Twenty-six-year-old Charlie Rosseau was a teenager when her mother told her why she had been born with one arm and one leg. The happy, blond-haired girl from Quebec had never “felt disabled,” but her mother revealed that her missing limbs were the result of a botched abortion she’d had as a teen, but decided not to complete at the urging of a doctor. Her parents had kept this fact from her because they didn’t want the story to define her in the small Canadian town where she grew up. Charlie has refused to allow the violence she experienced in the womb to define her and has instead spent the last several years traveling the world. “I decided I will have a boyfriend, I will live, and people will love me,” she said.
Perhaps no issue divides Westerners like abortion; we cannot even agree on who the main characters in this great moral drama are. For abortion supporters, it is about female bodily autonomy, without which sexual liberation is impossible. For pro-lifers, it is about the fundamental right to life of children in the womb, without which a society rooted in coherent human rights is impossible. For one side, the child is incidental or, delusionally, non-existent. For the other, abortion is violence perpetrated against the youngest and weakest members of our society. The stories of abortion survivors are a powerful testament to the fact that abortion is not about a what, but about a who.
Charlie’s story is more common than many might think. Josiah Presley survived an attempted curettage abortion intended to dismember him in Korea in 1995. His mother discovered at five months that she was still pregnant, he escaped with a maimed arm, and was adopted by a family in Oklahoma. Brandi Lozier was aborted in 1993; when clinic staff was about to discard her body, she raised her arm, and the staff revived her. Courtney Young survived an abortion in 1996, was born at 27 weeks, and was adopted by a loving family. Young’s mother had been pregnant with twins—the abortion killed Courtney’s sibling. Claire Culwell discovered in 2009 that her health complications were due to an abortion that killed her twin. She was adopted by a loving family but told me that every time she looks in the mirror, she sees her twin’s face staring back at her.
Abortion is a procedure with a single purpose: to end the life of a child in the womb. Miraculously, survivors are everywhere. In 2008, a UK mother told the Daily Mail that she was delighted that her infant son had survived an abortion; Carrie Holland-Fischer, who testified in favor of the Texas Born-Alive Infant Protection Act in 2019, told me that she endured much bullying as a child due to a disfigured face from an attempted abortion; when Gianna Jessen survived a saline abortion in 1977 and was born at 30 weeks, the abortionist signed her birth certificate. Filipino Paralympian Ernie Gawilan, who competed at the 2016 and 2020 Summer Paralympics and was the first gold medalist for the Philippines in the Asian Para Games, survived an abortion in 1991. Even in the womb, he jokes, he was swimming—away from the abortionist.
To tell these stories, abortion survivor Melissa Ohden, a pro-life activist and author of the powerful memoir You Carried Me: A Daughter’s Memoir, founded The Abortion Survivor’s Network. Ohden was expected to be delivered stillborn, but after soaking in saline solution in the womb for five days, she was born alive in 1977 weighing just two pounds and fourteen ounces. Her grandmother told her 19-year-old mother that the abortion had been successful and urged the medical staff to dispose of the baby girl as “medical waste.” A nurse heard Melissa cry out weakly and rushed her to a neonatal intensive care unit instead. Ohden was subsequently adopted, and her memoir describes her reestablished relationship with her birth mother and their journey to healing and forgiveness. In a post-Roe world, these stories are essential.
“When Roe was overturned, we saw a nearly 40% increase in the number of abortion survivors reaching out to us from various corners of the globe,” Ohden told me. “Survivors had been collectively holding their breath, feeling marginalized, and this overturn helped many to feel like they mattered. Sadly, we’ve seen a continued escalation of the awful treatment of survivors. When Governor Ron DeSantis mentioned the name of a survivor, Penny, in the first presidential debate last August, the response of the mainstream media was to deny her story, backtracking as they actually talked to her family, but ultimately pivoting to say that circumstances like hers are the reason why safe, legal abortion is necessary.”
This, says Ohden, is “gaslighting of survivors at its finest” and has “had the chilling effect on survivors that the media wants—many survivors were frightened by what they saw in the news coverage and the progress we made reaching them and the peace they got to experience has been eclipsed by the media-driven narrative of abortion as a choice, a right that the American people want.” The message sent by the media to survivors is clear: the response to their survival should not be a recognition of their humanity, but instead more effective abortions to ensure that no babies survive. This message is being pushed just as the number of abortion survivors rises with the increased use of medication abortion.
“We are contacted by women on a weekly basis who are experiencing failed chemical abortions or successful reversals (more often the straight up failure of both pills),” Ohden said. “These women are at greater risk than ever of aborting that survivor again and deserve to know the truth—that babies survive abortions and that there is hope for their child and for them. The term ‘abortion survivor’ is met with such denial and anger by so many. We need to raise awareness about incidence, how it happens (abortions fail, chemical abortions can be reversed, some abortions are stopped by women), and share survivor testimonies to support these realities. Survivor stories are powerful, but historically in the pro-life movement, we have leaned heavily on survivor stories due to gaps in the statistics.”
Statistics are hard to come by, but not non-existent. “Failure rates for medication abortions alone range from 1% to 16%, with an overall 4.8% failure rate, as per the Charlotte Lozier Institute,” Ohden told me. “Correlated statistics from CHI, the most detailed abortion survival statistics we find, indicate 1,734 survivors of surgical abortions alone in the U.S., in the last reporting period. We are currently connected to over 700 survivors from around the world. Knowing there are thousands upon thousands annually, the reality is that those we’ve connected with are just the tip of the iceberg. Some of those who initially survived may be aborted successfully in follow-up attempts, while others may never know their story. Families need support to address this trauma.”
That trauma is exacerbated by the treatment survivors receive from abortion supporters. “It’s very difficult not to take abortion extremism personally,” Ohden admitted. “Part of the healing work we do with survivors is to help them live lives as wholly as they can in a world that continues to be unsupportive of them. Abortion extremism permeates our daily lives. One of the greatest examples I can give to put people in our shoes comes from a young survivor who is now 12. She survived a late-term abortion that her birth mother sought after a prenatal diagnosis. We have been honoured to work with her and her adoptive family to talk about abortion, how babies survive abortions sometimes, and how she is one of them. This will be a lifetime journey for her and her family, but I’ve been honoured to be with them, along with my team, for the highs and lows.”
When Roe was overturned and she saw people protesting the outcome in her community, she was saddened and surprised by it–‘isn’t this a good thing?’ There are survivors like her who see and hear what people are saying, doing, posting, and reporting. I want people to pause and think about what it’s like to be in her or other survivors’ shoes. What if that was your child? Would you be okay with these types of messages and treatment? Not telling a survivor their story to avoid such realities is also not an appropriate response to this circumstance. Survivors and families impacted by attempted abortions are not the problem. Abortion is the problem.
Survivor stories are varied and inextricably tied up in the gruesomeness of the abortion industry’s killing procedures. Jennifer Milbourn survived a vacuum aspiration abortion. Sarah Elizabeth Brown survived an attempt by notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller, who attempted to inject potassium chloride into her heart at 36 weeks but instead punctured her brain, rendering her blind (she was adopted and passed away of kidney failure at age five). Ana Rosa Rodriguez survived after having her right arm torn off by New York abortionist Abu Hayat in 1991 at 32 weeks. Heidi Huffman survived a suction abortion after the abortionist missed her, instead removing much of the placenta and amniotic fluid. Sara Smith survived an abortion in California in 1970, but the abortionist successfully extracted her twin brother.
“The Abortion Survivor’s Network is deeply committee not only to raising awareness and humanizing the pre-born, but ending the generational trauma that failed, stopped, and reversed abortions cause,” Ohden explained. “Reaching women with the truth, filling in research gaps, educating policymakers, healing individuals and families, empowering our youngest survivors to embrace their experience and not be ashamed of who they are—really, our work is just beginning. Just today as I type this, our team was contacted by a woman shocked that her abortion six weeks ago failed. We’re here for her; for this survivor; for her family; for their lifetime.”
ASN’s research estimates that 85,817 infants were born alive after failed abortions since 1973 in the U.S. alone—and we know that babies have survived abortion attempts in Canada, the UK, and around the world, as well.”The stories of abortion survivors are uniquely powerful because they give us a glimpse of answers to unanswerable questions. What might the missing millions of aborted children have looked like? What might they have done? How would they have changed us? Who might they have loved, and been loved by? What would their own children have looked like? A single person has a tremendous and irreplaceable impact on those around them, and it is difficult to grasp what we have lost in the sheer unmatched carnage of abortion. We live in countries crowded with the ghosts of children we threw away, and they lurk at the edges of our cultural consciousness. Abortion survivors speak into the appalling and suffocating silence left by those murdered millions, and their voices remind us once again: We are here, and our faces are the faces of the children you tried to throw away.
