TODAY'S CHURCH

My Neighbor is Each Human being at Fertilization

March for Life Essay Contest
Junior High Winner

by Rachel Anne McKee

In the Bible, Christ commands us to "treat thy neighbor as thyself" (Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 19:19, Matthew 22:39). Even in the gospel of Mark chapter twelve verse thirty-one Christ tells us that the second greatest commandment is that "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." But who is my neighbor? Who is worthy of all this respect? How can my neighbor be someone I don't know? What about unborn babies: how can they be my neighbors?

In Luke 10:25 a man asks of our Lord, "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Christ answers him saying that he must "love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself." But wishing to justify himself the man asked " and who is my neighbor?" The Lord then related the parable of the Good Samaritan to the man and asked him "Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?" The lawyer replied "He that showed mercy on him" and the Lord said unto the man "Go and do thou likewise."

In this passage of the New Testament, we see that the lawyer answered Christ correctly by saying that the man who helped the beaten man was a neighbor to him, his friend, and a rescuer to him. Just as the Good Samaritan was a rescuer to the man, so the mother must also act as her son or daughter's refuge and source of help. If a mother neglects this task, she abandons her child as a helpless victim.

We must also follow in this man's example by rescuing those who are in need of our help even if it doesn't seem that we need to help them. Our neighbor is anyone who helps us and we are neighbor to someone if we care about them or are willing to help them in their difficulty, as the Good Samaritan did. If they are truly our neighbor, that person would do the same to us in our trouble. A neighbor is a "fellow human being" (American Heritage Dictionary), especially one who you can befriend and help if it is needed. We do not necessarily need to know our neighbor and definitely do not have to be acquainted with him; we only need to be willing to help that person and be his companion. So, in that case we are even neighbors to those for whom we spare some bread or give some change or even help to walk across the street.

Included in this group of people we can rescue are ALL the unborn babies on every side of the world. Many prochoice people deny this because they think that the "baby" is just a "fetus" and not a real, living preborn human being. However, not only the Church but science as well can prove that the fetus is a living human created by God.
In biology, a form of life is a living thing that carries out life processes, which include nutrition, respiration, regulation, reproduction, synthesis, growth, transport, and excretion. Nutrition is basically the intake and usage of food in the body. The baby in the womb obviously gets his food from the mother who supplies him with his nutrition through the placenta. Regulation is basically how a living thing's body reacts to its surrounding environment. Before the baby is born, he does have regulation because his body will react to anything that tries to attack him, such as an infection. Synthesis, another life process, is the joining together of cells to form a larger form of matter. As a baby grows (which is another life process the baby carries on), his cells also carry out their functions and grow and bind together as well. Though the fetus starts as a one-celled organism he grows to be a multi-cellular organism known as a Homo sapien, human being. Synthesis and growth, then, are probably a fetus' principle functions in the womb. As for respiration, because the baby's lungs are full of fluid, he respirates in a much different way than we know; but still carries out respiration as a preborn. Like respiration, the baby also has a different form of excretion. The remaining two processes, reproduction and transport of nutrition, do not need to be carried out by the baby until or after birth. But this is only the biological aspect of the concept that the fetus is a human being.

Jesus also says in Matthew 25:40 that "inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." If you look at this verse literally, you can see Christ is speaking even about the the least or littlest of his brethren, which is, in fact, the human baby! Christ also says he knows us even from our mother's womb; how can he know us as none other than a human baby? He also creates us with a soul and a body in order to love him. This soul and body come into existence at the moment of fertilization. Though the preborn baby does not have a fully developed body until birth, he does have a soul. However, the baby is helpless and is in need of assistance on the part of the mother; she must not pass her baby by as the two priests walked past the jew in his helplessness.
I conclude by saying that it is not the act of bringing a baby out into our environment and our world that makes him suddenly come alive as a human. A baby is a human within the mother at the very moment he is created through fertilization of the egg. And that human is my neighbor.

(Rachel Anne McKee, age 14, is a parishioner at St. Michael the Archangel Church in Concord, California [OCA] This essay is reprinted from the Spring 2000 issue of Alive in Christ, Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania, OCA)