By Dave Andrusko
Admittedly I am very partial to well-done pro-life videos, but even if I was not a fan I think my jaw still would have dropped when I watched “Interview with an Unborn Child”. I so want you to see this video now that I will wait until Monday to give a full explanation of the background to this astonishing video.
The creators of this very brief video (4:16) know that abortion is a sensitive topic and even many pro-lifers find brutally honest pictures of aborted babies very unsettlingly. So they immediately tell the viewer, “The film contains NO shocking images.” And it doesn’t!
Instead the narrator (the unborn child) ever-so-quietly reduces you to tears in about 60 seconds in. Why?
Some of the reasons are obvious. The music is perfectly haunting. We understand immediately that this child is utterly….. alone…. and…. helpless.
From his words and the images, we know that he has been abandoned by his mother. Even after more than 30 years in the Movement, this truth still cuts me to the quick. This pain is only exacerbated by the truth that as often as not, the child’s father (at a minimum) will encourage the child’s mother to “get rid” of him.
Listening to narrator, we know that he anticipates being hurt. Physically and existentially. Even if he didn’t, we, as his parents, do. And we try to keep his cries muffled and our indifference barricaded. And when he says, “My greatest pain will not reach the ears of anyone, not even my mother,” you (or at least I was) are stunned into silence.
[The refrain “not even my mother” is the narrative thread that binds the video together, that and the expressions of deep, DEEP pain etched on his mother’s face.]
What else? There is the finality of abortion. “Even though my heart is beating fast,” he tells us, ‘how quickly the star of my life will be snuffed out.”
Finally, and this comes early and is geared to people of faith, the child knows that even if no one knows his individuality, his uniqueness, his last hours, God does. If we are to be His hands and feet, what can be more important than saving His children?
Take 4:16 seconds out and watch “Interview with an Unborn Child.” After you do, please write me at daveandrusko@gmail.com