San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick should not be playing in the National Football Conference title game on Sunday.  In fact, if anyone were taking book on these sorts of things back in 1987, they would have bet that a "Colin Kaepernick" would never have existed at all.

In the early part of that year, Kaepernick's birth mother made a culture-defying decision.  She chose not to have an abortion.  Instead, she hung in there through the pregnancy and birth and gave up her baby for adoption.  This could not have been easy for a single mother of a bi-racial child, but she endured.

There were not many women who made the choice this woman did in 1987.  Although the statistics are imperfect, an estimated 72,000 women that year gave up a child for adoption to someone other than a relative. Having watched two newborn sons die of heart defects, Teresa and Rick Kaepernick, then of Wisconsin, decided to adopt, and Colin was the baby who came their way. 

Not many babies were as fortunate as Colin in 1987.  That year 1,353,671 American women chose to abort their child.  In other words, given the circumstances of his conception, there was only 1 chance in 19 that Kaepernick would make it out of the womb alive.  Whatever the odds are of winning the Super Bowl, they have got to be a whole lot better than that.

Colin, whose arms are tattooed with Bible verses, understands the source of his good fortune. "I think it's something where God has really led me to where I'm at today.  He put me in a position to be successful throughout my life."

Several of the verses tattooed on Kaepernick are Psalms.  If there is still room, he might consider Psalm 139:16-"Your eyes did see my substance, being yet unformed; and in your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them."