The most recent variety of the coronavirus, Covid-19 or the Wuhan virus or China flu etc. has swept us up into an international health emergency.

Though the facts seem to be as much about hype, panic (a run on toilet paper?) and politics (demagoguing) as it is about health, one thing for certain, it has focused us all on our most common denominator: our fragile humanity.

As the “United States of Entertainment”, perhaps more than any other nation, Americans are willing to put significant effort into attaining entertainment. So, for instance, when your favorite NBA team has its game interrupted by a health emergency, you’d think folks would riot. Yet, refreshingly, everyone complies in a thoughtful if not sarcastic way.

The owner of the Dallas Mavericks was quoted as saying “You know what, it’s really not about basketball or money…you think about your family… Because now, it’s much more personal.”  

When crisis strikes and our family is at risk, what really matters is painfully evident.

A Cardinal was quoted as saying “something changed: all of the sudden, we started to care for every life. … We have become lovers of life. …since the virus began spreading in Italy, no one is having discussions about the right a person with Down Syndrome has to live or if it is up to the expectant mother to choose to abort it. Neither are Italians talking about euthanizing the elderly, and there are no ‘equality’ marches that are really against equality and against freedom. People don’t talk about abortion, or about euthanasia, because everyone is talking for life,” he said. “We are looking for vaccines, we are taking precautions to guarantee that we can save lives.”

The pro-life movement has always been about respect for all life; it has always stated that no inconvenience is too great to nurture life – whether in the womb or in the frailty of sickness and age. All life matters because it is our most common and “humanizing” bond that will guide us through tough times.

When a member of this humanity is at risk, the pro-life movement speaks.

It is in times like this that we realize that we are all pro-life.