This is an article I published way back when. I decided to re-publish it.
When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!" (Lk. 1:41-1:45).
This excerpt is a unique passage in Scripture, because it underscores the work of two unborn children: John the Baptist and Jesus.
It is remarkable that one of the first people to acknowledge the Lordship of Christ was an unborn child. The sequence of events in the passage shows us how this happened. The first action was Mary's greeting. John the Baptist heard this greeting, prompting him to leap in the womb-- a highly unusual action for an unborn child. By doing this, he awoke his mother's consciousness to the presence of the unborn Christ; although it was the Holy Spirit that revealed to Elizabeth that Mary's child was the Son of God, just as the Holy Spirit revealed to Peter that Jesus is Lord in Matthew 16. John the Baptist's leap was instrumental in communicating the presence of God, so we can therefore say that even in the womb, he was a prophet, acknowledging his Lord, who was also in the womb.
Now of course John could not have acknowledged Jesus' Lordship with the full consciousness of an adult. However, the Bible says that no one can say "Jesus is Lord" without being filled with the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3). John may not have been able to speak, but he definitively communicated that. He was therefore filled with the Spirit.
It is also interesting that the being whom he acknowledged to be Lord was an unborn child. Like any lord, he was our master, even while he was a tiny baby in the womb. This smallest of all God's creatures, younger than even the sixth-month fetus John the Baptist, deserved worship and far more honour than any human being whom ever lived. At the time, Jesus would have probably been a few weeks into his Incarnation, no bigger than a coin. Elizabeth had the humility and faith to acknowledge him for whom he really was, even if he was smaller and not even visible.
To hear poor-choicers talk, you would think that God was completely indifferent to the lives of unborn children. Scripture shows quite the opposite of course. The unborn child is not just some "potential" being: he is a beloved child of God. God so loved the unborn child that he condescended to become one. He also wanted an unborn child to testify for him, for the edification of Mary and Elizabeth.
And so, just as God loves the unborn child, so we should also love him as well. John the Baptist and Jesus were not "blobs" of tissue, but unique human beings with their own identities. In every unborn child, we should see the same face of Christ.
An unborn child is not a blank soul that needs an imprint from the outside world in order to become a somebody. Nor do any biological processes trigger that uniqueness. Each unborn child has his own characteristics-- characteristics that may be hidden-- but are still there all the same, waiting to be discovered.
God does not create "generic" human beings. Each and every one is special from the time they are created in the womb.
