[Darris McNeely] I was recently reading a great story from The New York Times, about a little boy named Charlie. Listen to it.

"Charlie's 17 months old. He has such a swift strong kick, that putting a pair of pants on him can turn into a wrestling match, but his mother doesn't mind, far from it. "Things that might annoy other parents," his mother says, "I'm very thankful for." Charlie crawls around the house chasing a Yorkie named Bruce and he proudly holds himself upright against the couch and he wasn't expected to do any of this. Before Charlie was born, doctors predicted that he would be paralyzed from the waist down. Prenatal testing had found he had a severe spinal defect and might need breathing and feeding tubes, leg braces, crutches, a wheelchair, and lifelong treatment for fluid buildup on his brain."

Charlie had what they call spina bifida, which occurs when the tissue doesn't close over the spinal cord in the womb causing irreparable spine damage.  More than 2000 children every year are born with spina bifida. But in Charlie's case, they detected it early and they could go in and the doctors did into the womb of the mother perform surgery to close that tissue back over the spinal column and prevent further nerve damage. Charlie was then born normally, he has challenges and will for the rest of his life. But as you can see in the article, he's way ahead of other children with that same problem because of what the doctors detected and also that they could go into the womb and do it.

Now, I was thinking about that as we deal with abortion and the rush, the mad rush that has going on in recent weeks and months in the United States with states enacting severe abortion laws that allow taking a child's life even after it's born. That's murder. This story points us to the fact that that's a life within the womb. And the doctors knew that Charlie had a problem, they knew how to go in and correct it and they did. And it reminded me of the scripture that we so often use as we talk about abortion, whether or not that fetus is actually a viable life, which God says that it is. 

The scripture is in Jeremiah 1:5, where God said to Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you, I ordained you a prophet to the nations." God knew Jeremiah, He said, "In the womb before he was born."

If God knew and knows every infant, that's life. He knows who it is. As it begins to form and develop and all that is beginning to work there within the cellular structure and the DNA of that child. A doctor can go in and know a child and know how to correct a defect. If a doctor can do that, and that's a wonderful thing, how much more does God know what we will have as the potential of life that is being formed in the womb of a mother?

God says to choose life because that's life as it is being developed in a mother's womb. Something for us to always remember and think about in all of these discussions.

That's BT Daily. Join us next time.