Dr. Jack Kevorkian (1928-2011)
Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the doctor known for his devotion to helping people end their lives, passed away yesterday at the age of 83. He invented a machine that enabled terminally ill people to peacefully inject themselves with lethal drugs, which he says he used with at least 130 people, and as a result, he spent 8 years in prison for second-degree murder.
Kevorkian is unarguably a controversial figure, but I think he is an honorable man who stood for liberty. Kevorkian was a fan of the Ninth Amendment, which states, ”The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” This means that people don’t have only the rights specified in the Bill of Rights; they have the right to do anything that is not explicitly prohibited by the Constitution or, more philosophically speaking, anything that does not violate the rights of someone else.
This includes the right to end one’s own life, a right that Kevorkian made his life’s mission. I agree with him that people should be able to end their own lives if they so wish, and he did 13o people a great service by giving them the ability to do this. It is cruel to require terminally ill people to be subjected to a painful, often undignified death. All that Kevorkian did was to give people a way to make their own decisions about death and to die in a more painless, dignified manner. It is wrong that he was charged with murder for helping people who freely chose to die. Many doctors today believe that they know what is good for people, and what those people want to do with their own bodies does not matter. By respecting their wishes, Kevorkian showed his patients more respect than most doctors do, and he should be saluted for that.
“When your conscience says law is immoral, don’t follow it.” ~ Dr. Jack Kevorkian (May 26, 1928 – June 3, 2011)