'I Am the Unborn'

A New Pro-Life Anthem

What do you get when you team up two pro-lifers, one a former Hollywood filmmaker and the other a Florida songwriter? You get a professional, quality music video that hopes to become the anthem for the unborn.

The song is I Am the Unborn, and the makers chose to premiere it here at the Register.

The filmmaker is Christian Peschken, who has a list of television and film credits to his name — stretching from major shows in his native Germany clear to Hollywood, where he worked with the likes of Martin Sheen. Peschken now focuses his producing/filmmaking talents almost exclusively on Catholic subjects.

The songwriter is Barry David Butler, who wrote a heartfelt song from the point of view of the baby in the womb facing abortion.

My fingers now will never stretch
To touch the winning tape.
My race was done before I learned
The smallest steps to take …
I am the unborn;
I’m alive. Can’t you see?

Peschken and Butler share the hope that this song reaches those who need to hear it.

“The emphasis for lay Catholics like myself is to get the Catholic worldview into the secular market,” Peschken says. “Really, the bottom line is to find ways to get our Catholic worldview wrapped into a shape and form that it appeals to the secular media and viewer.”

“All this is an important part of the package with the song of unborn,” the filmmaker says, because as the video bolsters the pro-life cause and message, at the same time it’s a “chance to be a Catholic ministry to someone who is not interested in the Church.”

At first, the interdenominational duo seemed unlikely. Peschken is a Catholic convert; Butler is a non-practicing Jew with a knowledge and love of Jesus — but this cause is something they both believe in.

Peschken considers I Am the Unborn a wonderful song that has a mass-appeal approach with its universal sound: “This is a commercial song with a universal message: ‘Life!’”

It’s a message Butler wants to bring to others.

“I am not an activist, but just an ordinary guy with common sense,” he says. “My song speaks from the point of view of the unborn in the womb. What can be right about killing an innocent, defenseless unborn?”

Although Butler has written upwards of a thousand songs, both to his own lyrics and for other clients and lyricists, I Am the Unborn took a long time to finish.

Butler started years ago, when he came across a poem — Ballad of the Unborn, written by a woman named Fay Clayton — and was immediately taken by the point of view of the pro-life message spoken by an unborn child.

“The words were unbelievable,” says Butler. “Being a songwriter, I thought, I’ve got to give these lyrics wings.” He wrote a melody, and then a few years went by before he gave the song a more modern flavor. And with the help of a friend in England, he tracked down the poet, who lived in New Zealand. Butler sent her a demo CD.

Six months ago, the song became what it is today, when something clicked for him as he envisioned a chorus being sung at a church:

I am the unborn.
What ya gonna do for me?
I am the unborn;
I’m alive. Can’t you see?

“That song came to life when I got that part,” he says.

Butler actually had been thinking about the pro-life cause well before discovering the poem.

“Killing our unborn babies never made any sense to me,” he says.

“Maybe through a song and the video I can change people’s hearts. It comes from a non-religious view, but it makes common sense.”

“I believe in the story,” he says with great sincerity. “I would not keep this alive for 16 years if I didn’t believe in this. This is like a holocaust here. You have to make people know the baby’s alive in there.

“Who speaks up for the unborn baby? The baby has no choice. It’s not pro-choice. I believe these unborn babies in the womb now are counting on us.”

Joseph Pronechen is the Register’s staff writer.