Beyond A ZOMBIE FILM: The Girl with All the Gifts Exposes the Dark Reality of Abortion

Every January around the 22nd or so, thousands upon thousands of pro-life advocates travel to our nation’s capital for the March for Life, an annual rally against legalized abortion. They brave the cold, the potential scorn and mockery of the locals, and the possibility of snow or rain to witness to the value of human life and fight for the smallest and most vulnerable among us. It’s a great event every American Catholic would do well to attend at least once, and in the spirit of this important gathering, I want to provide a reflection on one of the most unexpectedly pro-life films I’ve ever seen: The Girl with All the Gifts.

The Girl with All the Gifts is a British zombie movie from 2016, but it’s not just a mindless exercise in gratuitous gore. The film uses its horrific story to highlight the infinite value of human life, and it approaches that topic from a unique angle. It’s the zombies themselves, not the humans trying to survive, who embody this theme, so let’s take a deep dive into this amazing movie and see just how it supports the pro-life cause.

The Basic Plot of The Girl with All the Gifts

Like most zombie movies, The Girl with All the Gifts takes place in a world overrun by the living dead, but this isn’t just another George Romero rip-off. The film puts a novel spin on the standard zombie mythology, and that unique lore sets the course for the entire story. See, in this world, when a pregnant woman gets infected with the zombifying fungus, the disease also spreads to her unborn child, but these second-generation zombies differ from their progenitors in a key way.

They still struggle with strong zombie impulses, but they’re not just animalistic monsters. By and large, they look and act exactly like normal human children, so unless their hunting instincts are kicking in, it’s impossible to tell them apart from non-infected kids. Nevertheless, a group of scientists and soldiers has managed to identify and capture a number of these second-generation zombies, and they’ve put the creatures in a facility that looks like a mix between a school and an insane asylum.

The children take classes and learn from a human teacher, but they’re constantly either restrained or locked away so they can’t hurt anybody. One day, the place comes under attack by a swarm of first-generation zombies, and only a few residents make it out alive. Among them are a zombie child named Melanie, a kind teacher named Miss Justineau, and Dr. Caldwell, the head scientist at the school.

They traverse the barren post-apocalyptic landscape searching for a way to survive, and unsurprisingly, most of them look at Melane with more than a hint of suspicion. Other than Miss Justineau, these characters all view the girl as subhuman, but as The Girl with All the Gifts goes one, they slowly learn that she’s just as human as anybody else.

“I Can’t Afford It”
Now that we know the basic plot of the movie, let’s start getting into some specifics. Before the facility gets overrun by zombies, two scenes highlight the horrific way Dr. Caldwell and the soldiers view these infected children. First, there’s an early scene in The Girl with All the Gifts where a soldier stops Miss Justineau from touching one of her students, and he angrily berates her for “think[ing] something’s human because it’s made in the right shape.”

In isolation, that might seem like an odd thing to say, but in context, it makes perfect sense. The man recognizes that Melanie and her classmates look human (they’re “made in the right shape”), but he believes their appearance is deceptive. The way he sees it, these kids are actually inhuman monsters bereft of the dignity real human beings possess, and they deserve to be treated as such.

A bit later on, Dr. Caldwell brings Melanie to her lab for a truly nefarious purpose. She wants to dissect the poor girl and use her remains to make a zombie vaccine, but thankfully, Miss Justineau steps in at the last minute and stops her. The two women only have a brief exchange before the scene ends, but their words contain a world of meaning. Justineau explains that you only need to spend five minutes with these children to recognize their humanity, and in response, Caldwell utters a genuinely chilling line: “What you’re feeling, I accept it, but I can’t afford it.”

In other words, the doctor doesn’t have a good reason for denying Melanie’s humanity. She knows the girl and her classmates are in fact human beings with the same dignity as anyone else, but she refuses to accept that obvious fact. She wants Melanie to be subhuman so she can dissect the kid and make a vaccine, so she engages in the kind of dehumanizing doublethink that’s plagued our species for ages.

Most obviously, it happened back in the heyday of the transatlantic slave trade. The White European slave traders knew they couldn’t treat human beings like cattle, so to justify this barbaric practice, they had to tell themselves that Black Africans aren’t really human. The same thing happens today in modern forms of slavery like sex trafficking, and this kind of rationalization also occurs with regard to abortion.

It’s a biological fact that a new human being comes to be at fertilization, so if we really believe in human rights, we have to extend those rights (including the right to life) to the unborn. But the abortion industry “can’t afford” to recognize that basic truth, so it tries to convince people that embryos and fetuses are just clumps of cells rather than true (albeit immature) human beings.

Melanie’s Humanity
In contrast, Miss Justineau’s claim that you only need to spend five minutes with Melanie to see that she’s human bears itself out in the rest of the film. As the characters travel the desolate terrain, the girl’s true nature becomes harder and harder to deny. She proves to be a valuable member of the team, and there are multiple times when the group would’ve perished without her help.

For example, there’s a scene where she uses a stray dog to lead the zombies away from her companions, and in another instance, Melanie goes ahead of the group and finds the best way around an area swamped with zombies. Throughout all this, the girl has numerous chances to run away and leave her friends to fend for themselves, but she never does. She displays truly human traits like loyalty, compassion, and love, so she’s clearly not just a monster that mimics our behavior.

Sure, her zombie-like instincts and the fungus that lives inside her make her a bit different from most people, but as she proves time and time again, those differences don’t make her any less human. She has the same basic dignity and deserves the same rights as anyone else, and in the face of this irrefutable evidence, even the hard-hearted Dr. Caldwell is eventually forced to admit the truth.

Abortion and Human Dignity
The Girl with All the Gifts ends with Melanie unleashing the zombifying fungus into the air and making the world safe for her kind, but she hasn’t forgotten her more “normal” companions. While Dr. Caldwell and the one remaining soldier don’t make it, Miss Justineau stays alive by remaining indoors, and the film ends with her teaching a new group of second-generation zombies from the safety of her new home.

It’s a beautiful vision of people putting aside their differences to live in harmony (well, as much harmony as feral children can muster) on the basis of their shared humanity, and if you know anything about the pro-life movement, you know that this vision is the foundation of our advocacy as well. Despite what some people think, opposing abortion isn’t about devaluing women or their bodies. Rather, it’s about recognizing the value and dignity of all human life, born and unborn, and fighting for a world where that dignity is recognized and protected.

It’s a cause that dovetails perfectly with the message of The Girl with All the Gifts, and if you pay close attention, you’ll find that the movie understands that connection way better than you might expect. See, the soldiers sometimes refer to Melanie and her classmates as “freaking abortions,” and Melanie herself even incorporates the phrase into her own vocabulary a couple of times (probably out of naïveté).

Much like the comment about being “made in the right shape,” this is also an odd expression, but if you understand it in context, it too makes perfect sense. These “abortions” (Melanie and her classmates) are dehumanized and seen as disposable just like the unborn often are in our society, so The Girl with All the Gifts isn’t just about human dignity in general. It’s an allegory for unborn children, and it not-so-subtly decries the way abortion strips them of their humanity and treats them like objects that can be thrown away to benefit others.