By Mark David Blum, Esq.
After serving eight years of a ten year sentence, the State of Michigan paroled Dr. Jack Kevorkian from prison. In case you forget, Dr. K or Dr. Death, was the physician who went about the country helping the terminally ill and in pain commit suicide. With his Suicide Machine in tow, the good doctor would hook up a patient to an I.V. system to self administer life ending drugs. With hero attorney Geoffrey Feiger in front of him, Dr. K brought to the table an important discussion about medicine and its role in the ending of life. Even I have problems with the last case which brought about Dr. K’s imprisonment; where the Dr. and not the patient flipped the switch. To me and apparently a Michigan jury, that was too far over the line.
With his freedom now returned, I pray Dr. Death gets back to work.
Remember Terry Schiavo and the national outcry for living wills? Ms. Schiavo was a living human being with no working cerebral cortex. She could probably have lived forever in a persistent vegetative state. In the years that it dragged on, Terry’s husband has gone on with his life and found new love and a new family. Before he did and while he was still married to Terry, he says she told him and at least three other people that she would never ever want to live in a persistent vegetative state. Terry’s parents were appalled at the idea that Drs. were going to disconnect Terry from her feeding tube. Legal battles have raged over and over at all levels of the State and Federal Judiciary. Even then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist made the ghastly and astonishing statement on the record and before the nation that upon his review of videotape, he saw “life” in Terry and how disturbed he was “they” were going to let her die.
Laws were hastily drafted to create a federal right to sue to stop the removal of a feeding tube so that Terry’s parents will be able to get federal relief to stop Terry’s slow agonizing death from starvation and dehydration. “Life” itself was declared to be so sacred, so worthy of protection that the Government itself needed to step in and determine when and how a person may die.
Ultimately, the most horrific and disgusting part of that whole sad tale was how Terry’s death was forced upon her by starvation and dehydration. They removed her feeding tube and then watch her slowly fade away over the course of thirteen days.
Like Terry, Doctor Kevorkian was caught in the vortex of one of society’s great dichotomies. Ours is a legal and social system that has created a situation where we recognize in each citizen the inherent right to die. “Life” is not mandatory. At the same time, we refuse to allow any medical or social assistance in the process. Whereas instead of having starved Ms. Schiavo to death, medical professionals should have been able to load her up with morphine or some such other drug and ease her into death quickly and painlessly.
The same people who claim to be about human life and dignity never allow death to come easy. Dr. Kevorkian is the prime example. Assisting someone to commit suicide is a crime. If part of “life” is “death”, then a right to life must include a right to choose the time and manner of one’s death. Our technology is now such that we can end suffering and pain upon command.
Nobody should ever have to starve to death as a means to end life. Humanity and morality cannot tolerate this. Even the most barbaric of nations and cultures allow for quick and painless death; even if by beheading. Our own capital punishment system insists that executions come about quickly and painlessly. Murderers go peacefully while Terry starved and Dr. K had his life taken away from him.
Irony is found in this so-called ‘right to life’. Moralists would have you believe that there is such an inherent and God-given right as one to life. They further argue that the Constitution and the Law must protect that “right”. However “truthy” that may sound; there is no Constitutional “right” to life. “Life” is referenced as an inalienable right in the opening clauses of the Declaration of Independence. The source of our law is the Constitution and the only mention of “life” therein is that Government cannot take your life without ‘due process of law’; whatever that means.
Hypothetically; assume that there is such a right of “Life” inherent to every human being. Let us assume it is a Constitutional absolute. Pretend the right to life is as sacred as the right to speech and religion. Having a “right” is not the same thing, however as having a compulsion. I may retain the right to speech and express my mind and hang out with whom I please and pray to whatever God I choose. There is no such requirement at law, however that I MUST speak, pray, or hang out. In fact, there are constitutional protections that prevent me from having to speak against my will or pray against my will. If you want to get real ugly, there are even Constitutional provisions that even cheat the right life; Justice Scalia and the Moralist right argue vehemently that our Nation has the right to execute children and no law prevents that. Hence, even the “right to life” if it exists, is itself no more sacred that speech or prayer.
If you grant a right to life, then you must accept that as part of that life, there is death. Having a right to life does not require you to live. Such a right only protects your right to live, should you wish to do so AND you have not given society a reason to take that away from you (with due process, of course). There is no right, power, or authority given to anybody or entity that can decide for you that you MUST live. It is not against the law to commit suicide. Who would you prosecute? The argument against abortion and in support of State intervention is that these ‘babies’ do not have the choice to live or die.
With Terry and Dr. K, we end up staring into the face of that which scares us the most. Death looked back at us through Terry’s eyes. We saw in her our own mortality and the horror of its impending arrival. As humans, we are historically and probably hard-wired to be afraid of death. We have created religions and medicine and society and militaries and laws and the FDA all because we are afraid of dying. Some of us are afraid of the “end” and others are afraid of the prospect and process of dying. In some way, however, we all work daily in all that we do to cheat death, prevent it from stealing our lives, and to delay the inevitable for as long as we can. Religionists work even harder as they are trying to please a deity that they hope will be there to receive them after the moment of passage from this world.
Death will come soon enough without help. Celebrate life as you have it and focus your attention there.
Still, not everybody believes in suffering or living until the last possible moment. For many, death itself is indeed a relief; including those whose sole basis therefor is depression. But instead of throwing themselves off buildings or in front of busses or trucks; instead of making a bloody mess using a gun or slitting wrists; instead of misfiring or taking an insufficient amount of drugs and surviving, society should make ending life as peaceful and respected as establishing life.
We need Dr. K to get back to work. The discussion needs to be on the table. If it should be your true wish, should you not have the option to just go to sleep and call it a day?
