating would be an understatement,” she says with raw emotion and tears welling in her eyes despite the fact she has told her story many times.

In adulthood Melissa attempted to track down her biological parents.

She wrote to her birth mother’s parents. “We have been waiting,” her grandfather wrote back.

This was the man who marched his 19-year-old daughter to the abortion clinic saying ‘you will do this’.

She has never heard from her mother.

A letter of forgiveness to her birth father was not answered. He died in January 2008 and her letter was found in the top drawer of his desk.

“When I saw his picture next to the obituary in the local newspaper, it was me staring back at me,” Melissa says.

She made contact with her father’s father and her grandfather is now her biggest fan, encouraging her to tell her story.

“If they (her grandparents) had ever been told about me they would have adopted me. They are grieving the loss of the choice they never got. Abortion hurts families.”

Today Melissa is the proud mother of two-year-old Olivia (pictured with her).

She has just completed an Australian speaking tour organised by Life Network Australia.

  • Around 90,000 abortions occur each year in Australia which is one for every three live births.
  • In Victoria, the 2007 annual report of the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity revealed that 52 of 181 late-term babies who were aborted survived and were left to die. ACL has presented this information to politicians on more than one occasion. No action has been taken – yet.
  • Visit http://www.notbornyet.com/