Is there a holy ghost in the story of an Idaho couple who decided against aborting their babies?

I've been wondering about that since I first read a front-page Houston Chronicle story earlier this month about the Torres family's experience:

Dad held the babies upright on his chest, patting them and swaying, while Mom crammed the last bag between a cooler of donated breast milk and a new portable crib.

“Well,” Chelsea Torres said, closing the trunk and turning to her husband, Nick, “it all fits.”

That was the easy part.

What lay ahead was far more daunting.

Leaving the hospital with a newborn is a moment no parent is ready for. What if the baby screams in the car? What if she won’t take a bottle once you get home? Chelsea, 24, and Nick, 23, have an even darker worry: What if the girls don’t survive the drive?

The doctors assured them everything should be fine, but it’s hard to shake that fear. They’ve carried it for months, ever since the doctor back in Idaho told them Chelsea was pregnant with conjoined twins. Ever since they decided to ignore his recommendation to have an abortion. Ever since they loaded their 3-year-old son, Jaysin, into their Kia Optima six months ago and drove 25 hours to Houston.

“I’ve been dreading the return,” said Nick, dark circles under his eyes after days with little sleep. “I’m just glad we’re making it with two healthy babies.”

My question is simple: Why?

Why did the couple choose not to have an abortion? Were religious beliefs a factor? The Chronicle story that I read did not explain their thinking, so I Googled in hopes of finding more background.

I came across a more in-depth Houston Press story as well an Idaho State Journal feature from months ago, but neither fully answered my question.

Every so often there comes a story that cries for a faith element; wherein you strongly suspect that there are lots of religion ghosts floating about, but which frustrates because the reporter simply didn’t go there.

That's what happened, for me, when reading a lengthy story released by The Sacramento Bee on a Mexican-American family in which the mother becomes pregnant in her mid-40s with Siamese -- or conjoined -- twins. The story appeared on the one-year anniversary of the twins’ birth. As always, there are medical and ethical issues involved in this kind of pregnancy, as you can hear in the Bee video featured above.

The overture of the story:

ANTELOPE, Calif. -- Their mother calls it “the butterfly,” because its shape and symmetry remind her of a delicate winged insect.

The tiny foot -- a fusion of bone, muscle and skin with three toes on each side -- is attached to a third leg shared by Erika and Eva Sandoval, 11-month-old conjoined twins who also share a liver, some intestinal tract and much of their reproductive systems. Joined at the pelvis and sternum, they sit face-to-face at all times.

The sisters, born at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, in Palo Alto, Calif., last August, spent their first seven months in intensive care before coming home this spring, having trumped the slim survival odds for conjoined twins – a phenomenon that occurs about once in every 200,000 births.