Still A Passionate Advocate For Assisted Suicide (Kervorkian)

[Hissyspit]

Source: Washington Post

Still a Passionate Advocate for Assisted Suicide

By MONICA DAVEY
Published: June 4, 2007
SOUTHFIELD, Mich., June 3 — Jack Kevorkian, the former pathologist once known as Doctor Death, says he will never again counsel a terminally ill person on how to die. But eight years behind bars and a strict list of promises to gain parole have done nothing to mellow the blunt, passionate, combative advocate for physician-assisted suicide.

In an interview here on Sunday, two days after his release from prison, Mr. Kevorkian, 79, let loose a rush of fierce words about a nation that did not pass any new laws allowing assisted suicide while he was in prison. Again and again, he called the government “the tyrant.” He called the public “sheep.” He called some of his harshest critics “religious fanatics or nuts.”

Mr. Kevorkian says he assisted with more than 130 suicides in the 1990s, when he drew national attention to questions about what rights people have when it comes to dying. Asked whether he would turn away a gravely ill person seeking his guidance now, he said gruffly, “I can’t help them.”

Mr. Kevorkian, convicted in one of those 130 cases of second-degree murder, has agreed in his parole provisions not to help anyone else commit suicide. “Sorry,” he said. “Don’t blame me. Blame your government for passing the laws.” Mr. Kevorkian seemed gloomy, too, about whether laws allowing assisted suicide would ever expand much beyond Oregon, the only state that has legalized the practice under certain circumstances. Of the United States becoming one of the countries to allow it, he said: “It’ll be the last one, if it does ever. It’s a tyrannical country.”

- snip -

Asked whether he had any regrets about that period, Mr. Kevorkian said, mostly not. If anything, he said, he wished he had sought different legal advice. “Everything else had to be done,” he said.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/us/04kevorkian.html?hp

[Sukie1941]

1. We voted twice here in Oregon

Twice a measure came before Oregon voters to allow assisted suicide and twice the measure was approved.

So far assisted suicide is the law of Oregon.

I voted for it both times. I doubt I will use it, but if I feel the need, I would do so. So will my 93 yr old mom, who is unable to tolerate any kind of narcotic pain killers. She had lung surgery several years ago au natural. Very difficult to watch.

Her wish is to just drop dead on the spot. But if that doesn't happen, she sure as hell doesn't want to "linger," especially in pain.

The feds (former atty general) have tried to ban this measure. So far we still have it.

[kimmylavin]

3. I'm with you.

I've seen too many long, painful, drawn-out and EXPENSIVE deaths, and I have no desire to do that to my family.
I'll get my affairs in order, say lucid and meaningful goodbyes, and then I'll hit the road.
Should be MY right and MY choice, and it is nobody else's business...

[Screwfly]

2. Twenty-first century American

is the end all, be all of human civilization. Any person who believes otherwise is either a lunatic or a terrorist--especially someone who wants to opt out by committing suicide.

[noel adamson]

4. End of civilization is right Screwfly.

Especially this administration which has worked feverishly to undo every aspect of civilization from democracy to due process of law to freedom, even the freedom to die if and when one wants. The anti-democratic and dictatorial notion that anyone who thinks different than oneself is the sort of intolerance that the fascist Bush regime shares with the fascist dictatorships of Hitler, Pinochet, Saudi Arabia or the similarly authoritarian ideologues on the left such as Mao and Stalin.

What hypocrisy to prevent even a 93 year old dying woman from dying to end her suffering while vaporizing Iraqi children with 3,000 bombs on the tips of cruise missiles by remote control! What insane and mean spirited people increase human suffering to such a great degree in either case. Soon all of these horrible neocons, along with the poor unintelligent and gullible people who followed them, will join Jerry Falwell in hell. For that reason they may want to spend every dime they can to prolong their miserable lives trying to fulfill their insatiable material desires, pursuing dead loveless atoms in different forms, but the rest of us should at the very least have the freedom to die if we want. God bless Jack Kevorkian.

[provis99]

5. I thought Kevorkian was a convicted murderer

Didn't they call him Dr.Death not because of advocacy for assisted suicide, but because of his ghoulish obsession with the Armenian Holocaust and murder?:freak:

[truthisfreedom]

6. I believe "Right to Die" is a much more powerful statement.

Time will come.