A friend from church was having dinner with us recently. After a few minutes of conversation, he paused and gave me a puzzled look. "Am I pro-life?" he asked. I'm sure I looked equally puzzled at the suggestion that I should be able to answer that question for him.

This is a family that has taken a young unmarried pregnant woman into their home and regarded her as part of their family when she had no other family. But what bothered my friend was her "right to choose." Did he have to give up his belief that women have that right in order to be pro-life?

The culture we live in has taught us to care about a woman's right to choose as if there were no higher value. But if we turn our attention to the pregnancy, and God's activity in it, we'll discover that value doesn't reside in choice, but rather in what is chosen. It's a crucial distinction.

There is no point at which a pregnancy is something other than the presence of a developing baby in the womb. Black author Thomas Sowell wrote recently on the differences between innate abilities and the extent to which we are affected by environment as we grow up. He pointed out some fascinating truths about the environment's effect on children while they are in the womb. The mother's diet, including her alcohol and drug intake, affect the development of the child before he is born. Even among identical twins, if there is a significant weight difference between the two at the time of birth, the heavier child will tend to have a higher IQ. He says, "They may be the same weight when they become adults, but they didn't get the same nutrition back when their brains were first developing."

Sowell's illustration reminds us that during a pregnancy the biological development of a tiny unseen child is being shaped in ways that will have a lifelong effect. Call it by any name you wish, the reality is that what you have in a pregnancy is a developing baby-a baby developing exactly the way God designed the development of each one of us.

But, what about my choice? What if the baby isn't a baby to me? What if I don't want this baby? Isn't it my body? Isn't it my choice?

It is one thing to talk about my legal -- my "reproductive" rights. But spiritually I am in another world. I am in a world where God clearly says that I am not my own; I have been bought with a price. And as scary as that might be when I discover the pregnancy I didn't want, it is also the best news in the world. The God who created that little one in my womb is the same God who claims each of us as his own and promises to care for us-and who will help us face the worst news in the world.

Ever since the Garden of Eden it's been my choice. And not just because I am a woman. Each of us chooses. God's revelation guides our choices. Our choices aren't blind, and they aren't morally neutral, but the choices that bring true blessing are often the most difficult choices to make-at the very time they must be made.

No baby's death pleases God. No innocent person's death pleases God. Let's be a church that supports and helps young women to make the choices that please God. Let's be there. Like this family that became family to the young unmarried pregnant woman. That's what it means to be pro-life.

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