Editor's note. Melissa is the survivor of a "failed" saline abortion in 1977. She speaks all over the world including at the last three National Right to Life Conventions.
Melissa Ohden (right) and Lisa Andrusko, NRLC
Yearbook Editor, at the 2013 National Right to Life
Convention
November is Adoption Awareness Month. Adoption is the option that everyone can live with–the mother, the father, the extended families, and, literally, the child.
Over fifty-five million lives ended through abortion in our nation have left countless women, men, and their families wounded. Adoption, by contrast, brings a legacy of life and love into this world. Both create a ripple effect for generations to come, one for ill, one for good.
Yet we live in a world today that often talks about adoption in disparaging
terms: Adoption is a burden on women. No right person would ever "give up" their child.
I've had women state that because they could never 'give up' their baby, they would abort them, instead.
I've even been told that it's adoptees like me, who search for our biological
families that make adoption an unappealing option in the face of an unplanned pregnancy. I am certainly not buying that or any of the other
misconceptions about adoption in our world.
What I am going to do, though, is continue to fight for abortion to be abolished and adoption to be looked at as the positive choice that it is. I will do my best to encourage people to have conversations that encourage others to do likewise.
Take advantage of Adoption Awareness Month this November, and have the conversation, in person with people or via social media and the Internet.
Together we can change the lens through which adoption is looked at and talked about in our world.
Contact: Melissa Ohden, National Right to Life
