By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

The phenomenon that is Jack Kevorkian continues to unfold in a truly appalling way. When he began his assisted campaign in 1991, he initially received bad press. However, once he successfully redefined his purposes as “preventing suffering,” the media and public’s attitudes shifted dramatically. Kevorkian’s poll ratings soared. It didn’t even matter to most people that he used carbon monoxide to help kill many of his clients—they weren’t patients as he was not a treating or licensed physician—nor even that he often provided his deadly services in the back of his rusty van.

As the decade progressed, juries repeatedly refused to convict him for assisting suicides, even though there was no factual dispute that he facilitated suicides. The prosecutor of Oakland County, Michigan, was voted out of office when his rival ran on a plank of giving Kevorkian a free hand. As the end of the 1990s appeared on the horizon, Kevorkian literally had a free hand and his assisted suicides barely made the news. Continue Reading at CBC-Network.org