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Gianna Jessen (born April 6, 1977 in Los Angeles, California) is a Pro-life advocate and symbol.
Jessen was born over a month premature after a failed saline abortion. The doctor who had carried out the abortion was not present at the moment that Gianna was born alive, and the nurse called an ambulance and had the two-pound baby taken to hospital. Because of damage done during the abortion, Gianna now lives with physical disabilities. Doctors predicted that she would be blind, a "vegetable" and "crippled" for life — never walking. According to Jessen, some even suggested that she would not want to live in such a condition.
Gianna's biological parents, who were both seventeen, put her up for adoption. When she learned from her adoptive mother the truth behind her premature birth, she became an advocate against abortion. She begins her speeches with this statement, "I was aborted and did not die." She is a Christian, and credits Jesus with preserving her life.
Jessen testified before the United States Congress on April 22, 1996 against partial-birth abortions and again in 2000 in support of the Born Alive Infant Act. She has said, "My biological mother thought she was making a decision affecting only her. If abortion is merely about women's rights, then what were mine?"
In May, 2005, she ran a twenty-six-mile marathon in Nashville, where she lives.