The assertion of certain conservative politicians that abortion should not be considered “essential” surgery in a time of medical shortages is the latest twist in the ever-active “pro-life” news agenda. But different sorts of life debates lie ahead.

Writers on religion and ethics went to work when Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick suggested on Fox News that it’s OK if senior citizens like himself need to die in this epidemic to ensure that their children and grandchildren have decent economic livelihoods. Radio talker Glenn Beck, a Latter-day Saint, agreed that he’d “rather die than kill the country.”

Even liberals who favor fully free choice for abortion and mercy-killing abhorred suggestions that incomes should count more than the sacredness of human life.  Harvard’s Ashish Jha told The Washington Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey that Patrick set up “a false dichotomy” between economics and public health, which is “possibly the dumbest debate we’re having.” 

A related topic could be around the corner that  journalists should be preparing to cover. In a word: Triage.

Here’s the Merriam-Webster definition: “The sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors.”

That is, in a crunch who gets life-saving treatment and who doesn’t? In the current crisis, what if intensive care units in a city’s hospitals run short of ventilators necessary to sustain life, as worst-case projections indicate could happen? Should advanced age be a criterion for withholding treatments? This is a nation that next January will inaugurate a president of age 74 (Donald Trump) or 78 (Joe Biden) or 79 (Bernie Sanders), alongside a likely House Speaker who is 80.

One source, Arthur Caplan, a prominent professor of medical ethics at New York University, told CNN the spadework on how to manage such situations has largely been accomplished because for years hospitals have regularly had to allocate organs for transplant when the need outpaces the supply. Caplan advises the National Institutes of Health on organ transplantation policy and served on the Ebola working group of the World Health Organization. (Contacts: 646-501-2739 and arthur.caplan@nyulangone.org).

Information on the process is available from the United Network for Organ Sharing, a non-profit that manages the U.S.  transplantation system under federal contract. (Media information page: unos.org/news/media-resources. Contacts: newsroom@unos.org and 804-782-4730).

 Writers might also want to examine a heated debate among pro-lifers provoked by the conservative  Catholic editor of First Things magazine, R.R. Reno, who formerly taught ethics at Creighton University. He notes correctly that his church’s teaching distinguishes between the evil of direct killing, as in euthanasia, and “refraining from heroic interventions to save a life.” To be justified, heroic  measures must have “a good probability of success” and “not be excessively burdensome.”

Reno contends that the U.S., with its sweeping shutdowns and “shelter in place” rules, has “embarked on a society-wide, heroic effort” that fails both of the above moral tests. He has posted several articles on these lines, with the March 23 entry the most representative.

He calls the current public effort to counteract a virus that has no cure “a materialistic view of survival at any price,” whereas Christians should spurn a belief in “everything for the sake of physical life.” For Reno, the true pro-life cause is about opposition to direct killing, “not an ill-conceived crusade against human finitude and the dolorous reality of death.” Moreover, “there is a demonic side to the sentimentalism of saving lives at any cost.”

Religious conservatives by and large reject such thinking, emphasizing instead that Christian love of neighbor requires making considerable sacrifices in daily life to avoid spreading the virus to others. Among them are the Rev. Russell Moore, the Southern Baptist Convention’s spokesman on social issues, in a piece for The New York Times, and posted comments from Reno’s friend, Eastern Orthodox writer Rod Dreher.

Among Dreher’s gibes: “There really are some things worth dying for, but going about one’s business as a man about town in Manhattan is not one of them. Nobody is asking Reno or anyone else to deny Christ; they’re just asking him to deny himself the pleasure of others’ company for a period, for the sake of saving lives.”   

The Religion Guy does not advocate coverage of this, but readers may be interested that “Creation Spirituality” guru Matthew Fox posted an endorsement of environmentalist Kristal Parks' belief that with the virus our living earth is ridding itself of things that threaten its well-being. And “there is nothing more threatening to Mother Earth than us, we human beings.”

At some point, writers might also want to delve into the difficult question of why natural evils like deadly viruses  exist if there is a God who is both loving and all-powerful. This issue, of course,  is as old as the biblical Book of Job written several thousand years ago. The Guy will leave this “theodicy” issue alone for now, but this column from Harvard Law graduate David French, a columnist with  TheDispatch.com and  Time  magazine, might get you thinking.