Although a second abortion was suggested, my mother refused and instead brought me to term. I was born with bilateral congenital dislocated hips, a condition for which I've had dozens of operations. It hasn't stopped me from pursuing my medical studies, though, or from speaking out wherever I can for the right to life.
My mother Betty and I speak publicly throughout the country and throughout the world. Most recently, we spoke in Rome and met Pope John Paul II.
I have forgiven my parents for trying to abort me, and I forgive the abortionist who killed my twin brother and who almost killed me. I often think of my brother, Andrew James, whom nobody can replace.
I believe that the way of truth, love, and God's grace is the only way to deal with the abortion tragedy. I would like to call all people to stand with me to defend the right to life of all persons. There are many alternatives to abortion. Nobody needs to sacrifice her child, no matter what anyone says......
She was 14 when her mother first told her about the abortion of her twin brother, later named Andrew. Her mother had five children at the time of the abortion and did not think she could bear the stress of another child, she said.
It took Ms. Smith many years and an abortion of her own following a teenage date rape before she decided to go public with her story.
"I tried to block it out of my mind and get on with my life, but it didn't work," she said.
She had dreams about her aborted brother and felt that she had to do something to preserve his memory. Since then she has come to realize that as long as one unborn baby is denied the right to life, she also is denied that right in theory, because she was supposed to have been killed, she said.
Her work over the past two years has brought strong opposition from abortion advocates.
She said a woman on a call-in show told her, "You shouldn't be talking about these things. You should be dead."
Four weeks after she survived an abortion that killed her twin brother in the womb, Sarah Smith said, "I started kicking."
"I sit here not as an apparition, not as some voice from the grave. I'm a person, just like anyone else," said Ms. Smith, 24, who was born with serious medical problems five months after the abortion,
"I absolutely forgive my mother for the abortion," she continued. "She was like the majority of women who go for abortions, totally ignorant of what she was doing and uninformed about the consequences."
After realizing that she was still pregnant, her mother went back to the doctor who did the abortion. He told her that the baby was very likely severely deformed or brain dead and recommended another abortion.
Her mother said, "No way, I feel it kicking and I know now it's alive," Ms. Smith told a Manhattan audience recently.
"I am an abortion survivor," she continued. "Let my face be that point of reference for everyone to know what is being killed in the womb. When you hear the word 'choice,' think of me. My life, my limbs were meant to be torn apart."
She added, "I am a person now, I was a person then. It's time the U.S. Supreme Court realized that. Once they do, Roe vs. Wade will crumble."
She told her remarkable story at a luncheon June 14 at the Harvard Club. The event was held to raise money for Expectant Mother Care and the Legal Center for the Defense of Life.
