Growing up in Storm Lake, Iowa, I always knew I was adopted. My sister, Tammy, who's four years older than me, was also adopted. That was the norm in our house. It was actually a thrilling surprise when our mother, who suffered from a hormonal imbalance that made getting pregnant difficult, found out she was expecting our little brother just before my seventh birthday.
Tammy and I were typical sisters, and we fought like it. It was during one of these explosive arguments, when I was 14, that I learned the devastating truth about my birth. "At least my parents wanted me!" she blurted out. I couldn't understand why she thought she was more wanted by her biological parents than I was. She told me to ask mom and dad for the truth.
I waited up for our mom to get home from work that night. When I asked, I could tell it was something she didn't want to talk about. It took a long time before she finally said, "Missy, your biological mother had an abortion during her pregnancy with you, and you survived it." My parents had never intended for me to know. The only reason they had told my sister, then a junior in high school, is because she was pregnant. By sharing my survival story, they hoped to dissuade her from considering abortion.
Later on I learned that the woman who gave birth to me had been forced into the abortion by her own mother. She spent five days hooked up to a saline infusion drip in the hospital, with the expectation that I would die in the womb before labor was induced. The abortionist was shocked when I came out alive. Nurses rushed me out of the room, hoping medical care could spare my life. My heavily sedated mother did not know that I had been born alive. She left the hospital thinking the abortion had been successful. It would be 30 years before she learned the truth.
My parents adopted me in October 1977, when I was three months old. I was not a pretty baby —I was hooked up to tubes and wires in a neonatal intensive care unit—but they say it was love at first sight. Doctors thought I would face a lifetime of health complications, including mental disabilities, but by age 5 I had caught up developmentally and was given a clean bill of health.
The world felt like it stopped spinning the night I learned that I was an abortion survivor. I was angry and scared, and I felt ashamed and guilty for living. Every little emotion you can feel, I felt that night. I was in pain for many years after that. As a teenager, I developed bulimia and turned to sex and alcohol to cope with the pain. My parents never realized how much I was hurting, though, because I was great at hiding it. From an outsider's perspective, I was the perfect kid.
I would go to Planned Parenthood for birth control when I couldn't get in to see a primary care physician. On one of my visits there, a man shouted at me, "You don't need to do this!" Irritated and thinking it was none of his business, I rolled down my car window. He thought I was there to have an abortion, but I explained that I was getting the pill and that I was an abortion survivor myself. But as the words came out of my mouth, I thought to myself, this makes no sense. I wasn't knowledgeable about pro-life activities before, but once I understood that abortions were performed at my local Planned Parenthood, I never went back.
I started college at the University of South Dakota. I would later learn that my biological mother had gone there as well, and my maternal grandmother was a professor at the College of Nursing during the time I attended. I sometimes wonder if we ever unwittingly crossed paths.
At 22, I started searching for my birth parents in earnest. I had some information from my adoption papers, but their identities remained a mystery. Coincidentally, I ended up moving to Sioux City, where the failed abortion had taken place, and that gave me the opportunity to search records on a regular basis. I pored over phonebooks, newspapers on microfiche, and yearbooks at the library, not knowing my birth mother's name but just looking for someone who looked like me. I even put an ad in the local newspaper asking for anyone with information to come forward.
I knew where my maternal grandparents had been employed, so that was a huge piece of the puzzle that allowed me to eventually find them. I actually found my grandparents before I found my birth mother. I sent them a letter, but only my grandfather wrote back. He admitted that he knew that I knew my live birth was not the intention the day I was born, and he said they were now completely estranged from my biological mom. I couldn't put my finger on it then but now I know there was something sinister that ended their relationship.
In 2007, a mistake revealed my birth parents' names. I had requested my medical records from the hospital where the botched abortion had taken place, and when they arrived in the mail, I realized administrators had forgotten to black out my parents' names—a huge HIPAA violation for which I am grateful. I learned that I was living in same city as my biological father. I reached out to him via letter, sending it to his office in the hopes of protecting him. I didn't know if he'd ever told his family about the pregnancy. He certainly didn't know I was alive. I simply told him that I was alive, and that I wasn't angry or bitter. He never responded. A part of me wonders if he thought the letter was some weird, cruel joke. His relationship with my mother ended after they learned of the pregnancy, and I have every reason to believe he never knew I was born. He died six months after I sent the letter.
I was 36 when I learned the full details of the circumstances of my birth. In 2013, my biological mom's cousin emailed me after learning I'd been in touch with the family. By then, I was speaking out publicly against abortion. Through my cousin I learned that my parents were college students who were in love and engaged to be married when I was conceived. My 19-year-old mother was an athletic person who'd always had irregular periods; she didn't realize she was pregnant with me until the third trimester. She didn't want to have an abortion, but my grandparents didn't approve of the relationship between her and my father. My grandmother arranged for the saline abortion within days of learning of the pregnancy.
My mother's sister actually visited her in the hospital during the five-day infusion and tried to get her out of there because she knew it wasn't what my mother wanted. But nurses convinced her that it was too late, that they would be risking my mother's life. When she finally went into labor, she was told not to look, that seeing the "hideous" fetus would be traumatizing. She was so out of it that she didn't realize I was born alive. The abortionist had estimated that my mom was about 20 weeks along, but the fact that I had survived and weighed 2 lbs., 14 oz. suggested otherwise. A neonatologist later placed my gestational age at 31 weeks. The most devastating part of my story is that my grandmother demanded that I be left in the room to die. Ultimately, the nurses saved me.
How was I put up for adoption without my mother's consent? When I compare her handwriting with that of the adoption papers, it appears that her signature was forged.
After relatives put my birth mother and I in touch, we spent three years getting to know each other over email and phone calls before finally meeting in person in May 2016. She has lived with so many regrets, the biggest one being that she never ran away from her parents. Now I'm grateful to have an opportunity to share our story with the world in the hopes that no other woman and child will go through what we've experienced.
Melissa Ohden is a pro-life public speaker and founder of the Abortion Survivors Network. Her book, You Carried Me: A Daughter's Memoir, is out now.
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