“Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10).

The claim has been made that the New Testament is silent on the subject of abortion, but Paul, after reminding his readers of the law against murdering (which implicitly forbids abortion) and the obligation to love our neighbors (Romans 13:9 and repeated variously in the New Testament), added, “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor.” It is foolish to think that the apostle, who testified about his being set apart from his mother’s womb (Galatians 1:15), would have excluded the weakest and most fragile among us in his concept of neighbors. The passage surely speaks against harming our littlest “neighbors.” Abortion works ill to very close neighbors. Luke, Paul’s associate in ministry, recorded Pharaoh’s harmful practice of killing “young children” (Acts 7:19). This is important, for the word selected for “children” in this context is the same word used by Luke, a physician, for preborn baby John (“. . . when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb” [Luke 1:41]). The use of the same word in God-breathed Scripture for babies who have been born and for baby John who had not yet been born points to continuity of substance. The Creator of little children stressed the integrity of Scripture—to the minutest detail. If Pharaoh’s killing of babies was wrong, how can any Christian believe that he is aligning with Scripture if he supports the killing and harming of younger babies by abortion?

Children need protection, and they are dependent on our love. The text says that “love is the fulfilling of the law.” Let us obey this law, reiterated in the New Testament, and love every single child. Let us do him or her no harm, for “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor.” PGH