In the 1980s, Bob and Pam Tebow had moved to the Philippines with their young family. Months later, Pam became infected with a dangerous pathogenic amoeba and slipped into a coma. Strong medications turned her condition around, but during that extended treatment, Pam became pregnant. Her doctors, knowing the potent drugs could have already killed the embryo, recommended an abortion.

Pam chose instead to discontinue her treatments in hope of saving her baby. She and Bob asked God for help. The difficult time that followed ended with two final months of bed rest. Then, on August 14, 1987, a healthy (though somewhat malnourished) baby boy—Timothy Richard Tebow—was safely delivered.

If you’ve ever watched the six-foot-three-inch, 235-pound Tim Tebow play football, you know it’s hard to imagine he was ever the outcome of a troubled pregnancy. But even if Tim had never played a single down of football, his story needs to be told in our day of cheap life and disposable pregnancies.10

A generation ago, everyone referred to an unborn child as a baby. And pregnant women had no doubt that what they were carrying was a baby—a human person. It is hard for anyone to think positively about killing a baby. So to get around the distastefulness of the idea, the word baby has been replaced by terms such as “fetus,” “embryo,” or even a “clump of tissue.” These are impersonal, clinical terms easily associated with tumors or growths. These words, completely devoid of the tender emotions associated with baby, have allowed people to treat pregnancy as something like an unwanted disease instead of the exalted privilege it is—the privilege of creating beloved beings with eternal, God-given possibilities.

To make matters worse, a new term has emerged in the battle for human life: “after-birth abortion.” Previously known as infanticide, after-birth abortion allows babies to be killed after they are born. According to a World magazine article by Marvin Olasky,

The core of the argument isn’t new at universities like Princeton, where ethicist Peter Singer has long approved killing one-year-olds with physical or mental disabilities. But authors Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva push the argument further by defending the killing of any humans incapable of “attributing any value to their own existence… Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life.”11

The possibility that this attitude could become accepted presents a peril of almost unmatched significance. One writer explains: “The so-called ‘quality of life ethic’ is deep down more dangerous than nuclear war, for it destroys the very soul of our civilization, not just bodies. It says a human person’s value is not infinite and calculable, that it varies with health, intelligence, and social utility. That is exactly what Hitler believed.”12