December 19, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Those learning Gianna Jessen’s story for the first time might assume her to carry a special resentment for those who have committed or facilitated abortions, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Jessen, a prominent pro-life public speaker, sat down with Jonathon Van Maren this week to discuss her story as an abortion survivor. She was born 18 hours into a saline abortion in a Los Angeles abortion facility at 29 weeks. Saline abortions burn, blind, and suffocate babies, but Jessen was miraculously born alive. Jessen, who was adopted after a few years in the foster system, has cerebral palsy from the lack of oxygen to her brain during the saline abortion, but she considers her life a miracle.
During the interview, Jessen made a point of stressing that she wanted women who have had abortions and men who have encouraged or financed them to “know that I am not sitting here angry with them or against them.”
“The only person I've ever met that can ever free anyone from the thing they can't forget is Jesus,” she said. “You’ve gotta give him that abortion. You've gotta give him that sin and repent and he will free you. But I have never known any other person that can do such a monumental thing as free us. And I just don't want anybody listening and just going, just not being able to get out of bed tomorrow because they feel so condemned. No no no no, that is not God's plan for you. His plan is to free you.”
Jessen then told the story of being approached by her own biological mother during a public appearance, which she says came two weeks after contemplating what she would do in such a situation (mental preparation she credits to God speaking to her).
“I was greeting people afterward, which I always do, and this woman comes up and she says, ‘hi, I'm your mother,’” Jessen recalled. “The only way I can describe it is this as if the universe was crushing me, like I could not, apart from Christ, I could not have borne up under the weight of this.”
“But I know that my battle has never been against her or any other human being; this is a spiritual battle,” she continued. After silently praying for Jesus’ aid, she told the woman, “Ma’am, you must need to know that I am a Christian and I forgive you.” The woman told her, “I don’t want your forgiveness,” so Jessen simply repeated her original statement, only to be told “you are an embarrassment to this family.”
“And right then I knew what I needed to do,” Jessen said. “And I looked at her and I said, ‘ma’am, I'm a Christian and I forgive you, but I will no longer allow you to speak to me in this manner.’ And I got up and I walked out and then I sobbed for three hours.”
Jessen added that her adoptive mother had already met the woman some years beforehand and told her that Jessen had forgiven her but had no interest in meeting. “So she did this completely disregarding my wishes.”
“I think part of the reason that she was so angry was that she could see she had no control,” Jessen mused. “She could see I no longer belong to her, but to Christ.”
“And as painful and difficult and intense as this situation was, she could not convince me to be defined by where I come from,” Jessen told the audience. “And we all have that choice. We can either choose to be defined by all the injustice in all of the terrible things that may or may not have happened in our lives, or we can be set free by Jesus.
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