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Melissa Ohden is the survivor of a failed abortion. Her mother had an abortion during her pregnancy with Melissa in the summer of 1977 in Sioux City, Iowa.

And Melissa survived it.

This is Melissa Ohden’s story.

When Melissa was 14, she found out for the first time the truth about the abortion.

When I first found out, I was devastated. And I struggled with anger for the first time.

Her mother was an unwed college student who was pressured to abort her baby. She was almost 8 months pregnant when she went into the hospital to terminate her pregnancy. Medical staff administered a saline solution for an abortion that’s designed to fill the amniotic sack and scald the child to death from the outside in.

I soaked in that toxic salt solution for five days.

Five days later, the mother returned to the hospital to deliver what she assumed would be a stillborn baby.

But that didn’t happen.

Believing that the abortion procedure had worked, the medical professionals discarded Melissa’s body.

And ever so quietly, baby Melissa began to try. Whimper, really.

And the nurses heard Melissa and worked to save her life.

While Melissa was cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit, her biological parents arranged for her to be adopted. And when her adoptive parents first saw her…

They fell in love with her.

My parents saw the inherent beauty that existed in me.

Melissa wants everyone to see the beauty in every child — if only they were given the opportunity to live. She has made it her mission in life to tell others — even testifying before Congress that…

I should have been just another statistic, but by the grace of God I am more than a statistic. I come here to you today as a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a master’s level prepared social worker. And, yes, as an abortion survivor from a botched abortion.

As the founder of the Abortion Survivors Network, Melissa Ohden has had contact with 203 other survivors, whose letters she gave to the House Judiciary Committee Hearing on Planned Parenthood practices.

I’m here today to share my story to not only highlight the horror of abortion taking place at Planned Parenthood, but to give a voice to other survivors like me. And most importantly to give a name, a face and a voice to the hundreds of thousands of children who will have their lives ended by Planned Parenthood this year alone.

Melissa’s rallying message that she wants all of us to hear and share with others is this: