Melissa Ohden was already 14-years-old when she found from her adoptive family that her birth mother had tried to abort her. Years later, she was able to meet with her birth mother who had spent most of her life believing that her daughter did not survive the abortion procedure.
In an interview with BBC's Victoria Derbyshire program, Ohden explained that she found out about her birth mother's attempt to abort her when her adoptive sister unexpectedly mentioned it during an argument.
"You know Melissa, at least my biological parents wanted me," Ohden recalled her sister as saying, as reported by the BBC.
Ohden, now 41, said that she was confused by the revelation at first, but she eventually sank into depression.
"I turned my pain upon myself. It was a lonely place," she recounted, according to BBC. "I developed an eating disorder, struggled with alcohol abuse. I didn't want to be me," she continued.
In a video posted online, Ohden explained that her 19-year-old birth mother attempted to abort her using a poisonous saline solution. She says she was discarded as medical waste at the hospital, but a nurse heard her crying and rushed her to an intensive care unit.
Ohden started tracking down her birth mother at the age of 19, but she only found her after more than a decade. She eventually learned that her birth mother had no idea that she had survived the abortion.
"She was not told I survived. It was kept a secret from her," she said, according to BBC. "I was placed for adoption without her ever knowing. She never knew if it was a little boy or a little girl she had delivered," she continued.
Ohden has recounted her experiences in finding her birth mother in a book titled "You Carried Me: A Daughter's Memoir."
She explained that her mother did not want to go through with the abortion, but she says she was pressured by her grandmother, who reportedly worked as a nurse at the hospital.
Ohden and her birth mother had been communicating through email for three years before they met face-to-face. She said that her first meeting with her mother was "absolutely surreal."
"My biological family is a huge part of my life," she said, adding that she now meets with her birth mother "as often as we possibly can."
She now believes that she is "one of the luckiest people in the world" because she now has a relationship with both her adoptive parents and birth mother.
