California Governor Gavin Newsom, love all your neighbors — the unborn ones, too

Governor Newsom recently posted billboards in states with abortion restrictions, advertising the availability of abortions in California. Those billboards carried the beautiful words quoted by Jesus: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Just about all Americans would agree that loving other people is the epitome of morality. What could be a higher ideal than love and compassion for our fellow human beings?

However, in trying to apply this magnificent ideal we seem to run into trouble. Unfortunately, we humans often make excuses, convincing ourselves that certain people are not worthy of our love. We exclude them from the category of “neighbors.”

This is an age-old problem. Throughout history people in many societies have defined people not belonging to their tribe or nation or race as outsiders or even non-human. Slaveholders in the antebellum South somehow did not believe that black African-Americans were their neighbors. The Nazis described Jews as sub-human to justify their genocide. One of Hitler’s friends once wrote that the command to love your neighbor as yourself was mistranslated. He claimed that it really means to love your racial comrade as yourself.

Interestingly, Jesus overtly refuted Hitler’s friend. Being confronted with the command to love his neighbor, a man “wanting to justify himself” asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” This led Jesus to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). At that time, Jews despised Samaritans, but Jesus made clear that even those we hate are really our neighbors. Thus we are obligated to love all people.

Today, many Americans, especially progressives, revel in inclusion. Undoubtedly Newsom was admonishing us to love our neighbors because he thinks that states restricting abortions are excluding pregnant women from love.

However, I would urge Governor Newsom and like-minded Americans to be even more inclusive. Sure, we need to provide love and support to pregnant women. However, why should we deny that love to the baby inside that woman’s womb? Just because we are bigger and have more power than it does?

What is it about that baby inside the womb that disqualifies it from being our neighbor? Why shouldn’t it have the right to our love and compassion? Is it, as some mistakenly think, just a part of the mother’s body? No, the baby in the womb has its own unique DNA, which is different from its mother’s DNA. If I took a cell from a fetus and a cell from its mother and gave them to a geneticist, asking if these were from the same individual, the answer would be clear: No, they have different DNA. They are different individuals.

Is the baby disqualified from being our neighbor because it is “just a clump of cells,” as we sometimes hear? Well, if the fetus is “just a clump of cells,” what are you and I? All humans are groups of cells.

A baby in the womb is unmistakably human. He or she has human DNA. The baby is clearly alive with metabolizing cells. Thus we are talking about a living human being. He or she has a heartbeat that starts around six weeks after conception. Brain waves, movement, and the ability to feel pain begin long before birth.

Why then does our culture of inclusion exclude the baby in the womb? Apparently because adults think they are more valuable than these little ones.

Somehow, many think it is OK to deprive the weakest, most vulnerable members of society from protection. I urge you to reconsider and to love these little ones, too, as well as their pregnant mothers.