Southfield, Mich. – Jack Kevorkian said Tuesday he has a new mission to educate and inform the masses about their rights as citizens following his release from prison.
“My new mission is not assisted suicide,” Kevorkian, 79, said at his first news conference since he left prison Friday. “My work is effectively done there. … I’ll do what I can to have it legalized.”
The retired pathologist claims to have helped at least 130 people die from 1990 until 1998, the year he was charged with murder in the death of a 52-year-old Michigan man with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
He was convicted and sentenced to 10 to 25 years for second-degree murder. He spent eight years behind bars.
Kevorkian has promised not to help in any other assisted suicides and could go back to prison if he does.
But he still has strong opinions about the issue, insisting on the need for laws letting mentally competent people end their lives with the assistance of a doctor.
No other state besides Oregon has passed a law letting doctors help the terminally ill end their lives. Although Oregon’s law requires the patient to be the one to administer the fatal drugs, Kevorkian said Tuesday that doctors should be allowed to give the drugs if the patient is too disabled to do it.
“Some can’t swallow (the pills). Some can’t move their arms,” he said. “What kind of a medical procedure is it where the doctor flees?”
He said the best thing about being out of prison is “just being able to go around freely.”
About half a dozen anti-assisted suicide activists from the group Not Dead Yet held up signs from their wheelchairs outside the building where Kevorkian held his news conference.
“For me, the biggest problem is the stigma he attaches to disability,” said Susan Fitzmaurice.
