How can we love our unborn neighbours?

“And who is my neighbour?”

The lawyer’s question in Luke 10 was an attempt to shrink the circle. Jesus’ answer — the Good Samaritan — blows the circle open: your neighbour is whoever lies in the road on your route, whatever it costs you to stop. The child scheduled to die at a clinic near you this week is on your route. So is her mother, sitting alone in the waiting room. The priest and the Levite had somewhere else to be; the question the parable leaves us is only whether we will cross the road.

Loving the child

• Speak. Silence is what the parable’s first two travellers chose. Advocate publicly, sign the Declaration, talk to your church, your MP, your friends. “Open your mouth for the mute” (Proverbs 31:8).
• Show up. Peaceful, lawful, prayerful presence and outreach where decisions are actually being made changes outcomes. Get trained.
• Adopt and foster. Abolition without open homes is a slogan. Some of us are called to make the costliest argument of all.

Loving her mother and father

The woman considering abortion is usually not a villain; she is often frightened, pressured, and lied to. Love looks like:

• Practical provision — money, housing help, baby equipment, childcare, a lift, a meal rota through the first year.
• Presence — one person who says “you are not doing this alone” and means it for years, not weeks.
• Truth without contempt — telling her what abortion is and what grace is, in the same breath.
• Mercy after abortion — no “I told you so” exists in the vocabulary of Christ. There is full forgiveness.

Loving with the church

This is why we ask whole congregations, not lone activists, to take this up: a church can carry a mother where an individual would collapse. See how to get your church involved, and if you need help right now, it is one click away.