Jed Sutton comes to the maternity ward of a large hospital to visit his wife Grace, a convicted murderess who has been released from prison only long enough to give birth to her child. Soon after, Mrs. Mamie West also arrives on the maternity floor to give birth to her seventh child, and is greeted by Miss Bowers, the head nurse. Before seeing his wife, Jed is called into consultation by Dr. Lee, who informs him that Grace is in a severely weakened condition. Grace's plight wins the sympathy of Miss Bowers, who smuggles Jed into see his wife, against the orders of the prison matron. Other patients in the ward are Florette Laverne, a vaudeville dancer who doesn't want her baby because her husband Harry has threatened to leave her and get a new partner for his act; Gladys Norton, an eighteen-year-old who is secretly married and fears the reaction of her mother; Mrs. Kempner, who desperately wants a child even though the doctors have told her that she can never bear one; and Mrs. Helen Banks, whose frantic husband Ringer paces the waiting room. When Florette receives a telegram from Harry notifying her that he has found a new partner and is leaving her, she decides to put her twin babies up for adoption. As Grace's condition worsens, she tells Jed that she no longer wants to live and asks him to care for their baby. Jed insists that his wife's life is more precious than that of his child, but when Dr. Lee is blinded in a laboratory accident, another doctor is assigned to the case and Grace instructs him to save the infant at any cost. Meanwhile, Florette experiences a change of heart and decides to keep her twins and Mrs. Kempner, who has lost her baby, offers to care for the children while Florette is on the road. Jed, informed that his wife has died in childbirth, is about to leave the hospital when Miss Bowers hands him his infant with a dying message from Grace that she wants her life to begin again in their baby.