I Was Aborted at 8 Months and Left in a Bin to Die by MELISSA OHDEN for Life News
Growing up, my elder sister Tammy and I fought like many siblings do. It was during one of these childish rows when I was 14 that she blurted out, “At least my parents wanted me!”’
I was numb with shock. I was angry, scared, and felt so ashamed – even guilty for being alive.
We’d been told early on that we were both adopted, yet I felt like she knew something I didn’t. I ran straight to my adoptive parents who eventually told me they’d wanted to hide from me a devastating truth – that I had survived a failed abortion.
I was numb with shock. I was angry, scared, and felt so ashamed – even guilty for being alive.
My parents, Linda and Ron Ohden, took me in when I was three months old believing they couldn’t conceive (but had a surprise natural son called Dustin when I was six). They didn’t know any more details about my start in life – and I was left reeling from the deep void created by the unanswerable questions that tormented me about my past.
Inner turmoil
In my teenage years I developed bulimia and turned to sex and alcohol in a futile attempt to numb the pain. My family didn’t realise how much I was hurting because I hid it so well.
On the surface, I got it together and went off to university to study political science. But deep down, the confusion and self-doubt were still eating away at me.
And so aged 19 I began my search to find my birth family. My adoption papers gave little away. I didn’t even know my real parents’ names. So I spent hours searching through old newspapers on microfiche and year books at the library desperately looking for someone who looked like me.
I also placed an advert in a local newspaper appealing for anyone with information to come forward, but no-one did. It was like looking for a needle in a giant haystack.
Pieces of the puzzle
Then, after years of searching with no leads, I came across something when I was 30. I was flicking through a nursing college year book when I saw a woman I suspected was my maternal grandmother – all I had known was my grandparents’ surname and where they had worked.
Wracked with nerves, I posted them a letter. My grandfather wrote back. He said me being born alive was not what was supposed to happen that day, which I already knew. He also said I wouldn’t find my birth mother through them because they were estranged from her. There was no further explanation, but I knew something sinister had happened.
