October Baby has been on every pro-lifers radar over the past few months, and as much as I wanted to see it, I didn't have high expectations. I didn't know much of the story line, I just knew it was a Christian pro-life film. When NARAL started fuming publicly about it, I knew I had to go see it. After all, any movie that makes pro-abort organizations angry must be good.
I arrived at the theater with two friends in tow. I settled in, hoping it wasn't a long movie because my husband was home alone with four kids, and I was afraid of what awaited me when I returned. I didn't expect was to be drawn into the movie immediately. It was sweet and cute and funny -but by the end of the movie I was exhausted -emotionally pushed to the edge, filled with a sorrow I had not expected.
Several scenes were very difficult to watch. When the nurse gives a description of the abortion, I felt myself starting to panic. I began to sob, picturing all of the babies dismembered at the abortion clinic where I worked. More than a few times women had to come back for "incomplete" abortions. Many women came in for second-trimester abortions, where they were never told their babies would be pulled out of their womb, their arms and legs severed from their torsos. I had a flashback to the moment I saw the arms and legs of a baby in a jar after a second-trimester abortion. I wanted to run out of the theater, but the presence of my friends calmed me.
I felt an overwhelming pain in my soul - the pain of all the babies killed in the abortion clinic, the pain of my own child I aborted when I was young. I saw their little bodies poured into little baggies and thrown in the trash. Seeing this beautiful young woman on the screen, I saw in each innocent child killed a Hannah or a Nicholas.
At Nicholas' gravesite, I was plunged into sadness again. No aborted child has a gravesite. It is as if they never existed. There is nobody to cherish their memory, to know who they should have been, nobody to love them as they should have been loved. They exist only in their mother's grief, sliding down a wall in stifled agony.
When Hannah leaves the note for her mother, I joined in her mother's sobbing. Our hearts were joined with every mother who has aborted her child. What would I do for a note from my child, saying she forgives me? I think about her every day, I kiss her goodnight every night, but I will never hear her voice.
I know I am forgiven in Christ. He has healed me and given me new life in Him. My sorrow is no longer overwrought with guilt. I no longer hate myself or anyone else. But this does not mean I will not suffer. Our tears are His tears. He will allow us to go to the depths of our pain, only to lift us up to His light and glory.
I am so grateful to the filmmakers and everyone that worked so hard to bring this film to nationwide theaters. If you haven't seen the movie, please go see it. It shows us the human face of abortion, and the hope we can have that we can end it. God bless you.
