Jack Kevorkian died today. Back in his heyday when it seemed he was hooking up someone to his suicide machine every other week, Kervorkian had a deeply antagonistic relationship with disability advocates. Many of Kevorkian’s…clients?…had severe disabilities and the disability community accused him of presenting suicide as the only rational alternative to a lifetime of “suffering” with a disability. Kevorkian never did show much interest in dialogue with these critics and couldn’t ever quite seem to comprehend how “disability” and “quality of life” could be used in the same sentence. His work and the media’s fascination with him forced the disability community to articulate a counter-narrative to Kevorkian’s rather explicit assumption that a life with a disability isn’t worth living. That narrative is still frequently marginalized and met with blank stares, but we are becoming more skilled in its telling. Though it may not have been Kevorkian’s intended legacy, he challenged us gimps to articulate our general desire to keep on keeping on, despite life’s struggles and limitations. Perhaps that’s something for which he should be remembered.
I just rented “You Don’t Know Jack” this week, the film based on his life, and learned so much. I think he was a brave man who truly cared about self-determination and people’s quality of life. The real villain that I saw in the film was society itself. There were a number of patients who wanted to die simply because financial reasons prevented them to live with dignity. For example, quads who got their benefits cut so they could no longer live at home and had to endure bed sores “the size of dinner plates”. He turned most patients down because he believe they were simply depressed and could get help to live a quality life. I recommend the movie, it really changed my perception of the man. As someone with a disability, I feel he fought for our rights, and highlighted society’s faults. The same people who protested him I believe probably did not care as much about the quality of other people’s lives, as long as they just stayed alive.