They were never supposed to be born. Abortion would end their precious lives, but God had other plans. Today, they are living amazing, purposeful lives.
Ernie Gawilan
Ernie was born in the Philippines in 1991 without the lower part of both legs and an underdeveloped left arm which were the result of a botched abortion. Adding to his challenges, his father abandoned him, and his mother died of cholera when he was just five months old.
Subsequently raised by his grandparents, he suffered bullying and ridicule for his appearance during his childhood. His life changed when, at age 9, a businessman noticed him and persuaded his grandfather to send him to a center for youths with disabilities.
Later in his life while working as a housekeeper in 2000, he discovered his love for the water. “When I am in the water my physical disability was not visible… I look like a normal person,” he was quoted saying.
He entered his first swimming competition in the 2008 Philippine Olympic Festival but was almost thrown out because he forgot his swimming trunks. He begged officials to let him compete in his cumbersome cargo pants. He still finished second. The first place finisher urged him to go to Manila where he joined the country’s persons with disabilities swim team.
Gawilan continued to excel competing in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, India, Japan, New Zealand and Italy, winning over a dozen international medals. That included becoming the first Filipino athlete from any sport to win a gold medal at the Asian Para Games in 2018.
His success continues as he won more medals in this year’s ASEAN Para Games in Indonesia.
Melissa Ohden
Melissa is the founder and director of the Abortion Survivors Network and the Abortion Survivors Network Education and Policy Center. The fact that she’s even alive is a miracle and amazing.
In August of 1977, her biological mother, a nineteen-year-old college student, had a saline infusion forced upon her by her mother (a nurse) and an abortionist. Melissa soaked in that toxic solution—intended to poison and scald her to death—for five days before being expelled from her mother’s womb.
Doctors initially thought she had a fatal heart defect due to high levels of fetal distress. To make the situation even worse, Melissa’s grandmother demanded that she be left to die. Thankfully, a neonatal nurse refused to do what she was told and rushed her to the ICU.
There is an effort in Congress to prevent babies born alive after a botched abortion from being left to die, but the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is being held up by Democrats in both houses.
Melissa survived because she received proper care and was at approximately 31 weeks of gestation, not 18-20 weeks the abortionist had estimated. However, she suffered from respiratory problems, jaundice, and seizures.
Testifying before Congress last year against the Women’s Health Protection Act—which was designed to legalize the right to abortion but eventually failed—Melissa used her story to call for an end to abortion.
“…I’m alive today because someone else’s ‘reproductive right’ failed to end my life. When do our rights to bodily autonomy begin? There’s something wrong when one person’s supposed right results in another person’s death. There’s something deeply disturbing about the reality in our world that I have a right to an abortion, but I never had the simple right to live,” she said.
Thanks to God, these heroes survived attempted murder, but their stories cry out for creating a culture that will permanently bring an end to all abortions.
For Georgia, the answer is to adopt a Personhood amendment to the state constitution. It will provide protection, equal justice, and equal rights for all innocent human life at all stages of development, level of dependency, physical or mental ability, medical prognosis, manner of conception, age, or race.
If you have not done so already, please sign the Georgians Ending Abortion petition calling on Governor Kemp to call a special session of the Legislature to adopt such an amendment.
Sources: lifesitenews.com; righttolife.org.uk; soports.inquirer.net; bbc.com.
By Wayne DuBois
Georgia Right to Life
Media Relations Advisor