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.
Support Our Site
Now is your chance to support Gospel News Network.
We love helping others and believe that’s one of the reasons we are chosen as Ambassadors of the Kingdom, to serve God’s children. We look to the Greatest Commandment as our Powering force.
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.
