Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 31, 1993 TAG: 9303310241
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The subject of an Arthur S. Demoss Foundation-sponsored TV ad, people are starting to recognize Jessen, whose biological mother tried to abort her during the seventh month of pregnancy.
"Yes, I am she," Jessen told the audience. "I am that girl in the commercial."
On television, Jessen stands with a choir singing, and her voice, dubbed over "Amazing Grace," tells her story.
"Ten-and-a-half hours on my feet singing `Amazing Grace,' " she said of the taping, shaking her head. "I'll tell you by the end of that day I didn't like that song at all."
At Christmas a few years ago, Jessen's adoptive mother told her inquisitive teen-ager that a saline abortion had caused Jessen's mild case of cerebral palsy. Jessen has been speaking against abortion ever since.
"I'm out there fighting for the unborn as best as I can," she said. "I really believe abortion is a civil rights issue. It goes further than that with me - it's by the hand of God that I'm here. It's a miracle that I'm alive."
Jessen's visit to Tech was sponsored by First Right, a student group that opposes abortion.
Jessen has made similar trips all over the country ever since an article about her headlined "An abortion survivor grows up" appeared in a newspaper in Southern California. When the story hit the wires, people began calling her for speaking engagements.
"This is what I do," she said. "This is what I do to educate people."
Jessen, accompanied by her mother, is home only four to six days a month. She studies on airplanes and in hotel rooms.
"I see what I read about in textbooks," she said. "I lobbied Congress for two weeks last summer. It's a good thing government is my favorite subject."
Jessen welcomed questions about her life, handling most of them herself but sometimes looking to her mother for a forgotten statistic. She declined to argue issues or politics with members of the audience.
"I'm not that politically astute," she said when asked about the Freedom of Choice Act. "I do the best I can. I'm 16 years old. I talk in my language. I'm not here to debate."
She answered a question about sex education classes, saying the she believed in abstinence.
"You can't just jump into bed and expect everything to go hunky-dory all the time," she said. "You have to . . . not do that.
Her message, she said, was that abortion was wrong and dangerous. She stuck to that message during her speech, which ran just over an hour.
"I was not a blob of tissue," she said. "I was not a sprout. I was a baby. I came out as a screaming baby. When people say they support a woman's choice, they're saying they would rather have me die."
by CNB