The room was plain: Blank, white walls; a silver table; a silver cart, a series of silver instruments laid out across the top.
Melissa’s head rolled back and forth and she caught her reflection on one of the silver surfaces.
Then she heard a voice: “Get up,” it said. “It’s not too late.”
“I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Man, what kind of pill did they just give me?’” she recalled years later.
Her head continued to roll to the side, and then the words from an advocate outside of the facility floated through her mind: “Your baby’s got ten fingers and ten toes, and you’re about to kill it.”
Then she heard the audible voice again: “Get up. It’s not too late.”
The voice wasn’t angry. It was pleading.
At that moment, the abortionist walked into the room. He didn’t say a word. He washed his hands, pulled on a pair of gloves, and sat on a stool before Melissa. He didn’t make eye contact.
Still not speaking, the abortionist tapped the stirrups as if to tell Melissa to put her feet in them. As he grabbed one of the silver instruments, his hand brushed Melissa’s leg. At that moment, she sat up.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I just can’t.”
Angry, the abortionist stood up. He ripped off his gloves, discarded them in the trash and walked out, never looking Melissa in the eye.
“Instead of saying, ‘Okay, well that’s great.’ Or ‘Hey, let me get you a refund,’ or ‘Let me have the nurse come in,’ ‘Are you familiar with other resources?’—Nothing,” said Melissa. “Instead, he gets angry.”
Melissa hurried to get dressed and ran out the side exit door to her vehicle, still pregnant with the growing child inside of her.
Lifemark Premier
This month, Melissa Coles’s story comes to theaters in the film Lifemark, the latest from executive producers Kirk Cameron and the Kendrick Brothers—creators of War Room and Fireproof.
The little baby, whose life Melissa saved all those years ago, is alive today. His name is David and he serves as an attorney, pro-life speaker, and adoption advocate.
Following Melissa’s decision to save her child’s life, she then made the difficult decision to make an adoption plan for her son.
In the following weeks and months, Melissa read letter after letter after letter from prospective adoptive parents. None of them seemed to be the right fit for her baby.
Then one day, a different letter came. Melissa knew, holding the sealed envelope from Susan, that there was something special about this one.
“It didn’t read like all the other letters,” Melissa said. “She wasn’t trying to be perfect. She wasn’t trying to be something that she wasn’t. She was just being real in her situation, in their life and what they experienced, what they went through, what they were looking for. And I just instantly fell in love with Susan.”
To this day, Melissa has great admiration for Susan and the job she and her husband did in raising David.
A few years ago, they were all reunited when Melissa and David’s story was first told in the documentary, I Lived on Parker Avenue. Released by Louisiana Right to Life in 2018, the film follows David’s journey to Indiana to meet Melissa and his birth father.
That documentary eventually made its way to Kirk Cameron and the Kendrick brothers and became the inspiration for Lifemark.