The first six years of Micaella Clay’s life were spent in the foster care system. She didn’t have a name or a birth date. She remembers her older brother calling her “sissy,” but had no identity of her own. Clay is an abortion survivor, born in a make-shift abortion facility on an unidentified migrant farm.
Clay told Live Action News, “I was in 36 foster homes by the time I was finally adopted when I was six years old and given the name Micaella.”
Throughout her young life, Clay battled with a myriad of health problems related to her heart, lungs, and spine. She wondered about her medical history, but nobody could provide her with answers.
Curiously, her birth certificate did not match her older brother’s.
“When I was in my late teens, I gave birth to a son and wanted to know if he, too, would be prone to the same medical conditions,” Clay said. “I called the local Job and Family Services to inquire about the circumstances surrounding my birth, but my records were sealed.”
Undeterred, Clay continued to call Child Services, but a judge later told her it was not in her best interest to delve into her past. She suspected that her birth mother had requested the records not be opened.
Clay said, “It was the law, that even upon her death, that my records stay sealed. There was nothing I could do, but I was determined to find some answers at some point.”
Discovering the circumstances of her birth years later
On her 35th birthday, Clay called Child Services once more and this time, the woman who answered told her she had prayed that Clay would call again. The woman said she would contact Clay after work hours and provide her with some answers to put her mind at ease.
“When she called, she informed me that I was not to worry, that my children would not suffer from the same health issues because my medical issues stemmed from being born alive during a botched abortion attempt,” Clay said.
As Clay put together the pieces of her past based on the information the woman disclosed, she discovered that her biological mother was a migrant farm worker who probably didn’t have health care. She went to a crude facility on the farm to obtain an abortion. She wasn’t sure at the time how far along she was in her pregnancy, and an aspiration vacuum was allegedly used in a failed attempt to suck Clay from her mother’s womb.
Clay said, “I was born alive during the procedure. It was thought that the abortion was performed by migrant workers themselves who were not medically trained.”
The facility workers transported the mother and baby, who was struggling to survive, to the hospital — but doctors reportedly couldn’t put Clay in an incubator or administer steroids because she had been out of the womb for too long. They estimated her mother’s pregnancy had progressed to the beginning of the third trimester; therefore, Clay’s lungs were not yet well-developed.
“My lungs lack the outer layer of mature lungs which is why I have some trouble breathing, especially around smoke,” Clay said.
READ: Fact checker fails to tell the truth on abortion survivors and infanticide
Clay was subsequently transferred to a specialty hospital without any identification. The secrecy surrounding her birth lingered. The day of Clay’s arrival at the hospital, her mother had brought along her older son, Clay’s brother— and during the commotion, she panicked and disappeared, leaving her son at the hospital.
Clay said, “It wasn’t until I was adopted that Child Services created a certificate of live birth, so I could have something that identified me as a human being. But I noticed the name on the live birth certificate they provided is not the name I have now. I have no idea where the other name came from.”
Her birth mother eventually went to Child Services to determine the whereabouts of Clay’s brother. While there, she chose to relinquish her parental rights and possibly signed the agreement to secure Clay’s records.
“Not a lot was gleaned when my mother visited Child Services,” Clay said. “But I did discover she claimed to not know I had been born alive. However, when Child Services tried to get more answers about that day at the abortion clinic, she abruptly left without telling them the actual date I was born.”
A life-affirming mission from a tragic past
While Clay might have been angry about the horrible circumstances in which she came into the world, she felt relief that her children’s health was not at risk. Instead, Clay gets angry when she hears people refer to the preborn child as “just a clump of cells.”
Clay said, “Because of my experience, I value life more and God gave me peace about it. I have such a heart for my biological mother. I just wanted to tell her that I forgave her.”
In November 2020, Clay found her mother on Facebook. She had learned of her mother’s name from her brother’s birth certificate but observed she now had a different surname.
“I messaged her but received no response,” Clay said. “So, I messaged a relative of hers, who I later found out was my sister. She replied and told me… she had passed away the previous March.”
For Clay, it was a bittersweet turn of events. She discovered she had four other siblings who knew Clay and her brother were part of their family, but were told by their mother they had perished years earlier in a car accident.
Clay said, “They had just lost their mother and now learned they had been lied to all their lives. So, my brother and I weren’t eagerly embraced at first.”
Yet from such a heartbreaking story sprang a life-affirming, God-given purpose for Clay.
“I felt compelled to use my platform as an abortion survivor to tell other birth mothers about forgiveness,” Clay said. “Somewhere out there are women who have had abortion, who have placed their babies for adoption, and I want them to hear those compassionate words.”
A member of the Abortion Survivors Network, Clay speaks publicly, though her siblings find her willingness to share her story distressing.
Clay said, “This is my story, and I can’t change it. I don’t believe God wants me to stay silent. If I can reach out to a woman in need and save a life in the womb, I will continue to speak out.”
