By Ashley McGuire
The Little Sisters of the Poor fight the good fight on two fronts. Their work caring for the dying and elderly poor puts them on the front lines of the Covid-19 crisis. And thanks to the unrelenting, bullying efforts of Attorneys General Xavier Becerra and Josh Shapiro and friends, the nuns are also still leading the religious liberty fight in America. Today, they experience Round 2 at the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that should be renamed Insatiable Ideologues v. Little Sisters of the Poor.
For eight years, the sisters have resisted a provision in the Affordable Care Act that forces employers to offer things like abortion pills in their healthcare plans, a provision which obviously violates church teaching and their consciences. They continue to resist it, even as their work has never been more urgently needed in this country.
The virus has unleashed a torrent of death and suffering upon our nation’s elderly. The most vulnerable elderly are those who are already sick and those who are poor and without access to good medical care. Those are the people the Little Sisters have committed their lives to serving. They accompany them in their final weeks, days, and hours, holding their hands, smiling, and singing at their bedsides as they pass from this life to the next. They don’t just bestow a clean bed and healthcare; they give their residents the ultimate gift — a happy and dignified death. In that respect, their residents die richer than some of world’s richest.
