An In-kind Contribution to Legalized Euthanasia

"I don't think CBS can plausibly claim that the debate over euthanasia requires a snuff film to get going. That's just bogus. I just couldn't believe my eyes."

Stephen Smith, editor of U.S. News & World Report, commenting on the
60 Minutes segment which showed Jack Kevorkian giving
a fatal injection to Thomas Youk

"[Former Kevorkian attorney Geoffrey] Fieger thinks Kevorkian has decided he'd rather die in jail, on his own terms, than of a heart attack. 'He's talked countless times to me about his impending death, that no one else in his family has lived as long as he has,' Fieger says. 'I think he worries about it.'"

Detroit News

"The taping and its broadcast are, in the crudest terms, a stunt death."

Caryn James, New York Times

"NARAL's membership is old; the average age is 55 or 60."

NARAL President Kate Michelman, explaining why her group is part of a pro-abortion coalition that intends to spend up to $6 million dollars on an advertising campaign to target young women ages 16-25

Wisely or not, I made a decision a long time ago to avoid watching films or videos that actually showed examples of the violence you and I have dedicated our lives to ending. In my opinion they are real-life slasher films, whether the victim be an unborn baby or a patient "assisted" to die. For me to observe their deaths runs the risk that I would become less shocked, less enraged by these brutal acts of inhumanity.

So, unlike tens of millions of other Americans, I did not watch the ghoulish home movie Jack Kevorkian made of Thomas Youk's death which 60 Minutes cheerfully aired November 22. By now you know the details surrounding this 14-minute infomercial for euthanasia. Of how two months before, according to Kevorkian, he had injected potassium chloride into 52-year-old Youk, who suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease. Of how he negotiated with an agreeable 60 Minutes to get the segment that aired his amateur home move presented in just the right way - - no challenges, let alone criticism from correspondent Mike Wallace, and no opposing views other than a pro-forma 90-second objection from a medical ethicist. Kevorkian, 70, finally 'fessed up to being a party to over 120 assisted suicides but insisted Youk's death was the first in which he himself - - not the patient - - actually administered the lethal dosage. So why was CBS News President Andrew Heyward, "The fact that Kevorkian was willing to take this to the next level, that's what the news was [emphasis added]." One wonders what Heyward's answer would have been had Kevorkian opened Youk's carotid artery. That also would take the killing "to the next level."

While CBS described this a "public service," perhaps there was one other tiny consideration at play: the show aired at the end of " sweeps month." The size of the audience watching programming that crucial period determines how much a network can charge advertisers for the upcoming season. In other words, tens of millions of dollars were at stake. However, we were told, by Mike Wallace no less, that such mundane considerations played no role in the decision to cross a line heretofore unbreached. (No doubt Kevorkian also knew that Wallace - - who has publicly admitted to bouts of depression - - is an unabashed partisan of euthanasia.)

Kevorkian's behavior has been analyzed by people far more familiar with his peculiar mental processes than I am. (This, after all, is the man who, when asked by the Oakland Press what Mr. Youk's last words were, laughed and responded, "I don't know. I never understood a thing he said.") The whys and wherefores behind any individual act may escape us but the key is to place them in the larger context of a very intelligent man obsessed with death and blessed with an uncanny grasp of today's media's inability ever to say, "This is as far as our complicity goes, not one inch further."

Like a child who taunts authority successfully, Kevorkian was emboldened by four attempts to convict him of assisting in a suicide. Three ended in acquittals, a fourth in a mistrial, producing a bumper crop of publicity for Kevorkian. But that gambit had run out of ethanol. The Detroit county prosecutor won that office precisely because when running he promised no mas - - no more trials on charges of assisting in a suicide, which he believes are fated to lose.

Kevorkian could never live with this. Upping the ante, Kevorkian unnerved even some of his staunchest supporters by harvesting the kidneys of a quadriplegic whom he "assisted" to commit suicide. The attempt by Kevorkian, who was a pathologist before he lost his medical license, was so incompetent the Oakland County medical examiner described it as a "mutilation." Direct killing - - "euthanasia" - - was next.

CBS tried to dress up its abject capitulation/advocacy as contributing to the debate. Peter Steinfels of the New York Times shrewdly pointed out that, in one sense, Kevorkian and 60 Minutes did further the debate. By providing a point of rare clarity, the segment showed that "the moral and legal line between assisting a suicide and directly ending a life is paper-thin."

To the best of my knowledge, no one has discussed one other element. 60 Minutes's in-kind contribution to legalized euthanasia aired on the 35th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. What we saw may have been much less bloody than what was contained in the famous 8mm Zapruder home movie, but in attempting to soften our resistance to murder it was no less grotesque an assault on the soul of our nation.

As illustrated by the media-savvy Kevorkian, the children of darkness are masters of manipulation. Another recent example is " PEP" - - the Pro-Choice Public Education Project. Funded by a coalition of 46 pro-abortion groups - - including, by the way, the National Education Association and the YWCA - - the ambitious goal is to use print and electronic media ads to pump up enthusiasm in women ages 16-25, a.k.a. "mobilize complacent abortion-rights supporters, especially young women," according to the Washington Post.

Starting with subways and bus ads, the proposed $6 million campaign is long on attitude and light on substance. The Post reports that in the year-end issue of People, readers "will confront a downtown waifette complete with fashionably pierced nostril and eyebrows and elaborate tattoos. 'Think you can do whatever you want with your body?' the copy asks. 'Think again.'" Get it? Ripping your kid's head off is just like piercing your nose, an act of individual taste devoid of moral components.

The creative team from the ad agency of DeVito/Verdi, the Post tells us, "could moonlight on the set of a WB series; all are under 30, they're close to the target audience themselves and are applying the techniques for selling lip gloss to raising awareness of abortion issues." Indeed, they have weaved references "to the '70s revival and nostalgic TV games into their ads - - which all conclude with the tag line, 'It's pro-choice or no choice.' "

That butchering children can be marketed like lip gloss; that Kevorkian can "sense reluctance" in Youk when Kevorkian suggests euthanasia yet plow ahead anyway; and that Mike Wallace can observe Youk's final death throes (as U.S. News & World Report put it) with an "icy demeanor" that "never cracked" ought to make your blood run cold. They have reworked familiar material - - " control your own body/your own death" - - in a new and ever more sinister manner.

If I may, let me close with something that will help sustain us as our nation sets sail into uncharted waters. It is a passage taken from journalist Pete Hamill's new book. Quoting from a study of the life of turn-of-the-century Italian immigrants written by Luciano De Crescenzo, we learn from Hamill that departing immigrants would bring a ball of yarn on board, leaving one end with someone on land. "As the ship slowly cleared the dock, the balls unwound." After the yarn ran out, "the long strips remained airborne, sustained by the wind long after those on land and those at sea had lost sight of each other."

Like those strips of yarn, respect for the dignity and uniqueness of every human life can only be kept afloat by our memory - - our refusal to forget that each one of us matters infinitely. Provided you and Ikeep the banner of respect for life flying high, the sight of this precious emblem of justice and mercy someday will guide our nation safely back home.

dha