Ten minutes into watching “Lake of Fire,” I was in tears. I saw the mysterious contents from a plastic vacuum tube sputter into a glass bottle on a counter in an abortion clinic. The woman on the exam table was assured that her procedure had gone smoothly. As the doctor examined the mangled infant remains, I had to look away.

“Lake of Fire” exposed the compelling philosophies surrounding the abortion debate, as well as the painful, even violent, implications of those ideas in the lives of real people. The documentary was filmed in black and white, highlighting the conclusion of the film that there is no black and white answer to the question of abortion.

The filmmakers followed Christian pro-life “jihadists,” documenting their stakeouts around abortion clinics and murders of abortion doctors in the name of Jesus. On the other extreme, pro-abortion bio-ethicists and professors, such as Peter Singer from Princeton, Noam Chomsky of MIT, and Alan Dershowitz of Harvard weighed in with equally frightening ideologies. Singer asserted that the true dividing question in the abortion debate is not “when does human life begin?” but rather, “why do we value life at all?” Unfortunately, few, if any, well-spoken pro-life advocates were included in the exchange of ideas.

The film ended by following a pregnant woman named Stacy through her entire abortion procedure. We heard her tragic story; she was a victim of abuse and had had three previous abortions. After the abortion was performed, Stacy put on a brave face, joking about wanting a cigarette. Suddenly she broke down and sobbed, “my stomach feels better, but my heart hurts.”

After the in-the-clouds philosophies and violent extremism had been presented in the rest of the film, Stacy’s story invited the audience to look abortion in the face and ask: Does abortion make my heart hurt?