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It is easy to forget that every abortion is happening to a unique person. With tens of millions of abortions occurring every year, the deaths become a mere statistic. We never know the people who are lost, and to many of us, they are just numbers on a sheet.
Sometimes, however, someone comes along who survived an abortion attempt in the first months of their lives. Such individuals remind us of what abortion really is. These people represent the countless unborn children who are killed every day. They stand in place of those who cannot stand. They remind us, too, that abortion threatens not only the unborn, but also the children already born.
1. The Oldenburg Baby
On July 6th, 1997, a baby at the Städtische Frauenklinik hospital in Oldenburg, Germany, was aborted in the twenty-fifth week of pregnancy.
The abortion failed.
The infant, Tim, would soon come to be known as the Oldenburg Baby by the rest of the world. Though he was born breathing and moving, medical personnel believed that he would die anyway. Denying him medical assistance, they wrapped him in a towel and left him alone for nine hours without any other care or treatment.
When medical personnel returned to collect the corpse, however, the child had not died. Though Tim’s body temperature dropped massively, he was still living and breathing. One of the nurses took pity and cared for him until doctors finally provided him with medical attention.
Tim was soon placed up for adoption. He found a home with Bernhard and Simone Guido. The couple had been expecting to adopt a healthy baby girl. But they had fallen in love with Tim the moment they laid eyes on him. The family would care for Tim for the rest of his life.
Because of the abortion and the neglect he was subjected to, Tim had numerous disabilities that challenged him. In addition to his Down syndrome, he suffered severe damage to his eyes, brain, and lungs. In the first years of his life, Tim had to undergo numerous operations and extensive therapy. With his strong love for animals, Tim developed the fine motor and speech skills he needed through dolphin therapy. Tim later attended the Paul Moor School in Quakenbrück, where he was described as a confident, lovable, and happy person.
He tragically passed in 2019, having lived a happy life loved by family.
Tim’s story is hardly the only one of its kind. Countless abortion survivors have emerged over the years around the world to tell their stories. Many are survivors of not only the first attempt to end their life but of neglect after birth. Most are plagued by complications from the abortion and/or neglect for the rest of their lives.
2. Gianna Jessen
Another abortion survival case is that of Gianna Jessen, a victim of a saline abortion at seven months gestation. The abortion left Jessen with severe injuries and permanent physical disabilities, including cerebral palsy, due to a lack of oxygen during the abortion. She was never supposed to be able to walk or even to lift her head. Many even doubted that she would live.
Like Tim, however, Gianna defied the odds. After four surgeries and physical therapy, Gianna was able to overcome many of the effects of the attempted abortion. Today, she can walk without assistance, and she has taken an active role as a pro-life advocate. Jessen has testified in Congress on numerous occasions and regularly gives speeches promoting laws to protect abortion survivors. She has also given witness in cases where abortionists have been caught killing infants after birth.
Gianna Jessen carrying the Olympic torch
3. Sarah Brown
Not all children are able to overcome the complications from their abortions, however. Even with proper care, many die. Sarah Brown is one such case.
At 36 weeks, nearly full-term, Sarah was injected with potassium chloride meant to stop her heart. But the injection punctured Sarah’s head instead of her heart. The poison entered her brain and left her with visible scars and chemical burns at the base of her skull and above her eyebrow.
The poison severely damaged the left portion of Sarah’s brain instead of killing her. Upon her delivery, the staff at the hospital sent the mother home. They set Sarah aside and waited for her to die.
Though Sarah was neglected for hours following the attempt on her life, without care, nourishment, or assistance, she continued to live. As in Tim’s case, a nurse at the hospital took pity on her and called a pro-life attorney to help. The attorney placed Sarah with Bill and Mary Kay, who had been hoping to adopt a special-needs child.
The damage to the left side of her brain left her blind and unable to walk. Sarah progressed normally for a while, even beginning to speak, but her health worsened. In the year following her birth, Sarah suffered a stroke from which she never fully recovered.
Among her other injuries, Sarah’s airway was severely damaged by the poison used in the abortion attempt. For this reason, Sarah had to be hooked up to a machine that monitored her breathing at night to ensure her safety. She quickly found a way to take advantage of her situation to communicate: “She learned that if she held her breath the monitor would go off,” her adoptive mother recounted once. “We would jump out of bed and she would be grinning at us. That was how she got attention.”
Sarah passed away at the age of five due to her medical complications. Her life spurred her family to take up pro-life activism, forming groups to help pregnant women and children in need.
Despite how efficient abortions have become, there are still a great number of survivors. Many go on to live productive lives, such as Melissa Ohden (founder of the Abortion Survivors Network), Josiah Presley, Nik Hoot, and others. For every one who survives, however, a great many more die.
Abortion survivors, from left: Melissa Ohden; Josiah Presley; Nik Hoot; Gianna Jessen; and Claire Culwell. Image credit: Family Voice Australia
4. Sycloria Williams’ Baby
Another tragic story of a child who died soon after a failed abortion is that of Sycloria Williams’ baby. On July 17, 2006, Williams went to a clinic and confirmed that she was 23 weeks pregnant. She then went to Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique’s abortion clinic. Renelique gave Williams a drug to dilate her cervix and told her to go to another clinic the next day for the abortion procedure. Williams went to this clinic (A Gyn Diagnostic Center) and was given more medication. When Renelique was contacted to come to complete the abortion, he did not show up. Williams gave birth. Williams’ lawsuit outlines that one of the clinic owners knocked the child off the birthing chair (umbilical cord still attached). Then, they threw the baby and the placenta in a plastic bag and threw it away.
5. The New Zealand Baby
More recently, in 2021, a woman came into the hospital for a third-trimester abortion. The baby was perfectly healthy, so instead of injecting the baby with a fatal solution, the mother was induced. The baby was born alive but was neglected after birth. Instead of giving the child proper medical care, they were left “gasping for air” for two hours before dying. A medical student who witnessed the occurrence was left traumatized. The medical staff used the excuse that the mother was experiencing financial difficulties. But the murder of her healthy child did not help her in her financial difficulties. Instead, it left her the mother of a horrifically murdered child.
The Problem of Infanticide
Stories like these are shocking, even when they have a happy ending. It is heartbreaking to imagine any child surviving abortion and then being left to die. Sadly, this is not uncommon. In the United States, it is likely that between a few hundred and well over a thousand children survive abortions every year. Hundreds of more deaths have been recorded in other countries. Though the total number of abortion survivors is difficult to calculate, even just the number of known abortion survivors is staggering.
Worse, these children are commonly neglected after birth. In some countries, the outright killing of the infant after birth is accepted, even recommended as a matter of practice to prevent suffering. Rarely, if ever, are they given care. Their survival is seen as an unfortunate medical failure, a problem that is best dealt with by ignoring it.
Indeed, in a review of eighty-three born-alive abortion survivor cases in the United States, not one report indicated that medical attention was given to any of them. Instead, most reports state outright that no measures were taken to preserve the life of the infant. While these children are sometimes given some comfort care to make their deaths more pleasant, even that level of compassion is often denied.
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