Newsom’s Blasphemy: Loving Your Neighbor Is Not Insisting a Mother Needs to Kill Her Unborn Child

Gavin Newsom took to Twitter in recent days with enthusiasm for his ad campaign in states that have post-Roe protections for the unborn. He tweeted at the governor of Mississippi:

the people of Mississippi deserve to know they have access to the care you are refusing to provide. This will be launching in your state today.

The accompanying image of a young woman in distress advertises California as an abortion destination.

“Need an abortion? California is ready to help.”

And Newsom brings God into his outreach to women beyond California to bombard them with abortion messaging.

In italics, it reads: “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these,” from the Gospel according to Mark 12:31.

Earlier this month we were told on MSNBC that the Bible does not say anything about ending the life of innocent unborn children. Gavin Newsom goes one further — suggesting that the Bible commands abortion. The former Republican congressman who claimed Jesus had nothing to say about abortion perhaps can claim ignorance — surely it’s been a long time since Sunday school, and he didn’t have the Catholic Catechism to fall back on, as Newsom does. There are a lot of people professing to be Christians claiming a lot of crazy things these days — most especially on abortion. Gavin Newsom, on the other hand, has entered into blasphemy territory. All for abortion.

Newsom is a father. And that young woman in the ad looks like a young woman who could use some protection, some men in her life being men and supporting her as the mother she already is. As governor, Newsom’s enthusiasm for abortion lets women down. But, of course, if his image of God — he says he is Catholic — is a Father who sent His Son to urge you to help the woman next door and states away to kill her child, it’s little surprise.

“My commandment is this: love one another as I have loved you.” That was the lead antiphon in morning prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours in the church that Newsom claims to be a member of. It struck me today how I fall so terribly short of that command daily. I can’t imagine I’m alone. Jesus Christ died for our sins — each and every one of us — is what Christians believe. Only the martyrs don’t fall short. Jesus in His Passion and Death is the measure. What a miserable perversion to say that God wants us to join the chorus urging the supposed quick fix of abortion.

Abortion is evidence that we are not loving our neighbors — that we are expecting them to choose the most intimate violence, severing the most natural relationship in the world, the bond between a mother and her child.

How about asking how many women feel like abortion is their only option? How about pushing for informed consent at the very least?

Earlier today I had a conversation on the new movie Lifemark, a true story about a woman who almost had an abortion — she was in the abortion clinic, on the table. A woman praying outside the clinic that day loved her enough to tell her the truth — some details about the baby she was about to have killed. On the table, no doubt in my mind because of the power of prayer, she had the confidence in God to get up and choose life. Melissa Coles courageously chose adoption for her son. She chose the couple who would become her child’s parents. She chose to love her neighbors — including the one whose beating heart was within her.

Loving our neighbor means life-giving choices. Loving our neighbor means wrapping around women and families with love and support. How dare you say God asks for death, when He died to give us life in abundance and for eternity.

Today is the feast day of Saint Matthew. I pity Governor Newsom if he truly believes the message of an apostle’s conversion story is to go out and make sure women in all states of the union can boost California’s economy by killing her child there. Perhaps the pre-conversion tax collector would be pleased, but not the one who God chose for sanctity.