When we come close to Christ, He makes it very clear how we are to respond to our neighbor. These, in fact, are the first two Commandments of Christ's Law: love God above all; love your neighbor as yourself. Two sayings of our Lord make it clear how we must love our neighbor. One is the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The other is, "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to Me."
These words of Christ help us deal with one of the most burning issuesof our day: abortion. Our response to abortion is a response to a tiny, helpless child and his/her mother. Apply the Golden Rule. Put yourself in the child's place. (We were all in the womb at one point ourselves.) Would you want to be cared for and nourished and brought safely to birth, or aborted? How easily the child is forgotten, because he/she is not seen and cannot protest the abortion decision. But who would want to be killed in his/her mother's womb? The Golden Rule also applies to the mother. If you were afraid because you felt you could not handle a pregnancy, what would you want? Help! We need to commit ourselves to help mothers raise their children, not kill them.
Our Lord also tells us, "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me." After we put ourselves in the position of the pre-born child and the mother, we then put Christ Himself there! Surely the pre-born child is the "least" of His brothers and sisters! The preborn have the least power, the least protection, the least voice! They cannot speak, vote, protest, or even pray! The mothers are also often alone, and cast aside by those who don't understand their problems. Christ makes it clear: by helping both mother and child, we are helping Him! By rejecting the mother and child, we reject Him!
To love one another as Christ taught us demands that we reject abortion completely, and work for better, life-giving choices!