Teen's Tale: Aborted As A Fetus, Now `Normal' -- 15-Year-Old Becomes Anti-Abortion Celebrity

Gianna Jessen sat down to an interview in a Maryland restaurant and talked about how normal she is. She's 15, enjoys popular movies like "Wayne's World," idolizes hot Christian singer Amy Grant, likes boys, hangs out at malls and giggles a lot.

"I'm just real normal. A normal, normal teenager," insists Jessen.

Not so normal when you consider what Gianna says is her incredible story: that, as a 7-month fetus, she was aborted with an injection of saline solution administered at a California abortion clinic. Gianna's mother was 17, unwed and apparently desperate to end her pregnancy, although it is not clear why she put off the abortion (late, but still legal) for so long.

Reportedly weighing just 2 pounds and left on a table to presumably die, Gianna was carried to a nearby hospital by an unknown good Samaritan. She survived the abortion, she says, though she was permanently disabled by cerebral palsy. Raised in a foster home, she was adopted at age 3 by her foster mother's daughter, Diana DePaul.

Gianna spends her days appearing at anti-abortion events coast to coast, touted in fliers as "the baby who beat the abortionist." In two years, she has become perhaps the anti-abortion movement's most dramatic witness.

Journalists often demand proof of her story. All that DePaul can offer them is a copy of her adopted daughter's records from a California social-services agency. Because the adoption is closed, the records carry neither her birth mother's name nor Gianna's true surname ("Jessen" is a stage name).

"Natural mother: 5'5 1/2", 135 lbs., brown hair, hazel eyes," the records say. `"t was elected to do a saline abortion as natural mother wishes. . . . Natural father reported to be a heavy drinker."

Christian media accept Gianna with zero skepticism and open arms, and "pro-lifers" idolize her.

"Pro-choicers" do not.

In the view of Kate Michelman, head of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), anti-abortion activists are "parading Gianna around like she's some kind of sideshow freak."

The comment, carried in USA Today, "hurt, to be quite honest," says Gianna, who, after all, is a teenage girl with crippled legs. "It hurt my feelings. I'm a kid. I'm still young."

But Gianna is not surprised that Michelman and other abortion-rights activists criticize her: "It's to be expected. Satan's going to try to knock you down any time."

CRISS-CROSSING AMERICA

Gianna's world is the anti-abortion inspirational entertainment circuit, her venue an eternal string of churches, church halls, Christian schools and Christian radio stations stretching across the United States.

Tutored by her mother, Gianna is on the road more than three weeks out of four. One time she flew six times in eight days. She has been on "The Maury Povich Show" and NBC's "A Closer Look With Faith Daniels."

She is so popular that "'92 is booked already going into '93," says Diana DePaul, always at her daughter's side. "We have some summer dates left. If Roe (Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973) is overturned, we'll get busy."

Gianna's fee for a stage appearance is $1,000, plus air fare and expenses. At every event, she unabashedly recounts the horrific circumstances of her birth. There are no solid figures on abortion survivors, but according to one 1974 report, about 196 aborted fetuses a year show signs of life, and about a half-dozen survive the experience. Because of different techniques, today's abortion-survival figures are considered much lower.

"Well, a saline abortion is a saline salt solution that is injected into the mother's womb," Gianna tells her audiences. "And it burns the baby, inside and out. The baby gulps it. And then she's to deliver a dead baby within 24 hours. I went through that whole process, but obviously, I came out alive."

It's not all a downer, though. At each of her appearances, which are frequently packed, the teen also tells about her devotion to God and to Jesus. And she sings, in a gutsy, juvenile Dolly Parton voice, all the more charming and genuine because it is untrained.

"If I didn't have the singing, I probably wouldn't be able to do (the appearances), because that's who I am," says Gianna, who is ingenuously frank about her ambition to become the next Amy Grant.

She often performs her own songs, and Gianna and DePaul, 45, who is divorced, recently wrote one called "Little Toys."

"It's a real sappy song, but it's a real convincing song," Gianna says.

"Little toy dolls on a shelf

"Getting dustier as time goes by.

"And if you look really close

"You may see a tear in their eye. . . .

"Oh where are the boys and the girls?

"We'll never see them at play.

"'Cause they're in their heavenly father's arms

"'Cause they were aborted today."

When Gianna was 12, DePaul told her she was an abortion survivor. The two were in the kitchen making Christmas dinner. Gianna, who already knew she was adopted, was not so much troubled as amazed.

She recalled thinking at the time: "Wow! Kind of, wow! I had to stop for a minute and think of what she told me. . . . Wow! I thought it was kind of neat, actually." She immediately called a friend with the awesome news.

Gianna first went public with her story at a Mother's Day event sponsored by a California anti-abortion group. Word spread, and soon she and her mother were on the road. A music tape and a book, tentatively titled "Born on Fire," are on the way.

"I think of my biological mother this way," the teen says. "I forgive her for what she did. She was so young . . . just so confused, and I pray for her, and I pray that she's all right. But I don't think of her as the girl that tried to kill me."

Yet, she wonders: "Wouldn't it be cool - this is cool and not cool - if I had a picture of her, to see? I wonder what she looks like. I battle with it all the time, in my head. When I was younger, I went through so much crying over being adopted. Wouldn't it be neat if she just left me something to read?"

`SWEET INNOCENCE'

Gianna has written another song, "Sweet Innocence," about how tough it is for a teenager - let alone one who tours the country talking and singing about surviving an abortion - to stay fresh and uncorrupted.

"Keep your sweet innocence.

"Don't try to hide the person inside.

"But if you only knew

"How hard it is to pull me through

"Some days it seems impossible to do."

"I pray all the time," Gianna says. "When I get on a plane. Before I talk to people. While I'm checking out music. Before I go anywhere. Because He's the one who controls everything. (I can't think), `It's me, it's me, it's me."'

"We're not out here on a money-making escapade or anything like that," her mother interjects.

"We're just telling a true story of God's love, you know?" Gianna says. "And people can choose to believe it. And if they don't want to, that's their problem."