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Years ago in Washington, DC, I met a woman named Gianna Jessen, then a teenager. She sang at an event I was speaking at, and we had a delightful conversation. She is musically gifted and I found her a wonderful testimony to God’s grace.
No one could spend two minutes with this woman without being convinced it would be a tragedy for her to have been killed, as she nearly was in an attempted abortion. Gianna is an abortion survivor.
Gianna's website (http://www.giannajessen.com/) includes her biography as well as a sample of her music and information about Gianna by Jessica Shaver, the book that tells the incredible story of her survival.
Because I've met Gianna, I was especially interested in a recent Wall Street Journal interview with her, which focused on Gianna's thoughts about the upcoming presidential election. Here it is:Gianna Jessen does not quit. Giving up is not an option to her. Gianna has what
she refers to as the "gift" of Cerebral Palsy. She weighed a mere 2 lbs at birth
and the doctors said she would never be able to hold up her head, sit up, crawl
or walk. She began to walk by the age of three years old with the help of leg
braces and a walker.
Gianna doesn’t believe that her Cerebral Palsy takes away her life, but, rather, enriches it. . . she walks with a slight limp today and runs marathons.Gianna understands the plight of orphans, being one herself. She was placed into the foster care system early on in life, eventually being taken into the loving home of a woman named Penny. Penny has been a mother to 56 foster children in her life. Gianna was later adopted by Penny's daughter, making Penny Gianna's grandmother. According to Gianna, Penny saved her life.
Gianna is a Christian. Her life was given to her by the grace of God. She shouldn't be walking, but more miraculous still; she should not even be alive. Gianna's biological mother was 17 when she had a saline abortion in her third trimester. Many Americans don’t realize it is legal to have an abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy. After being burned alive for approximately 18 hours in the womb from the saline solution, Gianna was delivered alive in a Los Angeles County abortion clinic. Her medical records state, "born during saline abortion"...this is what caused her Cerebral Palsy.
The Audacity of Death
By Daniel Allott
Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2008
According to Barack Obama, Gianna Jessen shouldn't exist.
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Had the abortionist been present at her birth, Gianna would have been killed, perhaps by suffocation. As it was, a startled nurse called an ambulance, and Gianna was rushed to a nearby hospital, where, weighing just two pounds, she was placed in an incubator, then, months later, in foster care.
Gianna survived then, and thrives now, because, as she told me recently with a laugh, "I guess I don't die easy." Which is what the abortionist might have thought as he signed his victim's birth certificate. Gianna's medical records state that she was "born during saline abortion."
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A federal version on the same legislation passed the Senate unanimously and with the support of all but 15 members of the House. Gianna was present when President Bush signed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002.
When I asked Gianna to reflect on Mr. Obama's candidacy, she paused, then said, "I really hope the American people will have their eyes wide open and choose to be discerning. . . . He is extreme, extreme, extreme."
"Extreme" may not be the impression the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have bought Mr. Obama's autobiography have been left with. In "The Audacity of Hope," Mr. Obama's presidential manifesto, he calls abortion "undeniably difficult," "a very difficult issue," "never a good thing" and "a wrenching moral issue."
He laments his party's "litmus test" for "orthodoxy" on abortion and other issues, and even admits, "I do not presume to know the answer to that question." That question being the moral status of the fetus, who he nonetheless concedes has "moral weight."
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To Mr. Obama, abortion, or "reproductive justice," is "one of the most fundamental rights we possess." And he promises, "the first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act," which would overturn hundreds of federal and state laws limiting abortion, including the federal ban on partial-birth abortion and bans on public funding of abortion.
Then there's Mr. Obama's aforementioned opposition to laws that protect babies born-alive during botched abortions. If partial-birth abortion is, as Democratic icon Daniel Patrick Moynihan labeled it, "too close to infanticide," then what is killing fully-birthed babies?
To read the entire article, see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121261107480446197.html
On a related note, here's a recent article about a woman whose son was born last year after surviving an abortion.
Please join me in praying for the unborn and for this upcoming election, that the American people will, as Gianna says, "have their eyes wide open and choose to be discerning."
This article originally appeared on Randy Alcorn’s personal blog, June 18, 2008. Visit the blog at http://www.randyalcorn.blogspot.com to read Randy’s latest thoughts on the Christian life, discipleship, books, family, and more.
