The Golden Rule

Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life

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“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12).

 This teaching of Jesus, called the Golden Rule, makes it pretty easy to evaluate how we should treat others, particularly others in need. Jesus tells us it applies “in everything.” That includes in pro-life strategy.

 “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” It applies when the “others” are unborn children, living and growing in their mothers’ wombs, and scheduled to be aborted. We are to do to them what we would want others to do to us if we were in the same situation.

 I once asked a pro-abortion person if he would prefer to have been aborted.  His response was, “I would not have known the difference.” And thus he avoided answering the question, which was whether he would prefer (now) to have been aborted (then), not what he would or would not have known then. Put another way, if you were in danger of losing your life and could not rescue yourself, what would you want others to do for you?

The answer for every sane person is that we would want others to rescue us, to save us. According to the teaching of Jesus, then, we have to do save and rescue the unborn. “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.” Yet most believers in Jesus do not follow this advice.

Were we in danger, would we want others to speak up for us, even if they would face ridicule, opposition, and accusations of being fanatical single-issue people? The answer is yes. Were we in danger, would we want preachers to sound the alarm and rally people to come to our aid and protect our lives? The answer is yes. Were we in danger, would we want public officials and candidates for public office to make an issue of saving our lives, and restore to us the protection of which we were deprived? The answer is yes.

If, then, we follow the teaching of Jesus, we know what we have to do. “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”

A lot of pro-life people lose time and sleep figuring out how much risk they should take in their pro-life activity – how many people should they risk offending, how many positions should they risk losing, and how many legal entanglements should they risk incurring. It’s time to stop wondering. “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.” Just ask the simple question, “If it were my life at stake, how much risk would I want others to take to save me?”

Some people today, including me, are even evaluating whether they should physically intervene by blockading the doors of abortion facilities to separate the babies from the instruments that will kill them. Jesus’ words convey an uncomfortable answer: “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”

2007 Columns