Prove you’re pro-life by wearing a mask
One of the finest people I ever knew, a friend for decades, recently worked in his yard on a recent Monday and Tuesday. He played golf on Wednesday.
On Thursday, he went to the hospital. Friday, by noon, he was gone. COVID-19.
Recently, I talked to his widow, a devout, faithful, extraordinary person herself. She is a bank president. That bank’s first female president. Tennessee’s first bank president widowed by COVID-19.
She wore a mask when she cared for her husband before the ambulance took him away. Before the COVID-19 took him away. She thinks the mask may be why she did not also contract COVID-19. She wears her mask whenever she is with anyone else.
The day before I talked with her, I talked with another friend, a Tennessee physician. This highly respected neonatologist has given his entire professional life to saving babies. He thinks it is foolish that we close schools and open bars. He is beyond frustrated that people won’t do the things that would save lives.
Daily COVID-19 deaths outnumber abortions
He is even angrier at “the so-called pro-life politicians who won’t save lives by requiring masks. They say they’re pro-life, but more Tennesseans are dying of COVID-19 than there are abortions.”
Quite frankly, I thought he was getting a bit carried away. That sounded like an exaggeration. So I checked.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that in 2018, 10,880 abortions were performed in Tennessee. That is an average of 30 abortions a day.
COVID-19 killed 115 Tennesseans on Dec. 18.
Tennessee has more than three times as many COVID-19 deaths as abortions.
The baby doctor asks, “Why aren’t the politicians pro-life after babies are born? Where are the pro-life politicians now when we all need them? Are they willing to save babies in the womb, but not their mothers and fathers? Not their grandmothers and grandfathers?”
COVID-19 is hitting home for more families
On a recent night I checked on my nephew. He and his wife and their two children all were struck by COVID-19. Thank the Lord that they all, we think, will be OK. We hope. We pray. But it has come home to my family. It is coming home to more and more families every day. And soon it will come home to most everyone.
We all will lose friends, if not family, to COVID-19 soon, unless elected officials are willing to lead and be truly prolife. Unless all of us are willing to follow the advice of scientists and medical doctors and be truly pro-life. If our elected officials can save lives — and scientists report that they can — will they?
If we can save lives — and doctors say we can — will we?
The Tennessee Medical Association, the largest organization of our state’s doctors, has urged public officials to require masks in high-risk counties. Goodness gracious, even Mississippi does that much.
ICU beds are filling up
Public health officials recently reported that ICUS are so full that there were only eight ICU beds open in an entire 16-county region of our state. The Tennessee Hospital Association president, Dr. Wendy Long, has warned that “We all need beds and available staff in our hospitals not only to care for COVID patients, but to care for those experiencing heart attacks, strokes, injuries …”
Doctors and hospitals are warning us that unless we act, they won’t be able to save us. They are begging us to wear masks to protect ourselves, our families and our neighbors.
Even if we won’t heed doctors and hospitals, will we at least believe The One who told us in Deuteronomy 30: “I have set before you this day, life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, that you and your children may live.”?
An attorney based in Dresden and Nashville, former state senator Roy Herron chaired the Tennessee Senate’s health committee. This spring the University of Tennessee Press will publish his fourth book, “Faith in Politics.”