While many in the media tend to demonize those who pray outside of abortion clinics, one mother stresses that their pro-life presence is what saved her baby boy’s life.
That baby, who she gave up for adoption many years ago, is now the 24-year-old star of an upcoming documentary, I Lived on Parker Avenue. Produced by Joie de Vivre Media, the 30-minute film follows David Scotton as a 19-year-old college student who travels from Louisiana to Indiana to meet his birth mother and father for the first time. On Saturday, David appeared on Fox & Friends, along with his birth mother and adoptive mother, to share his story.
To be released March 8, the new documentary shines a “spotlight on the beauty of adoption,” began Fox contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy. From the beginning of the film, she said, David thanked his birth mother, Melissa Coles, for refusing abortion and “instead putting him up for adoption.”
According to Melissa, she changed her mind at the very last minute.
“The reality is, David was seconds, literally, from not being here,” she reveals in the trailer. “It’s kind of bittersweet, because I wanted him.”
And in the documentary itself, she admits, “I feel so guilty,” while hiding her face in her hands. But when she asks David if he’s mad at her, he responds “never,” and adds that he has “had a great life.”
While on Fox & Friends, Melissa said that “multiple things” inspired her to choose adoption instead of abortion. But one thing changed her mind like nothing else: a pro-life witness.
“[T]he protesting outside had a lot of influence,” she said. “I remember coming in and I heard lots of different things being said, and one thing that stuck out [in] particular was, ‘Your child’s got 10 fingers and 10 toes.’”
That thought wouldn’t leave her as she waited on a doctor’s table wearing a gown, she remembered. So when the abortionist entered the room, as he was “within like seconds of touching me,” she decided “I can’t do this” and “literally” ran out of the clinic.
At Campos-Duffy’s prompting, Melissa shared a special message for women like her, with scheduled appointments at abortion clinics.
“I would beg and plead with them with all my might to please consider the alternative,” she said.
Her son, David, was in agreement.
“We want the rest of the world to see what the adoption option can do,” he said later. “If it was not for the adoption option, I would not be here today.”
And he explained why he wanted to capture his first meeting with Melissa on camera.
“First, I wanted to meet her and thank her for leaving the abortion clinic and giving me the life that I have today and giving me my mom that’s sitting next to me,” he said, referring to his adoptive mother, Susan Scotton. But he also wanted to “reclaim the beauty of adoption” by “filming a live thank you and live meeting….”
Throughout the interview, Susan held Melissa’s hand to support her.
“It was awesome,” Susan said of meeting David’s birth parents on camera. “The whole experience for me was being able to thank Melissa” for giving her and her husband “the joy of our life.”
Today, David is a second-year law student at the Louisiana State University. He regularly tells his story in talks across the country. In January, he shared it at the Family Research Council’s (FRC) “ProLifeCon.”
His parents, he said, were seniors in high school when they found out they were expecting him in 1993. Unmarried and without money, they “easily decided that the simple solution would be abortion.”
But all of that changed after “one woman from the sidewalk” reached out to Melissa as she walked into the abortion clinic.
Hearing about her unborn baby’s fingers and toes prompted her to realize that “her baby was real, that her baby was special, and that her baby was meant for someone special,” he concluded.
And, perhaps, that her baby was from Someone special, too.