Based on a true story, Babies tells what happens when eight children are brought to a very special state hospital in a small, river town in Northern California. Babies is also the story of various adults, both staff and patients at Port Carthage Stage Hospital, trying to understand what it means that these babies have come to G Ward.
Abandoned by their mothers, "warehoused" in overcrowded, underfunded orphanages, the babies develop severe attachment disorders that mimic the symptoms of autism, a label attached to all them before they ever re-cross the American border.
At the state hospital in Port Carthage, when everyone else has given up hope for ever helping the babies develop, several of the patients, led by an old woman and a young firebrand, step in, and a miracle occurs.