Talk to Gianna Jessen for just a few minutes and she’s likely to punctuate every sentence with a deep, infectious laugh. Talk to her for a while longer and, as her story unfolds, it becomes apparent that the constant joy has overcome unspeakable challenges.
In many regards, her life has been a short path littered with obstacles at every turn: the hardest of hard knocks, betrayal, and cruelty. But for every setback, there have been invitations into the greatest halls of government and forays behind communist walls. A life that was never meant to be has been used to inspire—even save—others.
You see, Gianna Jessen was intended to die before she was born, just another one of the 1.2 million abortions each year in the United States. Instead of death, though, Gianna was bathed in a burning saline solution, but she overcame to enter the world. Two months premature and weighing just two pounds, she spent her first few months in a hospital. From there, she entered the foster care system.
The failed abortion had also provided the “gift” of cerebral palsy, as she calls it: “It allows me to really depend on Jesus for everything.”
