40And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth.
41And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:
42And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
43And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
44For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.
45And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.”Gabriel had told Zacharias that John the Baptist would be filled with the Holy Spirit “even from his mother’s womb” (v 15). There is no evidence that any other child in the history of the world, with the exception of the Lord Jesus, was ever filled with the Holy Spirit in his mother’s womb, or even from the moment of birth. John is a unique and singular case in this regard. We are told that when Elisabeth heard Mary’s greeting John leaped for joy in Elisabeth’s womb and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Elisabeth then seems to be prophesying, the Holy Spirit giving her the words, when she makes a marvelous pronouncement that Mary was blessed among women, and the fruit of Mary’s womb was to be blessed also. Elisabeth calls Mary “the mother of my Lord,” indicating that God had revealed to her that Mary’s Baby Boy would be the Messiah and Savior. Elisabeth says the Lord will surely bring to pass the promises that He has made to Mary and to her. The entire narrative is an amazingly wonderful part of our Lord’s history.
The way that God refers to John the Baptist and Jesus while they are yet in the womb proves that an unborn child is a human person and that intentionally aborting a child from the womb and killing it is nothing less than the taking of a person’s life. It is the kind of murder that is prohibited in the Ten Commandments i.e., “Thou shalt not kill.”
There is no scriptural justification for extrapolating from the story of John that babies can be converted or that they are able to repent while still in the womb. Some have made that argument as they have tried to justify baptizing babies. But it is a fallacious argument and it defies common sense. Children are able to be regenerated only when they are mature enough to learn and understand that they are sinners, that Jesus is God’s Savior for sinners, and that God forgives those who put their trust in Jesus. There is somewhat of a mystery regarding what happened with John in Elisabeth’s womb. He had joy and he was filled with the Holy Spirit, but beyond that we should not speculate. Whatever happened to John, it happened only to him and not to others.