Music profile - Selah’s Todd Smith

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Today is Friday, January 17th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Megan Basham.

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Well, coming next on The World and Everything in It: Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. 

January 1973, the United States Supreme Court considered a case called Roe versus Wade. The result was to overturn all state abortion laws and replace them with one of the most permissive abortion rules in the civilized world.

Eleven years later, President Ronald Regan designated January 22nd as “Sanctity of Human Life Day.” Since that time, many churches have recognized the third Sunday in January as “Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.”

BASHAM: This weekend families across the country will use this day to celebrate God’s gift of life.

Todd Smith, founding member of the contemporary Christian trio Selah is a husband and father. 

Twelve years ago he and his wife Angie made a life-changing decision while expecting their fourth child, a baby girl they named Audrey. WORLD Radio’s Myrna Brown spoke with him about it, and now we’ll hear the story in his own words. 

SONG: [I WILL CARRY YOU] There were photographs I wanted to take. Things I wanted to show you… 

TODD SMITH: We were at an ultrasound. It was in December. We were 18 weeks. We were trying for a boy. I guess I just make girls.

Early on, I mean immediately the technician looked worried. She looked at her and she said: “Is my baby gonna live?” And she said, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Her heart, her stomach, her kidneys were failing. No amniotic fluid was being created, so her body couldn’t develop.

They recommended that we terminate the pregnancy. The doctor was actually very compassionate. He was very caring, you know, but he was  just like, this one is not going to survive. 

We were told her bones were breaking her like multiple times. And she would be suffering. And so, you start to go in your head, man, what is the most compassionate thing to do? Obviously, an abortion is horrible as far as what they do and the pain she would experience, but it would end it.

Obviously, we were just devastated and left that room and then went to another doctor.

And he said, you are going to lose her. But, we were told she’d feel a lot of pain and he said, no. She knows what she knows and you can keep her as long as your body keeps her or as long as you want to do that. And so Angie really determined like, I want to get her to 32 weeks. I want to get her to an age of viability. We want to carry her until God takes her or we can get her to this point. 

So, we wrote this song called “I Will Carry You.” 

SONG: I will carry you… 

SMITH: So, she lived for about two and a half hours, and all the girls got to hold her, and she was beautiful. She had red hair. Her feet, they had twisted a little bit, but her bones weren’t broken the way that we visualized and thought it would be. 

It was a very peaceful day. Literally just knew we were being lifted by so many people praying and days before that were awful and days after that were awful. But that day in particular was just beautiful. Beautiful day.

SONG: I’ve shown her photographs of time beginning…

SMITH: Life is so precious. Who have we lost? The millions that have died, what they could bring to this world.

We would much rather have her with us, let me be clear, than go through the suffering or have a story to tell or write a book or write a song. If we had to do it over again, we would do the exact same thing. You know, we would do the exact same thing because she was worth it.

(Photo/Selah)

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