The powerful testimony of Gianna Jessen, survivor of abortion and living with disabilities: “If abortion is about a woman’s right to choose, then what was mine?”

---

 

The guest of honor at Zurich’s “March for Life” was Gianna Jessen.

Her story is one of the most powerful testimonies of the paradox of a society that, in the name of women’s right to choose, attempts to suppress the lives of women before they are even born.

 

Gianna Jessen, Victim of the Women’s Right to Choose

Born on April 6, 1977, in Los Angeles, Gianna survived a late-term saline abortion attempt, a horrific procedure that, though less common today, was used for years to terminate advanced pregnancies.

A substance is injected that causes burns and damage to the fetus’s tissues and central nervous system, as well as dehydration and death within a few hours.

The abortion doctors were certain they had killed Gianna, but she defied expectations, being born alive and growing up with a motor disability that she herself calls a “tremendous gift.”

She became an uncomfortable activist defending unborn children, invited all over the world to tell her story. At one of these events, she even encountered her mother sitting among the audience.

In her speech in Zurich, she shared her experience of survival and spoke especially to the men present, urging them to promote a culture of life: “It’s important that you dedicate your life to your wives and children!”

 

“Is Abortion About a Woman’s Right? Then What Was Mine?”

Her story has become a powerful symbol in the abortion debate.

On several occasions, Gianna has raised a crucial question: “If abortion is about women’s rights, what were my rights?”

This highlights an intrinsic contradiction: how can a society that claims to defend women’s rights justify the suppression of a female life still in the mother’s womb?

To respond, some resort to rhetorical and dangerous tricks such as denying the personhood of life in the womb — arguments that are addressed in our dedicated dossier.

Gianna’s story mirrors that of Hope, whose story we have already told — another woman victim of an attempted application of the “woman’s right,” which, however, failed.

Also an abortion survivor, she is now forced to live with cerebral palsy and bears a scar on her forehead — the spot where the doctor struck her violently in an attempt to suppress a life too stubborn to yield to others’ rights to choose.