As some of you fine readers might know, Dr. Death died on June 3. Jack Kevorkian, embraced and reviled for his work, was known – and eventually imprisoned for – his work in assisting people with their suicides.
The Detroit Free Press confirmed he died at age 83 peacefully and that “… he didn’t feel a thing.”
I mention this because I want to deal with the idea of assisted suicide being right or wrong.
Personally, I feel that a person, according to the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, has their right to privacy, and through a little bit of interpretation of the text, their right to die. I’m sure there are people who agree and disagree with me on the matter.
That is not the motivation of this diatribe though. I wish to examine the potential merits of death being the right of the individual. Think of people who are terminally ill, who know they’re coming to an end. Wouldn’t it seem like they deserve the option to end the pain they’re enduring?
One such example is what netted Kevorkian in prison. He filmed one of his assisted suicides of a man who had Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The Free Press said after this action he committed a theoretical “self-inflicted triple injury,” with him injecting the patient, having it broadcast on 60 Minutes and then acting as his own lawyer in the ensuing trial.
Is what he did wrong? Was helping those people end their pain an act of second-degree, premeditated murder? Was he a monster that deserved to rot in prison?
I don’t think so. I think he was just doing what he felt was right and humane. I even feel I’m of a similar regard concerning the act. He was providing people with a means of control at a point in their lives where they had little. They knew they were going to die, but he gave them the means to choose when that would happen. There was no victimization. He empowered his patients.
I know that if I were in the last of my days, I wouldn’t like to feel powerless. I would like to have some semblance of control and I would take the option to choose my own fate. I know that a lot of people would probably disagree with me, but that’s okay. I won’t tell anyone how to live, so long as they don’t tell anyone how to die.
