By Melissa Ohden, CEO, Abortion Survivors Network
Last week’s important Congressional briefing, led by NRLC, included NRLC President Carol Tobias, MCCL Co-Executive Director Cathy Blaeser, and Sarah Zagorski, Communications Director of Louisiana Right to Life, who is also is the survivor of a labor induction abortion. I rounded out the presenters as both the survivor of a saline abortion and the CEO of Abortion Survivors Network (ASN).
Briefings like last Tuesday are influential for a multitude of reasons: Combatting lies like those told in the Presidential debate, “There is no state where it’s legal to kill a baby after they’re born.” They also provide a direct connection between those affected by laws (or the lack of a law) and the policymakers via their staffers. And as we know, these personal stories are remembered, shared, and continue to resonate long after a briefing.
Congressional briefings are one solution to the problems we face in the pro-life movement: strategically collaborating to gain a deeper understanding of an issue like born live legislation. Making that possible requires real-life stories.
Sarah shared a deeply personal look into what an abortionist and a woman undergoing an abortion “having a conversation” about the born alive infant (as Virginia’s Governor Northam remarked in 2019). Cathy offered an in-depth discussion of how Minnesota’s pro-abortion Gov. Tim Walz helped to gut their born-alive law.
Carol reported on states with protective born alive laws. In turn I talked about my reports of the status of born alive infants gleaned from research– and what failed abortions look like now in today’s post-Roe world.
Incorporating survivors’ voices, and, I hope, with ASN’s leadership, mothers who have experienced failed, stopped, or reversed abortions, resulting in a born-alive infant, will be a signal that these failed abortions do happen and more often than we think. As this truth finally breaks through, we hope to find a more informed, responsive, and compassionate legislative environment and, God-willing, foster a culture at life.
It gives me great hope that together, we can make a significant difference for abortion survivors and moms experiencing failed, stopped, and reversed abortions.