“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” – Mark 12:30-31.

Is your neighbor just the person who lives next door to you or the person who lives across the street?

In Luke 10, a lawyer asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”

Jesus answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus explained that a Levite and a Priest traveling down a road both saw a man in need in a ditch and just passed him by, not offering any help. Then a Samaritan saw him and helped him. The Samaritan loved his neighbor as himself, even though there was animosity between Jews and Samaritans.

Who is our neighbor? I would say anyone in our path who is in need is our neighbor. If we see a homeless man and we give him food, we are loving our neighbor, even if this man does not live next door to us.

How would I want someone to love me if I were in danger? If my life was in danger and my neighbor knew about it, wouldn’t I want him to help me? Would I expect someone to speak up for me if I were sentenced to death unjustly? Of course. I would expect others to live by this command to love their neighbor as themselves.

I have heard this verse thousands of times in my life, taught in church and at youth groups and many other places. It is a perfect teaching verse.

But sadly, so many Christians ignore this verse when it comes to children in the womb who have been unjustly sentenced to death by abortion. It’s not hard to get people to volunteer for things like feeding the homeless or donating to worthy causes but when I have talked to others about standing up for our neighbors in the womb, the comment I get so often is “I am not called to that.” I wonder, did the Good Samaritan stop and ask God if he was called to a ditch ministry? Does this verse say love your neighbor if you are called to meet that particular need?

Every day in this country, thousands of our neighbors face a horrific and unjust death. Every day thousands of our neighbors are lying in a ditch, so to speak, with no one willing to stop and help them. Or do they? I say, they do have someone who can stop to help but they just won’t stop.

Is there an abortion mill close to you? Do you pass one on your way to work every day? Do you ever stop to think what is really going on in that building? Inside that building, your neighbor is about to brutally butchered. For the most part we do not want to think about this because it makes us sick. We would never want to actually see what goes on in that building because it is too disturbing. So we just pass by thinking “what a shame”?

What if it was you in that building and some man or woman was about to tear you limb from limb? What if your neighbors were passing by and knew what was going on but didn’t stop because they were too busy or did not want to think about what was going to happen to you? That seems ridiculous to think about. Or what if it was a daycare center and we saw a man walking with a butcher knife, heading toward kids on the playground? I would bet money you would stop and do whatever you could to prevent him from reaching those innocent children.

Unfortunately, the children entering into the abortion mill are not seen and we don’t get that emotional bond that we would if we saw them playing on a playground. The fact is that abortion has become so political that so many of us are able to pretend we don’t know what is really going on in that building. If we truly saw abortion for what it actually is, I do not believe it would still be legal anywhere.

So I ask you, who is your neighbor? Are you willing to love your neighbor as yourself? Are you willing to live by what Christ taught us in this parable of the Good Samaritan?

Bryan Kemper is the youth outreach and street activism director for Priests for Life and the founder of its youth outreach Stand True.