In recent years it’s hard to imagine a person who has so personified a single issue as Dr. Kevorkian embodied the issue of Euthanasia or assisted suicide. He was an icon for the hard-to-talk about issue of patients that were terminally ill, suffering, and ready to die. The news media called him Dr. Death, the state of Michigan called him a murderer (Kevorkian lost a big chunk of his life behind bars), and you can be sure almost everyone avoided him at dinner parties. [His misunderstood paintings were gory, gruesome, and exactly as they should be…he argued that you can’t make violence or death more beautiful than it is. It’s ugly and so is a terminally suffering patient.]
He fought tirelessly for the right of the patient to determine their own end (“death with dignity” was a favorite phrase), and risked spending his life behind bars to do it. Some people called him a murderer, others called him a hero, and the medical community was especially hostile to him. Kevorkian said it was because of their own cowardice and inability to practice real medical ethics. He said America didn’t have real medical ethics–ironically, what people accused him of lacking–and I think our sleazily for profit healthcare system probably proves that for Kevorkian.
Kevorkian never shied away from controversy or this fight that consumed his life, but he always maintained that he was doing the right thing. He never killed anyone that was suffering from an emotional ailment instead of a physical one, and had strict standards about the type of patient (always suffering, always terminally so) that he would commit assisted suicide on. He maintained that he was killing people not just because it was humane but because it was his duty as a physician.
So now that he’s dead where does the issue of euthanasia stand? The short answer: nowhere. The long answer: Almost nowhere.
The only state that allows it is Oregon, and most others have not had a real conversation about it in years. Kevorkian pushed that conversation as much as one man could–especially one man without a political network, lobbying firm, or congressional committee, in fact what he was able to do almost single handedly is nothing short of a miracle–but there’s not many others willing to take up where he left off.
And it’s not exactly hard to see why. Most Democrats are in a fight for their life against an opposing party that has repeatedly used wedge issues like euthanasia (just abortion for old people as they see it) to whip up social conservatives into voting for an economic agenda against their own interests. Most of us are so busy trying to fight the economic war we’re not really interested in taking up yet another social issue that will cost us votes. [We’re doing all we can for gay marriage but we kind of hope euthanasia stays on the back burner.]
That doesn’t mean the issue isn’t worth talking about…just that maybe Democrats aren’t the party to take it up. In fact, Republicans and “Libertarians” (more extreme Republicans) have been so busy trying to find ways to cut medicare, medicaid, and every other healthcare cost–insisting that “Obamacare” won’t work because it adds new people into the system–that maybe they haven’t fully considered a way to take people out of the system: killing them. Indeed, you could save a bundle of healthcare costs every year if every person that wanted to be euthanized was allowed to be. So much that Paul Ryan would probably have an orgasm at the federal savings. Still, I don’t anticipate the Ayn Rand devotees taking up the cause of euthanasia anytime soon, even if it would be a good fit.