Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.

And in Your book they all were written,

The days fashioned for me,

When as yet there were none of them.

—PSALM 139:16

Here David speaks of the unique individuality that was his from his first moments in the womb. From the very beginning, God knew David and ordained what his life was to be. David was not the first to contemplate God’s role in the prenatal fashioning of his life. Consider this passage from Job:

Oh, that marvel of conception as you stirred together

semen and ovum—

What a miracle of skin and bone,

muscle and brain!

You gave me life itself, and incredible love.

You watched and guarded every breath I took.

—JOB 10:10–12 (THE MESSAGE)

A few chapters later Job affirms that God begins all human life within the womb: “Did not He who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same One fashion us in the womb?” (Job 31:15).

Writing several generations after David, the prophet Zechariah echoes the same theme, comparing the formation of the spirit within man with the creation of the universe: “Thus says the LORD, who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him” (Zechariah 12:1b). The author of Psalm 119 also wrote about God’s creative work within the womb: “Your hands have made me and fashioned me” (v. 73).

These biblical writers clearly understood that God initiated the creation of a human being in the womb—not at the moment of birth; not at the moment the baby takes its first breath. They are unambiguously affirming that human life begins not at birth, but at the time God begins to shape and mold the new person into the unique individual that he or she will become—the moment we know as conception.

In describing Mary’s visit to her also pregnant cousin, the physician Luke provides a fascinating illustration that validates the full humanity of life in the womb:

Now Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. And it happened, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Then she spoke out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.”

—LUKE 1:39–44