medical care

Little Sisters of the Poor in crisis: This Atlantic feature is about COVID-19 and sacrifice

The Little Sisters of the Poor are back in the news.

Yes, it’s true that, for the third time, the order’s legal team is back at the U.S. Supreme Court. This is, of course, a case linked to the Health and Human Services mandate requiring most religious institutions to offer employees — even students — health-insurance plans covering sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including "morning-after pills."

The issue, of course, is whether leaders of the Little Sisters of the Poor, and others, can be forced to cooperate with government programs that violate the doctrines that define their work.

This raises a question that few SCOTUS-beat reporters have answered. Who are the Little Sisters of the Poor and what do the members of this order do to help others?

That brings us to a must-read feature at The Atlantic (by religion-beat pro Emma Green) that ran with this dramatic double-decker headline:

Nuns vs. the Coronavirus

At a Catholic nursing home in Delaware, one-fifth of residents have died. The nuns who run the facility are grappling with their calling.

This story isn’t about politics and SCOTUS, although it might have helped to have included a sentence or two pointing to this order’s role in that First Amendment fight. This feature offers an inside look at the work that the Little Sisters of the Poor are doing during the coronavirus crisis.

As it turns out, they are doing what they have always been doing — but this work now requires them to risk their lives on a daily basis. Here is a crucial early summary:

In many ways, the Little Sisters were founded for a moment like this: The nuns take a special vow of hospitality, promising to accompany the elderly as they move toward death. But like other long-term-care facilities in the U.S., the Little Sisters home in Delaware was blindsided by this pandemic. Even those most at peace with death have been deeply shaken by COVID-19.


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Fire at will, in a circle: What does 'pro-life' mean in the context of the COVID-19 era?

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.


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