THE STORY – Teen birth rates in America’s Heartland are among the highest in the nation. And in the wake of the landmark Dobbs decision, a Christian maternity home in Arkansas becomes a crossroads in the lives of three pregnant teenagers. Filmed over two years with intimate verite access, Baby/Girls follows Olivia, Grace, and Ariana as they give birth and attempt to break the cycle of poverty, addiction, and abuse that has marked their own childhoods. With rare proximity and emotional clarity, Baby/Girls offers a powerful portrait of young women coming of age in a place where choice, faith, and generational traumas collide.
THE CAST – N/A
THE TEAM – Alyse Walsh & Jackie Jesko (Directors)
THE RUNNING TIME – 94 Minutes
“Baby/Girls,” directed by Alyse Walsh and Jackie Jesko, begins with a quiet but powerful image: baby bottles being washed while a baby cries somewhere in the background. It’s a small domestic moment that immediately sets the tone for a film that is raw, intimate, and deeply human. Set in Arkansas, the documentary follows three teenage girls—Grace Dulaney, Ariana Green, and Olivia Malott—as they navigate pregnancy and early motherhood in a region where teen birth rates remain among the highest in the United States.
Early in the film, we see the three girls together, forming what feels like a tight-knit group. One is pregnant, another is already a mother, and another is further along in her pregnancy. It’s the kind of community you need, as one of them notes, when school becomes a hostile environment. Walking through the halls visibly pregnant at 16 often means being stared at, judged, or treated like you’ve done something wrong. Instead of being supported, these girls are frequently looked down on.
The film listens closely to the girls themselves. Grace, pregnant at 15, admits she was terrified when she first realized she was going to have a baby. Yet she speaks with determination about wanting to “try to raise her better than I got raised.” The desire to break away from the circumstances that shaped their own childhoods runs throughout the documentary.
Much of the story centers around Compassion House, a maternity home for teens that provides temporary housing and prenatal care. For many girls, it’s a last resort. Several arrive there through court orders after difficult situations at home. The women running the house recognize that no teenager wants to end up there under those circumstances, but they try to make it feel like a second chance rather than a punishment. Inside the house, the girls receive prenatal care, support, and the chance to continue their education.
One of the adults guiding them, Crystal, was once a teen mother herself. Her story highlights the long-term consequences of stigma and lack of support. She recalls how being pregnant meant losing opportunities at school and missing experiences other teenagers take for granted. Her presence also reflects the film’s deeper theme: how cycles of teen pregnancy and hardship often repeat across generations.
The documentary gradually reveals how limited sexual health education has been for many of the girls. In one striking moment, 16-year-old Olivia explains she never had a proper sex education class and did not fully understand how pregnancy occurs. In communities where conversations about contraception are avoided and reproductive choices are heavily restricted, the lack of information becomes part of a much larger structural problem.
Another important layer to the film’s context is the impact of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The decision overturned the constitutional protections previously established by Roe v. Wade and returned the authority to regulate abortion to individual states. In places like Arkansas, where abortion is now almost entirely banned, the options available to pregnant teenagers are extremely limited. Within this context, the stories in “Baby/Girls” take on even greater weight. The lack of comprehensive sex education, combined with strict reproductive laws and strong cultural stigma around contraception, creates an environment where young women often have very little control over the paths their lives take.
Yet “Baby/Girls” never reduces its subjects to statistics. Instead, it carefully explores the backgrounds that shaped their lives. Many of the girls grew up in homes affected by poverty, addiction, or instability. Olivia describes losing her mother at a young age and being raised by her grandmother in a difficult environment. What she says she really wanted growing up was something simple: normal family moments, like sitting down together for Christmas dinner.
Ariana, already raising a young son, speaks with remarkable maturity about responsibility and independence. Her experience reveals the pressures teenage mothers often face from institutions and families. After struggling in school following the birth of her child, she found herself in court and was given strict expectations to find work quickly so she would not be considered a burden on her family. Rather than offering support, the system sometimes feels like it is punishing young mothers simply for their circumstances.
Grace’s story also illustrates how deeply family histories shape the present. Her mother was a teen mom as well, and the film includes powerful reflections about how generational trauma can influence relationships and self-worth. At one point, Grace’s mother speaks candidly about how the people who were meant to teach them self-respect instead taught them that love was something exchanged through their bodies. It’s a painful but compelling insight into why patterns repeat.
Filmed over roughly two years, the documentary captures both pregnancy and the reality that follows. The camera’s observational gaze transforms things like routine ultrasound appointments into sites of profound vulnerability, forcing the viewer to inhabit the girls’ physical reality. The result is a portrait that feels deeply personal rather than sensationalized. As the girls move into motherhood, the film shows the complicated balance between caring for a child and still wanting to experience life as a teenager. Financial pressure, limited childcare, and emotional exhaustion quickly become part of daily life. These realities contrast sharply with the romanticized portrayal of teen motherhood sometimes seen on social media, a reality Grace herself references.
What makes “Baby/Girls” so affecting is its honesty. The film allows space for joy and love, but it also confronts regret, doubt, and depression. The girls want to prove people wrong. They want to become something more than the stereotypes attached to teen mothers. But the documentary also shows how difficult it can be to break cycles shaped by poverty, trauma, and limited support systems. At times, the legal system that places some of the girls in the maternity home remains somewhat distant from the narrative, making it harder to fully understand how those decisions are made. Still, its presence is felt in the background, shaping where the girls can live and what choices are available to them.
“Baby/Girls” is a tough watch about a tough reality. Yet it’s also deeply compassionate. By spending time with Grace, Ariana, and Olivia before and after pregnancy, the film captures the full complexity of their experiences. These young mothers are not statistics or cautionary tales: they are teenagers trying, often against enormous odds, to build a better future for themselves and their children.
