“Love them both”—I have long appreciated the way this pro-life slogan acknowledges the sincerity in pro-choice expressions of concern for women’s welfare while inviting everyone to consider the humanity of the child as a subject of our love.

When I input the slogan, my search engine informs me that it can be considered “manipulative” because it “undermines women’s reproductive choices.” But to insist that such a call to love is “manipulative” ignores the “choice” of keeping a child, undermining the sincerity of the pro-life cause. The pro-choice and “anti-choice” movements are thus reduced to a simple rivalry between good and evil.

“Love them both” takes on richer significance in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son, which many of us hear every three years on the fourth Sunday of Lent. (Luke 15:11-32) Jesus tells the story of the younger son, who prematurely takes his inheritance and abandons his family for a life of debauchery. Squandering his money, the eponymous “prodigal son” is reduced to a humiliating and miserable existence until he comes to his senses and returns home. His father eagerly goes out to welcome his son and calls for the household to celebrate his return.

The older son learns of his brother’s return and resents the warm welcome he has received. The father, going out to meet him, too, begs his older son to join the celebration. There the story ends, abruptly, because in the wider context of the Gospel, Jesus is using it to challenge religious authorities who oppose what they deem to be general amnesty for sinners.

Most of us prefer to identify ourselves with the Prodigal Son. We tend to overlook the harm he did by dividing the family and wasting half the household’s wealth because we like the fact that he enjoys a happy ending, beloved by his father.

Jesus, however, wants us to consider the ways in which we might be like the older son, who harms the family by failing to appreciate how their shared life is more important than his notion that he has earned recognition and reward. Like him, we resent it when others receive what we judge they do not deserve. We imagine that we deserve better than they, and when we don’t get it, we punish them—and ourselves—by withdrawing from their fellowship.

Jesus invites us to be like the father, who loves both of his sons. Perhaps the greater contrast in the story is not between the two sons, both of whom have failed as sons, but between the father and his servant. It is possible to read the servant’s words to the older son as malicious: “Your brother has returned, and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf,” stoking the rivalry between the sons and provoking the older one to resentment. The father, however, in each case is devoted to bringing everyone together in celebration of their shared life in the household.

Prolifers know better than to give in to the rivalry others would stoke. We know to love them both: mother and child, prodigal son and steadfast son, prolifer and pro-choicer. People of opposing ideologies often try to reduce us all to a rivalry between the good guys and the wicked. But to be effective in calling others to love both mother and child, we need to be effective in loving others no matter what side of that rivalry they fall on.