HBO show on Jack Kevorkian

The recent HBO show, “You Don’t Know Jack” is a sympathetic portrayal of Jack Kevorkian, played by Al Pacino. This brings up an interesting connection between issues: Kevorkian’s book, Medicide: The Goodness of Planned Death, argues at length that those subjected to the death penalty should have their organs harvested for use by others. He says it’s terrible to waste good organs when known death is coming. This is how he started out his campaign, spending years in this pursuit, and it segued smoothly into doing the same for euthanasia victims.  

Delving Deeper – War of Words

Dehumanizing language – or worse, demonizing language – is one of the prime ways that issues of violence are all connected. The best book on this subject is William Brennan’s Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives, put out by Life Cycle Books. Brennan shows how specific kinds of language – seeing people as objects, garbage, disease, parasites, etc. – get applied across a wide range of groups, from unborn children to people with disabilities to ethnic minorities and enemies in war. An example of applying this to women is available on-line.

Calling on the CL Community

We ask subscribers to be on the lookout for news items or other media resources that would be of interest to other subscribers and that could benefit from consistent-life responses to either encourage, commend, or challenge positions: letters-to-the-editor, blog postings, or your own favorite short quotations. We’re not an outfit with lots of staff and money to pursue leads, but a community of people sharing information. If you have anything to share, please send it to weekly@consistent-life.org.

Quotation of the Week

[on the occasion of the anti-immigrant law passed this week in Arizona]

Edward Allred, millionaire abortion doctor, San Diego Union, October 12, 1980

"Population control is too important to be stopped by some right wing pro-life types. Take the new influx of Hispanic immigrants. Their lack of respect for democracy and social order is frightening. I hope I can do something to stem that tide; I'd set up a clinic in Mexico for free if I could."