Headlines tell us every day that abortions, contraception, and even euthanasia are somehow related to the plague, commonly known as the coronavirus. During this time of crisis, the culture of death is hammering home its message in ways designed to persuade the fearful and the anxious that more abortions and acts of euthanasia are the solutions to the problems that families are confronting.

The uncertainty of some opens the door for others to bludgeon us with falsehood. Such antics prove that the adage “never let a serious crisis go to waste” is truer now than ever.

Indeed, one recent headline reads: “American Clinics Report Up to 400% Rise in Abortion Requests. If There’s a COVID-19 Economic Collapse, This Will Get Much Worse.” The article includes several quotes from Julie Burkhart, the CEO of an abortion facility. It states: “Burkhart said several of the people that she spoke to on the phone at her Oklahoma City center asked if she could assure them that the governor wouldn’t take steps to ban abortions, given that they’ve had so many appointments canceled in their home states as a result of the bans. These women are under the intense anxiety of not knowing if they will be able to get an abortion at all, so it feels like now or never.”

As I read this, two things jumped out at me. The first is that preying on anxiety in a time of crisis assures the abortion facility of higher kill rates. The second is that Burkhart, CEO of Trust Women, is weaving a tale of fear as she assures the reporter that she and her staff are always prepared to kill babies when expectant mothers want them to do so.

The National Abortion Federation, on the other hand, decries pro-life activism at abortion mills claiming the pro-lifers may “increase risk of COVID-19 exposure” among its patients.

Its leader, Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, opines: “It is absolutely shameful that anti-abortion groups and individuals are ignoring public health guidance and putting patients, clinic staff, and law enforcement at risk. This is not only selfish—it’s dangerous. In many places, these protesters are able to walk right up to patients as they enter or exit the facility or surround them as they walk to and from their cars.”

Clearly Ragsdale is playing to the press with her overdramatization. The truth is that peaceful pro-life demonstrators are there to witness to truth. The only selfishness and danger lurk within the clinics, not outside.

Media of every stripe are joining the parade suggesting that these uncertain times will work against couples who want children and thus will either deter them or send them to the abortion mill in cases where they are already with child.

It’s that crisis that cannot go to waste.

Given such crazy times, is it any wonder that even Catholic patients who are facing death are being denied the in-person administering of the last sacraments and have to settle for FaceTime or Zoom in some cases?

And then there’s the ongoing pressure to let the dying go earlier rather than later. As Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, architect of Obamacare, has suggested with his coauthors in The New England Journal of Medicine, healthcare rationing should be considered. They write that “individual doctors are never tasked with deciding unaided which patients receive life-saving care and which do not.” Ezekiel wants a “higher authority” to set forth guidelines.

And, as he is an atheist, I assure you he is not talking about God.

Finally, we heard that New York state attempted to pass and then rescinded an order that recommended denying CPR to patients in distress. Given that fact and Ezekiel’s penchant for control, there is certainly good reason to learn how to administer CPR yourself.

It would serve the people of this nation well to remember these words of Thomas Jefferson: “Nothing . . . is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.”

It is the unalienable rights of man that the deadly cudgel of the enemies of life wish to crush. We are called to confront this at every turn. Let us respond, following the direction St. Paul gave in 1 Peter 5:8-9: “Keep sober and alert, because your enemy the devil is on the prowl like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand up to him, strong in faith and in the knowledge that it is the same kind of suffering that the community of your brothers throughout the world is undergoing.”